From Canada Place (9777 102 Avenue) to Alberta Legislature Building (10800 97 Avenue)

The Alberta Government is currently working on policy that will place all of Alberta’s water on a market. You know that pond in your land, that stream in your community?..The Alberta Government is going to stake claim in all of the water, and place it on a market. That means that pond behind your house, you will have to pay to use that water, but if someone has more money and pays more for it, they can use it, whether that be Cenovus, Statoil, you name it, the highest bidder will have much control over the water. In 2006 the first ever water market was created in Canada..guess where? Southern Alberta, in Treaty 7 territory.

Now the plan is to place all of Alberta on a water market. Water is not a commodity, it is not to be sold, and no one owns the water, we are all given it for life. All living beings require water for survival. Water is a human right, one which the Alberta Government is currently trying to control.
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Read more about the event at the Idle No More website…

FACEBOOK EVENT

Plus check out some of these World Water Week events happening in Alberta. And some pretty neat resources for you to use all week long.

• World Water Week events in Edmonton.
• World Water Day Resources from the United Nations.
• Monday’s Bottled Water Free Day and the Bottled Water Free Coalition has released this new and inspiring video on how to protect water in your community: Back the tap! Go bottled water-free. The video features Robyn Hamlyn (a 13 year old water warrior), Sylvia Plan (Aamjiwnaang First Nation), Mike Nagy (Wellington Water Watchers) and Munib Sajjad (University of Toronto).

Time is running out for Albertans to provide feedback on the government of Alberta’s “Water Conversation”, including proposed changes to Alberta’s water allocation system. Despite our concerns with the “Water Conversation” process, Our Water Is Not For Sale feels it is important for the public to participate in order to ensure that Albertans’ concerns about the water allocation system and the potential of expanded water markets in the province is heard in the process.

Your input could have a major impact! As of the end of February, the government has apparently heard from only a few hundred Albertans about this important issue, so taking a few minutes now to engage in the process and encourage your networks to do the same could have a major impact. The government has promised to release a “what we heard” document at the end of the process, and we want to ensure that Albertans opposition to water markets are heard loud and clear.

Below are suggestions from OWINFS on how you can best attempt to make your concerns heard. Please note that the Water Conversation includes four topics – management (allocation) of Alberta’s water resources, the health lakes, drinking water and wastewater systems, and hydraulic fracturing – but OWINFS is focused only on the water management (allocation) element. Other water policy organizations in the province may have suggestions for the other elements of the process.

What You Can Do

Raise concerns about the process

Provide feedback on the Water Conversation to the Minister of Environment and Sustainable Resource Development, Diana McQeen, as well as to Opposition Party Critics. We’ve provided some suggested speaking points below.

Send individual emails to:

Water Conversation feedback: ESRD.Info-Centre@gov.ab.ca
Environment Minister Diana McQueen: ESRD.Minister@gov.ab.ca
Wildrose Environment Critic Joe Anglin: rimbey.rockymountainhouse.sundre@assembly.ab.ca
NDP Environment Critic Rachel Notley: edmonton.strathcona@assembly.ab.ca
Liberal Environment Critic Laurie Blakeman: edmonton.centre@assembly.ab.ca
Please BCC info@ourwaterisnotforsale.com

Twitter: Twitter works too! Please tweet your concerns to @DianaMcQueenMLA or @AENV_SRD

Telephone: Finally, you may phone-in your feedback on the Water Conversation to 1-800-310-3773.

Speaking Points:

• I am disappointed that the online portion of long-promised consultations on water management in the province amounts to just two questions on a survey
• I feel like the questions are leading and don’t provide an opportunity to provide meaningful input
• The questions are so vague and general that it is difficult to determine what is being proposed or to decide whether or not I support specific strategie
• I am opposed to an expanded water market to determine allocation decisions in Alberta
• I would like to see a consultation process that meaningfully presents a range of options to improve water allocation system in the province

Respond Online

Respond to the Ministry of Environment’s online workbook survey. Specifically, for the questions on water management (questions 13 and 14), we suggest the following:

a) Respond ‘Don’t Know’ to question 13 and the six sub-questions in question 14

b) For the open-ended question 15 (Additional feedback on proposed approaches to addressing water issues), share your concerns about the questions. There appears to be ample space to outline your concerns.

Points you may want to raise include:

• It is impossible to answer question 13 since it asks me to indicate my support for a number of very different strategies
• The strategies in question 14 are so vague, leading, or general that it is impossible to determine what is being proposed or to decide whether or not I support specific strategies
• I need more detail about the strategies being proposed before I can determine my level of support (For example, does “Making it easier for water licence holders to share their water allocation with other users” mean they will be able to sell all or some of their allocation for profit? Will they be able to sell any portion of their allocation, even amounts that they haven’t historically used, or only amounts realized through water conservation measures? Will a mandatory holdback on transfers be in place to return water to rivers? What government oversight will there be over such transfers?)
• I am opposed to an expanded water market to determine allocation decisions in Alberta
• I am disappointed that the online portion of long-promised consultations on water management in the province amounts to just two questions on a survey
• I would like to see a consultation process that meaningfully presents a range of options to improve water allocation system in the province before any changes to legislation are made

Participate in a community session

There are still a handful of community sessions left. If you are in one of these few cities, we encourage you to attend these sessions to ensure that the process clearly reflects that Albertans are opposed to the expansion of water markets in Alberta. Go and raise the same concerns outlined above, indicate your support for the six principles we’ve outlined above, and ask clear questions about whether the government intends to allow licence holders to profit from selling all or a portion of their water allocation to other users.

We would appreciate a short report-back about any session you attend, what concerns were raised and what the response was to info@ourwaterisnotforsale.com.

Background Information

Download the OWINFS flyer.

The Government of Alberta is conducating a province-wide “Water Conversation” to ask Albertans for feedback on the future of water in the province, including proposed changes to Alberta’s water allocation system. In the fall of 2008 the government announced it was considering updating the province’s Water Act and released three reports in the fall of 2009 that indicated the government was considering moving toward a provincial water market. You can read background about the allocation review here.

Since launching in the summer of 2010, the Our Water Is Not For Sale network (OWINFS) has pushed the government of Alberta to “conduct broad and meaningful consultations” prior to making changes to how water in the province is allocated. While we are pleased to see that the public is finally being asked about the future of water in the province through the government’s Water Conversation, we feel that based on the Water Conversation Guide and online workbook, the process is neither broad nor meaningful. Read the media release from a number of organizations working on water in the province critiquing the process.

Are water markets still on the table?

The Water Conversation Guide clearly shows that an expanded and deregulated water market is still the focus of the government’s approach to water allocation in the province.

Page 32 of the guide refers to stakeholder initiatives including the Minister’s Advisory Group, the Alberta Water Council and Alberta Innovates (formerly the Alberta Water Research Institute), which have “suggested various mechanisms for achieving water management optimization in Alberta.” The recommendations from these three groups, released in November 2009, all focus on the expansion of water markets in the province. Read the reports.

Further down on the same page, there is a section on “Facilitating water allocation transfers,” which is simply another way of saying “water market.” While the guide and survey refer to making changes that “enable licence users to share water with other users,” it is clear that what is being referred to is changes to make it easier for licence holders to sell all or part of their allocation to another user.

On page 35, the government states that it is considering legislative changes, including “making improvements to the allocation transfer system.”

Our Principles

Our Water Is Not For Sale believes the following principles should guide water allocation and water policy in the province:

1. The market should not decide who has access to water, and licence holders should not be able to profit from licences they were granted in the past for free.
2. Water transfers should not result in an overall increase in water use. Only volumes based on reductions in water use resulting from conservation measures should be allowed, and any transfers in over-allocated basins must require a holdback to return water to the river.
3. Water regulation and allocation must be democratic and transparent. It must be managed by bodies that are accountable to the public, such as government or First Nations management plans.
4. Not all water use is the same. There must be a system of priority for water use that guides allocation decisions.
5. Indigenous rights, and the voices of Alberta’s diverse First Nations and Métis communities, must be an essential part of processes regarding decision-making about water.
6. Water policy and management, including the establishment of minimum instream flow needs, should be based on science.

If you haven’t yet been, you might be wondering just what is happening at these hearings? Well, campus community radio show Terra Informa broadcast some interviews captured at the Edmonton hearings. To find out what some of your fellow Albertans had to say about the experience, listen to the segment right here:

Download MP3 Edmonton Water Conversation, from the radio show Terra Informa

Media Release
February 13, 2013

The Alberta government’s Water Conversation survey of just 15 questions that was launched this week, fails to give Albertans the opportunity to meaningfully participate in the direction of water policy in the province, say groups working on provincial water issues.

“Albertans who have waited for years for promised consultations on the future of water in Alberta are going to be extremely frustrated when they see what the government has come up with,” says Scott Harris, Prairies Regional Organizer with the Council of Canadians. “Fifteen online questions, many of which bundle a range of policy options into ‘agree’ or ‘disagree’ options and are so vague as to be almost meaningless, is hardly the broad and meaningful consultations Albertans deserve.”

“This ridiculous survey will only serve to muddy the waters,” says Bill Moore-Kilgannon, Executive Director of Public Interest Alberta. “If the government really wants to give Albertans the opportunity to participate in a conversation about water, it has to be clear about what it’s talking about. For example, when it asks if people support ‘making it easier to share water with other users,’ is the government talking about expanding and deregulating a water market? If so, and if they explained the implications of this, I doubt that that this is the direction most Albertans would want to go.”

“The Athabasca Chipewyan have been actively campaigning for stronger water policies and regulations for years,” says Eriel Deranger Tar Sands Communication Coordinator, Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation. “In 2010, ACFN published the report ‘As Long as the River Flows’ to highlight the need to adequately identify and address the need for First Nation and Aboriginal base flow and impacts to treaty rights. The new water conversations emerging in the province have done little to address the unique rights of First Nations, and it would appear that governments are sidestepping their fiduciary obligations to uphold treaty and aboriginal rights.”

“The news release for the Water Conversation says that First Nations and Métis are being engaged on water issues through separate processes, but if there is a separate process, it hasn’t been made public yet,” says Jesse Cardinal, of the Keepers of the Athabasca. “Both processes are important for the future of water in the province, and the information about both should be readily available to everyone, otherwise the government will miss input from people who are very connected to water, input that could benefit us all. There are serious issues that are not being addressed in this process, including potential groundwater contamination from in situ mining operations and the slow progress the province is making in establishing limits on water extraction during periods of low flow in the river.”

“While it is commendable that the Government of Alberta has initiated this conversation it is concerning that the scope of the conversation has been narrowed in a way that will prevent any real discussion of the big-picture issues we face, including the problem of over-allocation of water in much of southern Alberta and the lack of mechanisms to return water to rivers,” says Bill Donahue, Director (Science and Policy) with the Water Matters Society of Alberta. “There also is no acknowledgement of the disconnection between science and water policy and management. We have to stop pretending that we’ve been doing a good job of managing water and achieving the Water For Life Goals, because we haven’t. My fear is that, by not tackling these issues, this conversation is going to distract Albertans from some of the biggest problems we face.”

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Media contacts

• Scott Harris, Council of Canadians
  780-233-2528
• Bill Moore-Kilgannon, Public Interest Alberta
  780-993-3736
• Eriel Deranger, Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation
  780-903-6598
• Jesse Cardinal, Keepers of the Athabasca
  780-404-5315
• Bill Donahue, Water Matters Society of Alberta
  780-566-4680