Canada has more fresh water than practically any other nation on the face of the earth. Yet Canada is in the midst of a summer drought. Parched brown fields are reported from coast to coast, and agricultural crops face devastation if the rains don’t come soon.
This is not the first summer, however, that Canadians have faced water shortages; it has been an ongoing event, occurring almost annually.
While several of Canada’s smaller rivers and streams have nearly dried up, the Great Lakes still have water, as do most of Canada’s other large lakes. Water still flows in the major rivers, even though the water levels may be down a few inches.
Lake Superior, which is almost 800 feet deep, is only two feet lower than usual, as is the case for some of the other Great Lakes. However, water is still not getting to the people who need it. This scenario is not unlike the shortages of consumer goods in the former Soviet Union, brought on courtesy of state control.
Like control over consumer goods in the old Soviet Union, water in Canada is subject to strict state control, even though some token water privatization has occurred in a few Canadian locations. Several Canadian waterways, including a few streams, are subject to some form of state control, often in the form of a conservation authority.
The mandate of such authorities invariably is to protect wildlife and ecosystems. No new development is allowed without prior approval from a conservation authority, or rather, no development is allowed if a wildlife habitat is threatened or could be disrupted.
The reach of conservation authorities in Canada goes beyond rivers. For example, wildlife officials have the authority in certain parts of Canada to force their way into private homes-without need of a search warrant-to inspect the contents of freezers and refrigerators. This is to ensure the population of deer, moose, and various other types of game, waterfowl, or fish.
Furthermore, people in rural areas are restricted from digging ditches or trenches on their property, even if the ditch or trench is intended as an irrigation canal or a reservoir to store scarce water during a dry season. In other words, laying a private pipeline for the purpose of transferring large volumes of water cannot be done without endless bureaucratic and governmental hassles, including any long lists of regulatory requirements that bureaucrats may think up on the spur of the moment.
Due to looming water shortages, several Canadian cities, villages, and towns have called on their citizens to conserve water. In Canada’s capital city, Ottawa, for example, such a call went out because the Ottawa River is a few inches below normal levels-even though a navigation canal called the Rideau Canal, which connects the Ottawa to Lake Ontario, is presently only one-tenth of 1 percent below its normal depth for this time of year (two feet in a 250-foot-deep lake). Even though installation of a few high-volume pumps at some of the locks along the Rideau Canal could supplement Ottawa’s water supply, a web of bureaucratic red tape prevents such action.
As most free-market supporters are well aware, government control of a resource often leads to misallocation and waste of the resource. The Seaway system, which enables 600-foot-long ships to make the journey between the Atlantic coast to inland ports was only recently privatized. It has yet to be modified, however, even though it wastes tremendous volumes of water moving ships through locks.
The volume of water released every time a ship moves through one lock on the Seaway is the equivilant of the amount of water a population of 15,000 people would use in a single day. By comparison, the European barge canal system uses energy from outflowing water to drive pumps that move water to locks upstream, thus saving two-thirds of the volume of water used per lock.
Some modern post-statist technology in the Seaway locks could make water available to 10,000 people every day, each time a ship went through a single lock on the stretch between Detroit and Montreal.
Despite such facts, however, the Canadian federal and provincial officials still stand in the way of private water pipelines-or even tanker trucks or trains-attempting to move water to areas where it is most urgently needed.
The purpose of markets is to bring to people the goods and services they demand--whether software, sneakers, or clean water. It’s a rule of economic life that whenever shortages are prolonged and systematic the cause is government control of resources. Canada’s supposed water shortage is classic case.
