the US has already signaled its ambition to very substantially enlarge the scope of its application. Also absent from the WTO are any rules analogous to the proportional-sharing regime established under NAFTA Articles 315. While the general prohibition against export controls established by GATT Article XI is definitely problematic, WTO rules allow the imposition of export taxes on water resources, which in our view could be adopted as an effective impediment to bulk water exports. As noted, such taxes are prohibited under NAFTA. However, the imposition of such export charges at levels insufficient to effectively eliminate water exports, might actually create an incentive to export water as a source of new revenue. For this reason this option may not be a desirable one. More to the point however, because pressure on Canadian water resources is most likely to come from the US, the availability of effective safeguard measures under the WTO is of little avail in attempting to protect Canadian water resources from US claims. For these reasons we believe that efforts to protect water from trade agreement based claims should be firmly fixed on US claims arising under NAFTA. 6.2.2 Protection from NAFTA Based ClaimsIn terms of seeking trade agreement-specific exemptions for water export measures, we believe that the preferred option would involve negotiating a broad exception for such measures such as the general exception for National Security measures provided by NAFTA Article 2102. This would imbed in NAFTA broad protection from the various constraints imposed by this regime on Canada’s ability to establish effective water export controls. Far less effective, but still of some value, would be exemptions specific to certain elements of NAFTA, such as those concerning investment and services. Given the particular problems presented by the investment and services provisions of NAFTA, addressing these aspects of NAFTA would, in our view,...
