BC MLA Adrian Dix says he receives text messages, emails and even stopped at his local Safeway. He says people urges him to cut power or even water to the United States.
“People are angry,” said Dix, the Minister of Energy and Climate Solutions of BC and the Minister responsible for the Columbia River Treaty.
“They ask me, well, can’t we cut something? People want to take action.”
This is happening as the tensions increase on the tariff threats of the president of the United States, Donald Trump and the repeated calls to make Canada the 51st state of his country, while looking at Canadian resources, such as water.
Last year, he reflected on a “very large tap” that could deviate to the United States, while the tap is fiction, the questions about what will happen next for the 61 -year -old water treaty under renegotiation are very real.
The waters of the powerful Río Columbia, with headers north of Cranbrook in the southwest BC, are in the heart of a key cross -border pact.
Since 1964, the Columbia River Treaty has required Canada to control the flow of the river, through prey, to meet the needs of hydroelectric energy and flood prevention, in exchange for half of the income of the generation of the generation of downstream energy.
The provisions expired in September. A three -year provisional agreement is established to allow continuous flood control operations and some components of a new agreement, but the renegotiated modernized treaty is not completed and is expected to stop for longer under the new US administration.
Dix says that BC and Canada are “fiercely defending Canadian interests” and maintain the course on renegotiations. Meanwhile, some observers now want to see it discarded, arguing that with the changing cross -border relationship, bets have changed.
That Canada lost
The Columbia River is the fourth largest basin in North America, which flows about 2,000 kilometers from the British Columbia Lake Columbia to the state of Washington, which enters the Pacific near Astoria, Oregon. With about 60 dams in the river and tributaries, today it delivers more than 40 percent of the US hydroelectric energy. According to the United States Energy Information Administration, and approximately half of the hydroelectric energy in BC in BC
When the treaty was ratified in 1964, Canada agreed to build three dams in BC to handle Columbia’s flow, flooding 110,000 hectares in the southeast of BC.
The salmon blocked from swimming upstream, and the land of the first nations were lost.
“He flooded sacred sites and burial sites, and began many damages,” said Jay Johnson, chief negotiator and senior policy advisor of the Executive Council of Chiefs of the Okanagan Nation Alliance (ONA) last July.
The Secwépemc, Syilx Okanagan and Ktunaxa nations, which were not part of the original Columbia River Treaty, were part of the negotiation team when the modernization conversations of the treaty began in 2018. The Sinxt, whose traditional territory includes flooded land, is also competing competing For a seat in the negotiations, after a judicial ruling in 2021.
For those who lost land when the dams flooded the valleys in the 60s, it is still a fight to face fluctuating water levels that leave airborne and dead springs.
Even in dry years, BC Hydro is required to release water downstream when the United States needs it, often exhausting water in the deposit of the arrow lakes of seven million acres.
The resident of Edgewood BC, Crystal Spicer, was a teenager when his family cultivation lands were swallowed under the waters of the new reservoir when the Arrow Lakes valley was dammed. To this day, Spicer cannot bear to see the reservoir that washed the rich silt from the valley to the sea.
“It’s devastating to see him,” said Spicer, while he was stopped at the bank in February.
“It was so drastic, I will never forget the paradise that was before.”
He would like to see that the treaty is modernized, or finished, and the river returns to a more natural state.
The Columbia River Treaty between the United States and Canada governs the use of one of the largest rivers in North America, Columbia, with provisions that provide effective flood control, irrigation and generation of hydroelectric energy and exchange and exchange Among countries. While the president of the United States, Donald Trump, threatens to impose punishment rates for Canadian products and electricity, calls to end the water treaty are becoming stronger. Correction: An earlier version of this description referred incorrectly to the Bond Water Treaty, a legal agreement between Canada and the United States that widely governs the use of shared water. In fact, this story focuses on the Treaty of the Columbia River, which applies to the Columbia and Kootenay rivers on both sides of the border.
Stagnant modernized treatise
According to the original treaty, Canada was paid an initial payment of $ 64 million for 60 years to manage the river waters to avoid flooding in Washington and Oregon downstream. Canada also received benefits, half of the revenues generated by the US hydroelectric energy.
The modernized treaty took years to renegotiate, with an agreement in the principle reached last summer. At that time, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the new agreement addressed concerns about indigenous ecosystems and values, when it came to water control.
There was pressure to finish the agreement before Trump assumed the position, but that did not happen. The unattered by the United States Senate or signed by the federal cabinet, some fear, makes it more legally vulnerable.
John Wagner, who has spent decades studying political ecology, water governance and treaty, fears that the Trump administration resisted signing the new agreement because it takes into account indigenous rights and ecological concerns. That could stop the process and more improvements.
“That could be the big problem,” said Wagner, a professor of environmental anthropology at British Columbia Okanagan in Kelowna, BC
As for Trump floating the idea of diverting Canadian water to California affected by drought and devastated by fire, Wagner says it is an impossible dream that would cost billions.
Columbia does not flow near California.
“The idea that there is a tap first, is misinformation,” Wagner said. “It’s a crazy idea. There is no touch.”
Is it time to point out an end?
But even the potential threat is to break into those who have always seen that the treaty is unequal.
Historian Eileen Delahanty Pearkes, a double citizen of Canada and the United States and author of a captured river, would like to see Canada triggered the 10 -year termination notice of the treaty, indicating the end of the long data agreement.
Pearkes says that Canadians underestimate the powers they have, like the treaty, which she described as a “acute” negotiation tool, since it threatens the control of floods and reliable electricity in which the United States has trusted.
“If Canada really wants to play hardball, you can say that we are serving a termination warning and say that we are going to execute this river exactly how we want to direct this river,” Pearkes said.
Pearkes says that Canada was never compensated enough for treaty losses. As for the possible reprisals of the administration of the United States, he said: “Fear -based responses are not useful.”
Wagner says that losing the treaty could benefit Canada, despite the loss of payments.
“The United States would be in a much worse position than us. We could generate a lot of hydroelectric energy on the Canadian side of the border, for example,” Wagner said. “I mean, we could do really wonderful things.”
CBC approached the negotiators to obtain their thoughts, but refused to comment, deferring the minister in charge.
Stay the course, says the minister
Dix insists that the termination of the treaty is an incorrect turn.
“I don’t think we have a lot of effect in one way or another, but it would certainly damage Canadian interests,” said Dix. Dix says that the termination process would take a decade, which dates back to the Trump period in office, so it would have little effect on the current threats of the United States.
And despite slow and complex negotiations, Dix says there is a strong cross -border support for the treaty.
“We are fiercely defending Canadian interests here,” said Dix.
“We do not do that for gestures. We do it for substantive actions.”
