Abstract
The contribution of international law and lawyers to the Columbia River Treaty was limited; the treaty was the outcome of a bargaining exercise whereby Canada and the United States shared benefits with and imposed costs on each other. Normally and properly both the federal and provincial levels of jurisdiction in Canada are concerned when international agreements involving transboundary rivers are being negotiated. Both were involved on the Columbia, took their data gathering and assessment seriously, and ultimately produced an agreement which was not at all a disaster for Canada. It might have been better, however, if, much earlier, the constitutionally-intended impact of internal boundaries on Canada’s domestic political process had been given more attention, if the respective responsibilities of the governments in Ottawa and Victoria (and of the IJC) had been clarified, if some political actors had avoided premature positions for or against policy/project options, if more attention had been directed to long-range goals and less to considerations of personal rivalry. Paraphrasing Burke, intergovernmental deadlock and flexibly comprehensive analysis go ill together.
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