For 60 years, this Canada-U.S. treaty governed money, power and a river. With Trump's threats, what now?
Columbia River Treaty compensates Canada to manage waterway for U.S. hydropower, flood control
B.C. MLA Adrian Dix says he gets texts, emails, and even stopped at his local Safeway. He says people urge him to cut off power or even water to the U.S.
"People are angry," said Dix, B.C.'s Minister of Energy and Climate Solutions and the minister responsible for the Columbia River Treaty.
"They ask me, well, can't we cut off something? People want to take action."
This is happening as tensions rise over U.S. President Donald Trump's tariff threats and repeated calls to make Canada his country's 51st state, while eyeing Canadian resources, like water.
Last year he mused about a "very large faucet" that could be diverted to the U.S. While the faucet is fiction, questions about what will happen next for the 61-year-old water treaty under renegotiation are very real.
The waters of the mighty Columbia River — with headwaters north of Cranbrook in southeastern B.C. — are at the heart of a key cross-border pact.
Since 1964, the Columbia River Treaty has required Canada to control the flow of the river, via dams, to meet U.S. needs for hydropower and flood prevention. The treaty also obliges the U.S to give Canada half the additional potential hydroelectric power produced by treaty dams, which can be sold at market value.
Provisions expired in September. A three-year interim agreement is in place to allow continued operations of flood control and some components of a new agreement, but the renegotiated, modernized treaty isn't finalized and is expected to stall longer under the new U.S. administration.
Dix says B.C. and Canada are "fiercely defending Canadian interests" and staying the course on renegotiations. Meanwhile, some observers are now wanting to see it scrapped, arguing that with the shifting cross-border relationship, the stakes have changed.
What Canada lost
The Columbia River is the fourth largest watershed in North America, flowing about 2,000 kilometres from B.C's Columbia Lake into Washington State, entering the Pacific near Astoria, Ore. With some 60 dams on the river and tributaries, it today delivers more than 40 per cent of U.S. hydroelectric power, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, and about half the hydropower in B.C.
When the treaty was ratified in 1964, Canada agreed to build three dams in B.C. to manage the flow of the Columbia, flooding 110,000 hectares in southeastern B.C.
First Nations land was lost, and salmon habitat affected.
"It inundated sacred sites and burial sites, and commenced a lot of damage," said Jay Johnson, chief negotiator and senior policy advisor to the Okanagan Nation Alliance (ONA)'s Chiefs Executive Council last July.
The Secwépemc, Syilx Okanagan and Ktunaxa Nations, who were not part of the original Columbia River Treaty, were part of the negotiation team when treaty modernization talks began in 2018. The Sinixt, whose traditional territory includes flooded lands, are also vying for a seat at the negotiations, following a court ruling in 2021.
For those who lost land when dams flooded valleys back in the '60s, it remains a struggle to cope with fluctuating water levels that leave docks airborne and dead fish.
Even in dry years, B.C. Hydro is required to release water downstream when it is needed by the U.S., often depleting water in the seven-million-acre Arrow Lakes Reservoir.
Edgewood B.C resident Crystal Spicer was a teenager when her family farmland was swallowed under the waters of the new reservoir when the Arrow Lakes Valley was dammed. To this day, Spicer can't stand seeing the reservoir that washed the valley's rich silt soil out to sea.
"It's devastating to look at," Spicer said, as she stood on the bank in February.
"It was so drastic – I'll never forget the paradise it was before."
She'd like to see the treaty be modernized – or terminated – and the river return to a more natural state.
Modernized treaty stalled
Under the original treaty, Canada was paid an upfront payment of $64 million for 60 years to manage the river waters to prevent flooding in Washington and Oregon downstream. Canada also received benefits — half of the revenue generated from the U.S. hydropower made possible by the treaty — amounting to between $100 million to $450 million per year.
The modernized treaty took years to renegotiate, with an agreement-in-principle reached last summer. At that time, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the new agreement addressed concerns about ecosystems and Indigenous values, when it came to water control.
There was pressure to finalize the agreement before Trump took office, but that didn't happen. The failure to get it ratified by the U.S. Senate or signed off on by the federal cabinet, some fear, makes it more legally vulnerable.
John Wagner, who has spent decades studying political ecology, water governance and the treaty, fears Trump's administration will balk at signing the new deal because it takes into consideration Indigenous rights and ecological concerns. That could stall the process and improvements further.
"That could be the big issue," said Wagner, a professor of environmental anthropology at the University of British Columbia Okanagan in Kelowna, B.C.
As for Trump floating the idea of diverting Canadian water to drought-stricken and fire-ravaged California, Wagner says it's a pipe dream that would cost billions.
The Columbia doesn't flow anywhere near California.
"The idea that there is a faucet first of all, it is misinformation," said Wagner. "It's a crazy idea. There is no tap."
Time to signal an end?
But even the potential threat is riling those who have always seen the treaty as inequitable.
Historian Eileen Delahanty Pearkes, a dual citizen of Canada and the U.S. and author of A River Captured, would like to see Canada trigger the treaty's 10-year termination notice, signalling an end to the long-held agreement.
Pearkes says Canadians underestimate the powers they have, like the treaty, which she described as a "sharp" negotiating tool as it threatens flood control and reliable electricity the U.S. has come to rely on.
"If Canada really wants to play hardball, it can say we're serving notice of termination and say we're going to run this river exactly how we want to run this river," Pearkes said.
Pearkes says Canada was never compensated enough for treaty losses. As for potential retaliation from the U.S. administration, she said, "Fear-based responses are not helpful."
Wagner says losing the treaty could benefit Canada, despite the loss of payments.
"The United States would be in a much worse position than we are. We could generate an awful lot more hydropower on the Canadian side of the border, for instance," Wagner said. "I mean, we could do really wonderful things."
CBC approached negotiators to get their thoughts, but they declined comment, deferring to the minister in charge.
Stay the course, says minister
Dix is adamant that treaty termination is a wrong turn.
"I don't think we'd have a lot of effect one way or another, but it would certainly harm Canadian interests," Dix said. Dix says the termination process would take a decade, which dates past Trump's term in office, so would have little effect on the current U.S. threats.
And despite the slow and complex negotiations, Dix says there's strong cross-border support for the treaty.
"We are fiercely defending Canadian interests here," Dix said.
"We don't do that by gestures. We do it by substantive actions."
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