of water in one province and a project is approved, this does not mean that other provinces have to follow suit. For the reasons we have just related, we don’t agree. However, having considered this question in the context of a prospective Accord, we should also note two other ways in which water exports from one Canadian jurisdiction will, in our view, clearly impact on others and which exist quite independently of an any Accord. The first has to do with the possibility of a National Treatment complaint being made to challenge federal measures intended to prohibit bulk water exports should the government have acquiesced to such exports before having established such a ban. Because federal authority to prohibit water exports is clear under Canadian constitutional law, a failure to exercise that power to prevent export approvals or undertakings would certainly support an argument that National Treatment rules would preclude such export constraints in other cases. In other words by failing to prohibit water exports in any case, the federal government would be precluded from according ‘less favorable treatment’ in all others. It is important therefore to stress the importance of swift federal action to prohibit water exports. The second has to do with the impacts of the proportional sharing provisions of NAFTA which we have described above. These commitments clearly bind Canada and are in no way confined to the territory of a provincial government that may issue such export permits. In other words, the claim to an ongoing share of Canadian water resources that might be asserted under Article 315 would persist notwithstanding the unwillingness or inability of the granting jurisdiction to maintain export flows. In the case that water is drawn from inter-provincial watersheds or groundwater regimes the implications are obvious. However, quite apart from these direct impacts, it is entirely possible that proportional guarant...
