Water a Commodity? Read about the Great Lakes

Is water a commodity? According to Peter Lougheed, former Premier of Alberta, it is. In a 2005 speech given to Calgary's Canadian Club, Lougheed is quoted as saying:

We should not export our fresh water. We need it and we should conserve it," Lougheed said in a speech to the Calgary branch of the Canadian Club Wednesday. "We should communicate to the United States very quickly how firm we are about it."
Lougheed says Canada's water is vital to its economic success and needs to be protected, and he'd like to see an all-party declaration in the House of Commons affirming a refusal to allow bulk exports of its fresh water supply.
Lougheed says even though bulk water exports are specifically excluded from the Canada-U.S. free trade agreement, he says the United States would use that mechanism to get to the resource.

a rebuttal ( or commentary) to this argument is found in a recent Policy Initiatives Branch brief found in the DSP archive: http://policyresearch.gc.ca/doclib/SD_BN_Water%20Tradable_e.pdf.

A more thorough analysis of Great Lakes initiatives can be found in SOLEC documents, which is an international agency affiliated with the Environmental Protection Agency. Our library has print copies of the latest reports:

http://www.epa.gov/glnpo/solec/index.html