Integrating Social and Economic Objectives within a Modernized
Columbia River Treaty

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Draft Recommendations Under Review

 

As Canada and the United States continue negotiations to modernize the Columbia River Treaty, the Canadian negotiating team – which includes Canada, B.C. and the Ktunaxa, Secwepemc and Syilx Okanagan Nations – is exploring different ways of operating the Canadian Treaty dams to support domestic objectives for ecosystems, Indigenous cultural values, and socio-economic interests, in addition to enabling power generation and protection from damaging floods. These efforts are informing Canadian negotiating positions, strategies and proposals.

 

The Columbia River Treaty Local Governments Committee is leading an initiative to identify social and economic objectives and performance measures that are being integrated into this process. Socio-economic interests that are impacted by reservoir and dam operations include flood risk, navigation, erosion, agriculture, recreation, tourism, and dust generation.

 

For more background information on this work, including a timeline and next steps,

please visit our Background on Socio-Economic Performance Measures page.

 

These performance measures and the resulting draft recommendations were informed by online meetings for local governments and the public, the latest of which were held in early 2023. Participants provided input on draft performance measures during the sessions and through online surveys. The team then compiled the input and prepared draft recommendations. The Columbia Basin Regional Advisory Committee and the Committee have provided feedback on these recommendations. The team will consider this input and post final performance measures and recommended next steps later in 2023.

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The Committee is grateful for funding from the Province for this initiative.

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Other groups are working on performance measures for ecosystem function, Indigenous cultural values and power generation. You can learn more about ecosystem function performance measures here.

 

Please send your questions to info@crtlgc.ca.

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Public meetings in early 2023

 

​The Province of B.C. and the CRT Local Governments Committee held the following meetings to discuss how social and economic interests for the Kootenay and Columbia River systems are being integrated into river management scenario modelling for the Columbia River Treaty renewal and invite input on the draft performance measures. Performance measures will be used in the new computerized Columbia River river management model to evaluate impacts on socio-economic objectives by different ways of operating the Canadian Treaty dams.

 

Background materials and details on each performance measure that were reviewed are below.

 

Columbia River Interests - Review the PowerPoint and Video Recording from our meeting held on January 30, 2023.

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Kootenay River Interests - Review the PowerPoint and Video Recording from our meeting held on February 2, 2023.