GLIN==> Water Experts call for Federal Support for International Joint Commission

*Water Experts Call for Federal Support for Canada’s Most Important Water
Body*
*Contact: Nancy Goucher, nancy at flowcanada.org*
*
*
The week of June 5-14 has been designated Boundary Waters Week to celebrate
the 100th Anniversary of the Boundary Waters Treaty.  On this occasion, the
Forum for Leadership on Water (FLOW) is calling for the federal government
to invest in Canadian water security by providing greater support to the
International Joint Commission.

The International Joint Commission (IJC) is the binational body created by
the Treaty to resolve disputes between Canada and the U.S. over shared
boundary waters. While celebrating its successes over the last century, this
group of respected experts is concerned that the relevance of the Commission
has been called into question in recent years due to inadequate resources
and insufficient support.

“The Treaty was way ahead of its time, and the IJC should be congratulated
for a century of unprecedented success in proactively addressing issues of
concern in waters shared by Canada and the United States,” remarked Jim
Bruce, FLOW Co-chair and former Canadian co-chair of the IJC Great Lakes
Water Quality Board. “The Treaty is a truly remarkable document; its
principles are just as relevant today as they were in 1909.”

“The IJC exemplifies for the rest of the world how successfully
transboundary water relations can be conducted between riparian neighbors”
said Bob Sandford, Chair of the Canadian Partnership Initiative of the
United Nations ‘Water for Life’ Decade.

The Commission has received close to 100 references in 100 years of
existence, and has only failed to reach a full consensus on two occasions.
Governments have acted on their recommendations in the vast majority of
cases. However, there are both new opportunities and worrying trends as the
Commission enters its second century.

“The IJC should be congratulated for its International Watersheds
Initiative, which recognizes the complex interplay between socio-economic
and environmental factors, and between water quality and quantity issues,”
stated Ralph Pentland, who has Co-chaired five different IJC Boards and
Committees. “But much greater government support is needed to extend the
concept to many more basins over the coming decade in light of increasing
competition for scarce resources, and newer challenges like climate change.”

“In recent years, there has been a disturbing trend towards substituting
expedient political processes for the sound technical ones offered by the
IJC. The Devils Lake outlet and Red River Valley Water Supply projects are
recent examples of this approach,” noted Norm Brandson, former Deputy
Minister of the Manitoba Department of Water Stewardship. “Unless we
strategically rebuild the credibility of the Boundary Waters Treaty and the
IJC to resolve trans-boundary water disputes, we seriously compromise the
integrity of shared ecosystems to the detriment of both countries.”

“A key opportunity for the governments is to build on prior successes of the
IJC in the Great Lakes by renegotiating the Great Lakes Water Quality
Agreement, and in the process find ways to better coordinate water quality
programs in the upstream Great Lakes and downstream St. Lawrence basins,”
stated Marc Hudon, Director of Nature Quebec’s St. Lawrence River/Great
Lakes Program. And in terms of aboriginal water issues, Merrell-Ann Phare,
Executive Director of the Centre for Indigenous Environmental Resources,
commented that “the IJC is perfectly poised to consider increasingly
intractable issues such as reconciliation of the interests, rights and
ambitions of First Nations, Metis and Native American peoples who are
impacted by transboundary water disputes.”

An earlier report by several FLOW members entitled Changing the Flow: A
Blueprint for Federal Action on Freshwater called on the federal government
to “work with U.S. counterparts to inject the IJC with the capacity it
needs–financial, technical and staffing–to evolve to meet new challenges.”
That same report described a troubling loss of national water science
capacity in recent years, which has compromised the ability to adequately
support the IJC’s activities and to protect national water security more
generally.
FLOW calls upon the government to expeditiously meet its commitment to
develop a new water strategy, and in so doing to ensure that the important
work of the International Joint Commission is appropriately recognized.


For further information:

Nancy Goucher, FLOW Program Coordinator
nancy at flowcanada.org
647-891-0338
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