By Council of Canadians
--, May 1, 2007
Council of Canadians
To consult the leaked document Leaked document: -- (PDF format)
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
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If we can safely export our resources to another country,let's do it.There is some that think any talks with the U.S. is really,really bad and will only lead to us becoming the 51st province. How immature. The states are our largest trading partner,by far,and will get along without us a lot better than we will without them.

Dealing with the USA usually ends up in one being shafted (how free is free trade? Softwood lumber?). Simple as that.

If they want our water (like they don't have any of their own), they should pay through their beaks for it.

Not quite that simple. Softwood Lumber was never part of NAFTA. The US wanted softwood out of NAFTA and Canada wanted cultural issues out of NAFTA. You got what you asked for.
Markets dictate price not wishful thinking.
Look into your history and take a close look how many of your PM's tried "diversifying" your exports. Nobody is interested.

Demand dictates pricing. Why is fuel so high? There's no shortage. Canada has enough to last itself for another few hundred years. People are willing to pay the price so the price stays up.
I imagine because you don't have enough refining capacity, not to mention your inter-provincial trade barriers, and your whopping gas tax.
Well then what's stopping you?

I imagine because you don't have enough refining capacity, not to mention your inter-provincial trade barriers, and your whopping gas tax.

I heard somewhere that Canada has three-quarters of the world's supply of fresh water. Unless everyone here is really bloody thirsty...

I've been wondering something about this issue of water for awhile now. We have the technology to convert salt water into fresh water, yes? I understand there would be a great deal of expense involved in processing the amount of water needed to provide what will be required in the not too distant future. However, would this not be an expense well worth investing in? I assume there must be other hindrances to this otherwise quite obvious solution, but I don't know what they are. Can anyone school me a little about this?

We could build a half dozen water pipelines to the U.S. and sell our water wholesale. The problem is: How will we ever shut them off? Populations in the U.S. will grow and Canadian water will become a way of life that they would go to war to keep. Our water supply, like the oil, is not infinite. We shouldn't even be discussing this with them. Water should already be more valuable than oil.

Sixty percent of your freshwater gets dumped into the oceans. If you export a fraction of that water, to regions that need it, what did you lose? It's being dumped anyway.

That sounds perfectly reasonable, but rivers are supposed to run into the ocean. The Colorado river used to flow majestically to the Gulf of California. So much water has been diverted for agriculture and human needs that the river is reduced to a trickle by the time it makes it to the Gulf and there is still a growing water shortage
Canada's fresh water from snow melt is going down every year. If we build water pipelines to the U.S., the demand will keep growing and in a few years we will be short of water, and then what?
Increases in world population means increased water use and less availability on a per capita basis. In 1989 there was some 9,000 cubic metres of freshwater per person available for human use. By 2000, this had dropped to 7,800 cubic metres and it is expected to plummet to 5,100 cubic metres per person by 2025, when the global population is projected to reach 8 billion.
People already use over half the world's accessible freshwater now, and may use nearly three-quarters by 2025. Over the twentieth century, the world annual water use has grown from about 300 km3 to about 2,100 km3