Is the tar sands’ water supply protected by NAFTA?
April 16, 2008 Posted by Meera Karunananthan Maude Barlow, national chairperson of the Council of Canadians, is warning Albertans that the government “could be forced to shell out hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation to foreign-owned oilsands companies under NAFTA if a drought forced the province to ration water,” according to an article in the Edmonton Journal. A study by University of Toronto professors Joseph Cumming and Robert Froehlich paints a disturbing picture of what could happen if Alberta were to suddenly suffer a severe drought. They suggest that American companies currently operating in the water-intensive tar sands could sue the Alberta government if it tried to restrict their intake for the sake of conserving water. “In the case of an oilsands operation that is shut down as a result of a loss of its water licence, one can conceive that compensation from a successful … claim could be exceptionally high,” claims the report, referring to NAFTA’s Chapter 11, whi
