The Current - Donald Trump wants our water. Can Canada protect it?

Episode Date: January 31, 2025

U.S. President Donald Trump wants to tap into Canada’s water, saying there’s a “very large faucet” that can be turned on to drain water from north to south and help with American shortages. We look at the question of water sovereignty — and whether Canada is ready to protect its resources.

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This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and this is the Current Podcast. Canada has so much water. Nearly 9% of our country is covered by it. We have the longest coastline in the world, more lakes than any other country. But in the United States, water scarcity is growing. And President Donald Trump has his eyes on Canada. So you have millions of gallons of water

pouring down from the north with the snow caps in Canada, and all pouring down. And they have essentially a very large faucet. And you turn the faucetet and it takes one day to turn it. It's massive. And if they turned it back, all of that water would come right down here and right into Los Angeles.

They wouldn't have to not use more than 30 gallons and 32 gallons. They want to do that. You know, they're trying to do that. And you have so much water and all those fields that are right now barren, the farmers would have all the water they needed. Donald Trump floated the idea of tapping into Canadian water in the lead-up to the election, but what was initially thought to be campaign rhetoric is evolving into a serious policy discussion. And this, as you can imagine, has experts in Canada worried about the future of this country's water sovereignty.

We'll hear more about those concerns coming up in a moment, but first I'm joined by Gary Wilson. He's an environmental journalist with the US publication, Great Lakes Now. It's an initiative of Detroit PBS. He's in Chicago. Gary, good morning. Good morning, Matt. Good to be with you.

Good to have you here. Donald Trump has repeatedly brought up this idea of importing Canadian water. Says that we're a giant faucet essentially, and it would take one day to turn on that tap and the United States would have all the water it needs. What does that signal to you about his approach to dealing with water scarcity in the United States?

Well, every time I hear the big faucet statement, I have to chuckle, but it's actually a very serious issue. First up, Matt, I would have to mention that in the presidential campaign, water was rarely mentioned in the run up to the election. It was all immigration, it was inflation, reproductive rights, the big ticket items. But as a candidate, Trump felt obligated to campaign in California, even though he had

no chance to win there. And water is a big issue in California, has been for multiples of decades. So he took the opportunity to publicly poke the Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, whom he doesn't like, by blaming him for the water scarcity. And then without any supporting information, he offered this simplistic solution that you refer to in your intro. Essentially Canada has a lot of water in the British Columbia snow caps, let's take it from there.

You know, it kind of passed under the radar in the US, except probably in California, maybe other parts of the Pacific Northwest, but certainly not in Canada. So that's how we got where we are. California is the fifth largest agricultural producer in the world. It's reliant on irrigation. And I mean, here in Canada, we a lot of what we eat comes from California. You think of strawberries, you think of spinach, everything in between. A Trump appointee to the committee that advises on trans border policy when it comes to water, call this an issue of national security. When you use that sort of language,

what does that say about how seriously we should be taking this? We should be taking it very seriously. The person you're referring to is a former representative on the international joint, Rob Sisson is his name. He's a former Trump appointee to the International Joint Commission, the agency that advises

the two countries on transport or water issues. Sisson is a Republican, but also known as a conservationist. And he used Trump's statements to put a spotlight on this. You know, California does have water needs. California does provide a lot of food for the United States and Canada, other regions of the world. The issue has to be addressed. But reading between the lines, I think what Sissa was saying, and I talked to him directly about this in my reporting for Grey Lakes Now, was there needs to be a rational approach. We need to take stock of what the needs are, what the resources are, develop a plan hopefully between,

with successful talks between the two countries and go from there. That this shotgun approach isn't going to work. There are agreements that govern and manage the water, particularly in things like the Great Lakes. We're a day away from Donald Trump ostensibly imposing tariffs on Canada. The relationship between Canada and the United States is a little fraught right now.

Should we put any stock into those agreements such as they are? We should. We should. We should be holding people and including President Trump and members of Congress in the United States accountable for those agreements. The boundary waters treatment, excuse me, agreement goes back to 1909 and it's largely seen as one of the, if not the most successful agreements between two countries over water issues. And water issues can be very vexing for countries and wars have been

fought over water issues. And the US and Canada have you know just been stellar and they're you know in their management of the transporter water issues. Have there been disagreements of course? Have they been resolved? Yes they have and in a peaceful manner. So you know we're a beacon for the rest of the world and some people here are afraid that that could be threatened. I was going to say, is the context different now, not just because of Donald Trump, but because of environmental pressures on agriculture in California, in Arizona, in development pressures in Arizona and California as well, where people are running out of water and they look north and they see lakes and they see an abundant supply and wonder whether they can tap into that.

I think you're onto something, Matt. There is a backdrop of conversation. I wouldn't say it's in the mainstream, but it's always there. The Great Lakes, there's a compact, the Great Lakes Compact that prevents the diversion of large-scale water to arid regions. Canada has a companion agreement

that mirrors that of the United States. But that doesn't stop the talk about shipping water to these arid areas. And it's something that is going to require more and more attention as the demand increases and with climate change. Can I ask a dumb question as to how you would go about doing that?

I mean, you just need giant pipes that go up towards Lake Superior. You put a straw in and you suck the water out of Lake Superior. I mean, that's the kind of doomsday scenario that I think some Canadians imagine, but is that what we're talking about here? That was the genesis, building pipelines that would go from Lake Superior to California or Arizona. The reality of that is the logistics and the expense are daunting.

But to closer regions, it's not that far-fetched. And right now, just outside of Chicago, 30 miles from Chicago, there are multiple cities and these cities are outside the Great Lakes Basin, who draw water from an aquifer and that aquifer won't be able to supply by 2030. So they're literally in the process now of building some pipelines to carry water out to these regions. And there's going to be more of that. Groundwater is under threat.

And at least in the US, there's not a viable plan to prevent the depletion of these aquifers. Those communities had their eyes on Lake Michigan, right? That's correct. And you wrote about this and suggested that perhaps the efforts to pull some of the water out of Lake Michigan were brushed back. Yeah, there's a lot of, well, first of all, the water comes from the city of Chicago.

It's drawn out of Lake Michigan. The city of Chicago is allowed to ship water outside the region based on a Supreme Court decision, so there's nothing illegal happening there. But the bigger threat, I think, is that the city of Chicago sees it as a revenue source, and then water becomes a commodity that could be traded, bought, sold, and now you're getting into dangerous territory and you're setting precedence. Water already is a commodity though.

I mean, it's bought and sold. People haul water out of aquifers and put it in bottles and ship it all over the world. So, I mean, again, going back just finally to, Donald Trump says all sorts of things, but should we be, going back just finally to, Donald Trump says all sorts of things, but should we be, we being all of us, should be thinking differently and in a more proactive way about the commodification of water now? We definitely should. And, you know, Ottawa's Maude Barlow, and I assume not many Canadians,

or most Canadians know of her work. Council of Canadians. Yeah, Council of Canadians. She was best known as the probably as the senior advisor to the United Nations on water issues. She once led a campaign bringing water to Detroit for residents who had their water shut off for the inability to pay. But Maud Barlow has been sounding the alarm for a long time, and trying to rally people to understand that,

to understand what she refers to as the myth of abundance of water. Canada has a lot of water, but it's not as much as most Canadians think. The same in the US. So she and others have been pleading for people to start paying attention to these issues. Glad to talk to you about this, Gary.

Thank you very much. Glad to be to you about this, Gary. Thank you very much. Glad to be with you. Gary Wilson is an environmental journalist with the US publication Great Lakes Now. That's an initiative of Detroit PBS and we reached him in Chicago. In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news. So I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner and I'm back with season three of On Drugs. And this time it's gonna get personal.

I don't know who sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy. On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. Growing US interest in Canada's water, as you can imagine, has raised concerns among some experts here about this country's ability to protect its natural resources. Tricia Stadnik is a professor and Canada Research Chair in hydrological modeling at the University of Calgary. Tricia, good morning to you. Good morning. How seriously do you take President Trump's comments

about turning on the giant faucet here? Yeah, look, I mean, Trump loves a good headline. We know that, and he intentionally provokes. But the reality is, this is something that Canadians should be paying attention to. This is not something that just started in this election campaign or presidency. In fact, back in 2018, President Trump signed

a memorandum of understanding, basically pledging to provide more water to California and using whatever means necessary to find supplies. So this is something that's really been in the forefront of his mind and his administration's mind for quite some time. How has climate change, this is something that we asked Gary, how has climate change reshaped water security

between Canada and the United States? I mean, ultimately what it's done is change the demand to supply ratio. So in the past, particularly here in Canada, supply was more abundant than demand, hence why water issues and water pricing were so low and low on the radar and not really in the forefront of anyone's mind. But now, particularly in Western Canada, as the drought from California starts to creep north because of climate change and global warming,

we're starting to see demand that is far greater than supply and exponentially increasing, particularly when we look at the population growth across the West. Can I ask you, this is something again that I ask Gary, but I think people are just curious about it. Is it practical to move water from North to South? Look, I would, practical, it's costly, it's expensive. It's possible.

It's logistically, It is possible. We have proven that time and again with the massive amount of water engineering infrastructure that we have, particularly in northern Canada, we're actually masters at controlling water and we've been doing so for many decades to produce hydroelectricity. So is it possible? Absolutely. Is it going to be easy? Absolutely not. You wrote a piece in the conversation that said, in your words, that this country is not prepared to defend threats to water security. What do you mean by that? Well, unlike our southern counterparts who have a national authority that actually governs the water issues and they have legislative teeth.

They can control the water and they can control the ministerial decisions across all of the states in the US. Canada has no such organization. So we do have several national agreements, the International Boundary Water Act, which my counterpart, Gary Wilson, referred to as the Boundary Waters Treaty, governs the management of water between Canada and the US. And then we have the Canada Water Act, which my counterpart, Gary Wilson, referred to as the Boundary Waters Treaty,

governs the management of water between Canada and the U.S. And then we have the Canada Water Act, which was ratified back in 1970. And we have the newly formed Canada Water Agency that is the first federal agency dedicated with a water portfolio. However, they are positioned as a connector or facilitator agency and have no decision-making or legislative powers. the water and the water So it's very fragmented in Canada and we're not well positioned as a federal or national body to stand up to this kind of rhetoric. If the United States were to actively push for greater access to Canadian water, how do you push back on that? Again, we're in the context of the relationship, whether it's trade or beyond,

between Canada and the United States, being in a completely different world now than it was before this election, for example. It feels like the norms, if they haven't been tossed out the windows, then certainly are on the window ledge. So what do you do about that? How do you push back on that?

Yeah. Well, Rob Sisson was, you know, and I know Commissioner Sisson from his former portfolio, really pushing for a rational approach. And I agree wholeheartedly with the fact that we need to take stock of the resources that we have, develop a plan and allow diplomacy to take over this. As Gary Wilson had said, there's the Boundary

Waters Treaty and that water treaty has really been exemplary in the world view in terms of how we manage water between national and international borders. But is this a different time now? It is. And so I think because of the increasing pressure for demand and the reduced supply, the logistics

of that diplomacy and the tone perhaps of the diplomatic action, as well as the coordinated response needs to be different, which is why I'm really trying to push for raising this profile with the government and whatever government we have next really needs to take this portfolio seriously and have a national body that can actually address

this kind of issue. Why shouldn't we share more water with the United States? I mean, if we have it and they need it and we use the products, whether it's your almond milk and your smoothie or the spinach that you're having as a salad tonight or the strawberries you might be having, if we use the products that are grown using that water,

why shouldn't we contribute? Yeah, that's a great question. And I get asked this question often. And really what it comes down to is a misconception of how much supply we actually have. So in Canada we are blessed relative to the rest of the world with a large supply of fresh water. That said that doesn't mean that we are adequately meeting our own domestic demand. In fact across western Canada for the past three years we were in quite a severe drought where exceptional measures had to

be taken. Alberta as a province had to renegotiate water licenses for the first time in its 118 year history. So we do have areas of vulnerability and I think we really don't have a good handle on what our supply is and how that's changing with climate change and what the increased demand is. And until we do that, I think that we really need to be conservative in our approach of making long-term commitments that we may or may not be able to stand up to in the future. Tell me more about that here, because again,

the statistic is that Canada has something like 7% of the world's renewable freshwater supply. And you could assume if you're a Canadian and you hear that stats that, and you take a look at the lakes and rivers around us, that we have a lot of water. We have an almost an endless supply. But you say that we are in some ways water greedy.

We absolutely are. So we do have the highest supply per person in the entire world of freshwater. However, we are also the largest consumers of freshwater per person in the entire world of fresh water. However, we are also the largest consumers of fresh water per person in the world. We consume far more than what is actually required by the United Nations for developed, uh, developed nations.

We should only be using about 250 liters per day per person. Uh, we use on average across Canada, 400 to 450 liters per person. Why, why are we using so much water? Yeah. Great question because it's cheap. We have the lowest cost of water in the entire world and that's because we've had so much. So we've never really had to worry about this until now, but the climate is changing and our political climate is changing and the demand is changing. So it's really time to revisit a water market,

pricing of water, and how we're handling our water resources as well as our mindset around water. What do we need here just finally in this country to take this issue seriously? Not just the eyes from the United States peering over the lake thinking, I would mine some of that water, but here to understand better what we should be doing.

If you say the governments aren't taking it seriously, which whatever government comes into power next, what should it be doing? So first of all, I think education of the public around water issues, water scarcity, water pricing, where we stand relative to the world. So Canadians are constantly hearing how much water we have. That is true. That is a true statement. What So Canadians are constantly hearing how much water we have. That is true.

That is a true statement. What we don't see is how much water we consume, how much water waste there is, and how we have a severe lack of conservation mindset and conservation policy. Up until recently, we actually were not even able to implement gray water reuse systems, for example, for conservation, because it just simply didn't exist

in the legislation. The building and the plumbing codes need to be updated and we need to pave the way for having more conservation infrastructure. But the governments also need to take very seriously, not only the threat to our security and sovereignty, but also the fact that there are some factions of our government that are open to opportunities, such as these opportunities have not gone unnoticed

by the Alberta government. The finance minister on CBC Eye Opener just yesterday, Nate Horner, suggested for the new board and the new heritage fund that they could invest in things where Alberta has a strategic advantage, specifically water challenges in the states south of us and the opportunities with fresh water and fresh water infrastructure. And I think we really need to be taking a long, hard look at what that means for our own domestic water supply

and our own water security. Trisha, thank you very much for this. You're welcome, thank you. Trisha Stadnik is much for this. You're welcome. Thank you. Trisha Stadnik is a professor and Canada research chair in hydrological modeling at the University of Calgary. What do you make of the interest from the United States in our water, but also what we perhaps should or shouldn't be doing when it comes to our own consumption of water?

You can email us, thecurrent at cbc.ca.