From Black Gold to Blue Gold: Lessons from the Petroleum Trade Regime for an Emerging Water Trade and Investment Regime

Water resources in Canada are “potential” or “quasi-staples”. That is, the exploitation of water resources has featured many of the aspects of a staples industry such as their large-scale, technologically influenced, rural-based, bulk-commodity characteristics, but lack others, especially a traditional staples export orientation. However, this situation is changing. In the electricity case, deregulation in both Canada and the US markets has resulted in the emergence of a new production regime in Canada, one that is approaching a typical “mature” staples industry, albeit with the new environmental regulations and conditions for participation of a much broader spectrum of “stakeholders” which bears some resemblance to a ‘post-staples” model. The same is true of water resources as a whole where, for almost two decades, one of the most controversial concerns raised by Canadian opponents of free trade with the United States was that it would lead to the large scale export of water from Canada. Should this come to pass, this commodity would become a “staple” and the water industry which would emerge in Canada would move from “potential” to “actual”