The Decibel - Why Canada’s water security is being threatened by Trump

Episode Date: March 27, 2025

For decades, scientific research at the Great Lakes has meant close partnership between Canada and the U.S., but President Trump’s latest job cuts may be changing that. Last Thursday, the U.S. agencies overseeing the health and conditions of oceans, lakes and rivers became the latest target of the Trump Administration’s federal job-cutting spree.Patrick White reports on water issues for the Globe. Today, he explains how the partnership around the Great Lakes is changing, why there’s new negotiations about water sharing, and why these conversations about freshwater are not just issues of environmental concern – but also of national security.Questions? Comments? Ideas? E-mail us at [e-mail]

One of the greatest shared resources between Canada and the U.S. is water. It takes a lot of cooperation to preserve access to shared freshwater, and our partnership with the U.S. is a clear example of our two countries working together. But lately, that partnership has come under attack. U.S. President Donald Trump has laid off thousands of federal employees in his first few weeks of office, including those who work at the environmental agencies that manage our shared water. So today, we're talking to Patrick White.

He reports on water issues for the Globe. He'll tell us what this means for cooperation over the Great Lakes, how President Trump may want to renegotiate water management more broadly, and why these conversations about fresh water are not just about the environment, but also about national security. I'm Menaka Rammel-Wms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Patrick, thanks so much for being here. Thanks very much for having me. Let's just start by talking about the importance

of the Great Lakes. How much do we actually rely on them? Yeah, I think for their size and importance, they are kind of taken for granted. The Great Lakes are the drinking water supply for 40 million people, including 10 million people in Canada. So that's a direct link to our health and wellbeing. The Great Lakes region, there's a stat out there that says if it were a country of itself, it would have an economy of about $6 trillion, which would make it the third biggest economy in the world after

the US and China. So economically it is gigantic. And on the US side, it stores about 90% of US fresh water. And this is just the benefits for humans. I mean, for countless bald eagles, lake trout, whitefish, all kinds of land mammals, this is the primary source of water and life. So it's really tough to quantify it because they just are so important to such a huge part of this continent. Of course, if we go back a few decades, we haven't always taken very good care of these Great Lakes. Can you tell us, what were they like in the 1960s?

Well, there was this famous incident in 1969 where the Cuyahoga River, which flows past Cleveland and into Lake Erie, caught on fire. I was on fire for about 30 minutes or so before they could put it out. It was a big story in Time magazine. They found that actually that river had caught on fire somewhere around 14 times over the previous 75 years or so. 14 times on fire. 14 times.

And this is because of, I guess, pollution? This is because industrial pollution. I mean, Cleveland was such an industrial powerhouse at the time. It was pumping all kinds of fuel, God knows what else into that river. There was one quote from the time magazine where they, a writer said, the river doesn't flow, it oozes. It was really thought of as dead. And around that same time, they, there were measurements of Lake Erie as well. And it was considered widely considered to be just kind of a dead lake.

I think Time Magazine again said Lake Erie is dead. So that incident, the Burning River, spurred a lot of environmental development in the US, especially. The Clean Water Act comes in in 1972. The EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, was formed in 1970, just a few months after this whole thing happened. The Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement between Canada and the US, which kind of binds both

countries to protecting and restoring the Great Lakes and really viewing the Great Lakes not as this chemical dumping ground as it had been for decades and decades, but as a vital source of drinking water for so many people. So that kind of change in how they view the Great Lakes really brings in new regulations and starts to bring this kind of environmental comeback, for lack of a better word. Yeah, and it sounds like this environmental comeback really came out of a partnership. It's not like Canada or the U.S. kind of working separately. It sounds like this is both countries were working together at this point.

Well, they discovered that they had to. Four of the five Great Lakes are equally shared by both countries. Lake Michigan is entirely in the U.S. but the others, if you don't have an agreement on both sides, these new regulations just aren't going to work. Fish don't recognize borders. Industrial pollutants don't recognize borders. So to a certain extent, anything that happens in the other Great Lakes, kind of further upstream, if you will, will come down here to Toronto, will flow out the St. Lawrence seaways.

So we talked about the state of the lakes a few decades ago and how dire it seemed to be. And now we've, over time, kind of had this partnership where we've worked to improve the environment. Is there any specific example, I guess, Patrick, that we can look to to say that, oh yeah, look, we've improved things and this is a concrete thing that we can see

that is so much better now. Yeah, there's a lot. The Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement I mentioned, they do have to put out a report, I think every year or every two years, that shows just how much things like PCB levels have really gone down quite a bit. And these are pollutants, essentially?

Yeah, these are super toxic pollutants. One of the best examples actually comes from slightly before the burning river episode with the sea lamp ray control program. So starting in the 1700s, late 1700s, we start putting canals that join kind of the Atlantic ocean to the great lake system as a way of creating transportation routes, uh, all

along the East coast that kind of give boats and shipping access to this great inland sea that we've got here. That brings in untold numbers of invasive species. And one of the worst, uh, turns out to be this eel like vampire fish. I don't know how better to describe it, called the sea lamp, right? It is quite scary looking. People might want to Google it to see what it looks like.

I love, I'm the water reporter, I love all the oceans creatures, but this is one ugly fish. And it is a delicacy in some parts of Europe, but when it comes over here, it proceeds to devastate many of the native fish species in the Great Lakes, lake trout, whitefish, many others. And many of these are the foundation of the Great Lakes fisheries, which is actually a fairly large fishery. On the Canada and US side, when the sea lamprey were coming in, there's a lot of arguments over who gets what catch.

There's typical of two nations that share a fishery when the sea lamprey comes in and wipes out a lot of the commercial fish and brings the fisheries down to something like 2% of its previous average. Canada and the U S finally say we have to work together on this. Uh, scientists, politicians join together.

They create the Great Lakes Fishery Commission. Out of the Great Lakes Fishery Commission, which was developed in the 50s, they create this thing called lampricide, which is essentially a pesticide for sea lamprey. They spray it in little streams and creeks where sea lamprey larvae are going to develop and head into the great lakes.

And they find that it's hugely successful. They wipe out 90 to 95% of the sea lamprey populations to the point now where we're seeing a lot of those native species that were facing really endangered species status are now coming back in a lot of the lakes, like whitefish. So that's an example of if it weren't for this cross-border sharing of resources, sharing of science,

who knows what the state of the lakes would be right now. Yeah, I mean, that seems like a really clear example, then, of how this partnership seems to have worked over the decades. Let's fast forward to the present day, Patrick, and look at what's happening now. Something called Great Lakes Day was just held in Washington. Can you tell me what exactly is that about, and why is it significant this year?

That's a day that takes place every year in Washington, DC, where politicians, scientists, activists all get together in the nation's capital, and they talk about the Great Lakes. So they go down to talk about water quality, about border regulations, about anything affecting the Great Lakes environment. It's not like a conference, it's just a place where a lot of these people can get an audience with members of Congress and senators who represent these areas and can really

hold the purse strings on a lot of potential development along the lakes. OK, and so now that the Trump administration is in power, how did that change things at this meeting? Yeah, so talking to a few people who went, there is a little different tone this year. It's usually very convivial. These are all people who are hugely dedicated to this region

and in case of many of the scientists, they've devoted their whole professional life to this region. This year, at least at one speech where usually an American politician will stand up, I think it was a congressional breakfast that's called for this event. Uh, we'll stand up and talk about the value of Great Lakes and Great Lake science. This year, it was a Republican Senator who proceeded to berate all the Canadians in attendance, uh, for the record on fentanyl trafficking and allowing fentanyl to get into the U S and as some Globe and Mail reporting over the last few weeks has shown, those numbers as low as they are for fentanyl are probably hugely overstated and really not at all relevant

to Great Lakes Day where Great Lakes science and Great Lakes policy should be at the top of the agenda. So everybody in attendance felt that there was a there was a chill that had come over that event to a certain degree. Yeah it sounds like a bit of a vibe shift was happening there. Can we look actually a little bit deeper though? Like tangibly the Trump administration has done a lot of cutting of programs in the last little while. How has that impacted Great Lakes research? Well that's a good point. They didn't really need this speech to know that there was a chill on this whole event because what we've seen in many other departments in the US over

the last couple of months with some of the activities of Elon Musk's Department of Governmental Efficiency, there's just widespread staff cuts and it's hit Great Lakes science quite heavily. There have been cuts to the Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab, which looks at ice levels, waves, they do forecasts for the Great Lakes, they do climate change forecasting for the Great Lakes. That's run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which has been heavily cut so far by Elon Musk's agency. The EPA is, nobody knows how many cuts there are going to be there yet.

It may be a thousand. The new head of the EPA, the Trump appointed head, Lee Zeldin, said he wants to cut two thirds of that agency. This is the Environmental Protection Agency, yeah. This is the Environmental Protection Agency, which was formed in the wake of the Burning River incident and has been responsible for cleaning up toxic sites all around the Great Lakes. And there's a Fish and Wildlife Service, a team around the Great Lakes has been reported,

at least, has been cut from the fish and wildlife service. They are the agency, uh, I believe that actually administers that lampricide program I was talking about in the States. So if they don't get out and do that. Lampricide spraying of lampricide this year, then, uh, from what I've been told by scientists,

those sea lampreys are coming back. This is a program that has to be done every single year, or those lamprey, they are ugly, and they are very resilient, and they will come back immediately. One other area that scientists, at least in Canada, have noticed, and that is just a chill on communications with their American colleagues. So especially those colleagues working in US universities or in the US Civil Service, they've been told they can't really talk to them anymore. Some meetings, cross-border meetings, just points to how much collaboration there is. There's a lot

of different committees that have cross-border collaboration on here. A lot of their American colleagues are not allowed to show up for these meetings anymore. I've heard from one scientist who said, U.S. scientists are using personal email and personal phones to communicate with other people because they're worried about surveillance on their phones. So the chill is on in many different ways. What do these actions, these cuts in general, Patrick,

I guess, what do they say about the Canadian-U.S. partnership around Great Lakes even more generally? This has been a real standout for the value of international cooperation. I've talked to lawyers on other stories who go all over the world talking about cross-border collaboration on freshwater resources.

They point to the Great Lakes and they point to other parts of the Canadian border, the Columbia River is one, where this collaboration and cooperation between the US and Canada, which is written into a number of different legal agreements, should be duplicated. So we're kind of a model for the world. And very suddenly, in just two or three months, this has kind of been overturned. We don't know exactly where it's going yet. We don't know if these things that Donald Trump has said about border agreements are

going to come to fruition. We don't know exactly how many cuts there will be. They're ongoing. So some of these programs that we're worried about, like the sea lamp ray program, we don't know what capacity they're going to have going through. So I think a lot of Canadian scientists are taking a, a wait and see approach to all this.

We'll be right back after this message. We'll be right back after this message. So Patrick, in addition to the issues around the Great Lakes, you've also reported on this other water management agreement between Canada and the US, and this is the Columbia River Treaty. Just tell us, what exactly is this treaty? It's a pretty complicated treaty, but essentially it coordinates hydroelectric production and flood control along the Columbia River, which goes from BC and empties out into kind of the border between Washington state and Oregon. that BC would build a number of dams to store water and kind of optimize the flow of the Columbia river so that some hydroelectric dams downriver, including some in the US could kind of optimize how much electricity they were going to generate.

So the US gets dependable electricity at supposedly a reasonable rates. In return, they pay BC and Canada for that electricity. So there's Canada gets money, US gets electricity. It's not quite as clear cut with as that it's a very big treaty, but that is essentially what happens. It is been under renegotiation for a few years now. And it's again, this is another one that is often pointed to as a model of international cooperation. Both sides win with the Columbia River Agreement. But recently in the last few years,

mainly on the American side, there have been complaints that the amount that they're paying for electricity under this agreement has been a little too high. And in I think 2018, the Columbia River Agreement was opened up for renegotiation. So they've been both sides have been trying to hammer this out since then. I believe in summer of last year, they reached an agreement in principle. And there was a mad rush at that point. I've talked to a couple of negotiators on the American side, there was a mad rush at that point. I've talked to a couple of negotiators on the American side.

There was a mad rush to try to finalize that agreement, because they realized that a Trump administration could wreak havoc on that treaty. And it's just the kind of thing that a person who likes to think of themselves as a great dealmaker would weigh into and try to get a better deal on the Columbia River agreement. So they tried and failed to get that done. It is now kind of in this in between state. And according to our sources in Ottawa, one of the calls between President Trump and

then Prime Minister Trudeau, President Trump did specifically reference the Columbia River Treaty as something that the US was supposedly getting ripped off on. Okay, so sure enough, Trump did bring this up as a potential issue. Do we know exactly what he's saying about it? No, and I'm not sure he does either. From what we know, he was simply reading off a kind of list of grievances that had been prepared for

him. So it's unclear if he really knows what the agreement is all about. During his campaign, he had talked at least twice about a giant faucet that could be turned. He said it was located, I believe in the Pacific Northwest somewhere, could be turned to divert water from that region, including Canada, down towards Southern California. And so reporters like myself and others were left to look at the map and ask real experts about what he actually means, whether such a faucet actually exists. In the Pacific Northwest, everybody said this is entirely fictionalized, no faucet exists. So it's really unclear what he means

when he talks about this faucet and what he wants from the Columbia River Treaty. How important is that in the States? Like how badly do they need water? Yeah, there was a few stories that came out last fall quoting the US drought monitor, which relies on a lot of information from some of these agencies that are now being cut back, that showed that 87% of the US was technically under drought conditions. At that point,

it becomes a bit of a national security issue. 87%, that seems massive. It is. When you looked at the map the US drought monitor put online, it goes a color-coded map from green to orange to red. Vast swaths of the country are either orange or are red, or at least last fall they were. And I can imagine kind of a national security advisor

looking at that map on the US end and thinking we need to secure some water for the health and safety of our residents. So when you're looking at that map, the first thing that catches your eye if you're looking for water is obviously the Great Lakes, this huge inland freshwater sea, and then some of those giant rivers like the Columbia that do come over from Canada into the U S also stand out. So if you're looking at this as, as a way of preventing drought from really affecting America,

you start to look at some of these water resources that the U S shares with Canada. Yeah. You said something very interesting there, but how someone can see this from a national security perspective. So it sounds like we're not just talking about environmental concerns anymore.

There's actually kind of different conversations that could be happening. Yeah, I've talked to a few people on various joint commissions shared between the U.S. and Canada, and this is how they're starting to see this, that the water issue has become so extreme in Canada, too. But in the U.S. has become so extreme, especially in the southwestern portion of the States. There were giant public work schemes that were proposed back in the 40s, 50s and 60s that imagined water being diverted from Alaska and the Yukon all the way down the Rocky Mountain Trench and into the Southwestern US. These are projects that

would take decades. At the time they were pegged at a few billion dollars when they were proposed back then. Today they would be in the trillions. They are kind of unthinkable at this point. We're not even talking about the the environmental havoc which would be horrible. Those projects will start to surface again I think, at least the proposals when you look at the that map with the water resources in the north of the US that they share with us and the vast those vast kind of red parts on the drought monitor map that we see in the southern US. So let's talk about Canada's response to all of this, Patrick. Like what is the response to this kind of talk?

I think it's hard to know how to respond to some of this talk, to some degree, because we don't actually know what degree these cuts are going to affect the Great Lakes or going to affect the Columbia River. They haven't really been announced. A lot of media outlets in the states have been reporting on the cuts. And it's been hard to gauge exactly when everything comes out in the wash, what's

going to exist and what isn't anymore when everything is said and done. But I did talk to one NDP MP in Windsor who said, Brian Massey, who says it's really time for Canada to step up on the Great Lakes and perhaps even take over some of these duties that we're going to see lost on the US. But then again, we don't know yet that we're gonna see lost on the US. But then again, we don't know yet what's gonna be lost on the US. So it's quite hard to say in what areas we should be stepping up.

Canada, interestingly, last year did finally, after a lot of talk about it, finally create something called the Canada Water Agency. It's based in Winnipeg, but its goal of this agency is to fund freshwater projects and freshwater restoration projects all across the country, though it has a couple of, or a list of priority regions,

and the Great Lakes are one. So we could see if there are areas where Canada could step up, perhaps the Canada Water Agency could start funding some of that. Yeah. Well, just lastly, I mean, this kind of sounds if there are areas that where Canada could step up, perhaps the Canada Water Agency could start funding some of that. Yeah. Well, just lastly, I mean, this kind of sounds like things that people are thinking maybe we should start doing.

But yeah, what else can Canada really do in this situation? Because it sounds like there's maybe a threat to the environmental side of things, but also potentially national security. So what can we do to make sure that these things remain strong if the US isn't necessarily going to be our equal partner in this anymore? We haven't heard a lot from the federal government on this. I'm not sure at this point what they

could do except again go through the Canada Water Agency or kind of buttress the scientific work we are doing on the Great Lakes. There are organizations and now I'm talking about NGOs that have been talking about this very issue for decades like the Council of Canadians who is longtime director of Mod Barlow has written extensively on the need to protect Freshwater resources in Canada. It might be time for organizations like that to kind of fill the void that we're seeing here a little bit Again, it's hard to know what we're facing at this point. And it's hard to know when we will actually find out what's

been lost on the American side. So there's a bit of a wait and see approach again, but it does fall on Canada to probably protect the Canadian side of the Great Lakes, at least. Patrick, so great to talk to you. Thank you for being here. Thanks so much. Now that the federal election campaign is officially underway, we want to hear from you. Throughout the campaign, we'll be answering your questions about the leaders, the stories, and the issues.

If you have a question for us, send us an email or a voice note to thedecibel at globeandmail.com. We'd love to hear from you. That's it for today. I'm Maynika Ramon-Wilms. This episode was produced by Tiff Lamb. Our intern is Amber Ransom. Our producers are Madeleine White, Michal Stein, and Ali Graham. David Crosby edits the show.

Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Matt Frainer is our managing editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you soon.