Seasons change and life goes on. The same Canadian trade unions that warned free trade would mean the end of all social and environmental legislation in Canada are now using the agreement's disputes mechanism to force other countries to harmonize with ours. The nationalists who insisted that Canada had lost all right to protect its cultural industries under free trade now demand the same protections be maintained in any multilateral agreement. Not a flicker of recognition at the turnabout.

And now water, the third great bugaboo from the free trade debate. By now, according to the stories we heard at the time, the Great Lakes should be dry, drained to irrigate the previously arid midwestern states, since as any of the obsessional zealots who follow this issue will tell you, water was "not specifically excluded" from the agreement. Miraculously enough, Lake Superior is still there. So before we launch into another round of hysteria over water exports, the least they might do is acknowledge they were wrong the first time.

What is it about water that excites such passion? A small Canadian consulting company has only to win a permit from the Ontario Environment ministry to draw 600 million litres a year from Lake Superior for export to the drier parts of Asia, and all hell breaks loose. Though water is provincial jurisdiction, and though there is no federal legislation prohibiting bulk water exports, the federal minister of foreign affairs, Lloyd Axworthy, announces he will ban the sale, on the sudden discovery that "the security of our water resources is a major priority for the government." In the Ontario legislature, a Liberal opposition member agonizes that water, "one of our most basic resources," might be a mere object of commerce. "Is there anything sacred left," he demands of the Environment minister, "that your ministry and your government is not willing to sell for the sake of a buck?" Once upon a time, the government of Mike Harris would have thrived on such opposition. But the new, caring Tories, it turns out, are every bit as hostile to the notion as their critics. "Our water's not for sale," Harris firmly declared. Indeed, so high was the hysteria by this time that even the company that initiated the proposal, Nova Group, was demanding that it should be banned.

So apparently we are all agreed: Canada, though endowed with more fresh water than any country on earth, will not part with a drop of it -- not for all the tea in China. Question: why? Why are we so unwilling to play the part of water sheiks? I don't know what makes one resource more "basic" than another, but I have even less idea why water should be considered "sacred," at least so far as this means it is off limits to trade.

Is it because it is essential to life? So it is. Food is also pretty essential to life, but we don't seem to have much of a problem with exporting that. Is it, as other critics maintain, that water is part of our national heritage? But how is it any less so if we sell some of it? This isn't blood, after all. Or, talking of fluids, wine. The French consider wine part of their heritage. Yet I'm told they export massive amounts of it.

So what is it, then? Is it seriously proposed that we will run out of the stuff?

Axworthy, for one, frets that if the Nova scheme went through, others would follow, and "all of a sudden you have a fairly major run on Canadian water." Oh, please. True, 600 million litres sounds like a lot. How much is it?

About as much as passes into the Mississippi at the Chicago diversion every two minutes. Lake Superior has not been unplugged.

In any case, if we ever did need to ration water, we could. The critics worry that once water is exported, it becomes a "good" under international trade agreements, which is true. But, disappointing as it may be to some, there is no trade agreement on earth that requires us to go without water. The worst that could happen – or the best, depending on your point of view – is that we would be required to treat water like oil.

What does that mean? It means that should we ever declare a shortage of water – as defined by us – we could cut back on the amount available for export only as much as we curtailed domestic supplies. That doesn't mean the foreigners get our water. It only means they'd be allowed to bid for it. If water really was as scarce as all that, presumably we'd be willing to outbid them.

Which is really the issue, here. All this concern for water conservation is pretty rich, in the country that uses more of it, per capita, than any other: 50 times as much as Latin American countries.

And the reason we waste so much water is that we give it away for free. If the consequence of allowing large-scale water exports was to force us to price this "sacred" liquid, it would be the best guarantee against shortage there could be.