Will new leaders kickstart (or doom) hopes for high-level Nooksack River talks?

History suggests that new leadership in Ottawa and the White House won’t deliver a crossborder deal to protect Sumas Prairie from the Nooksack River.

But that doesn’t stop Abbotsford Mayor Ross Siemens from hoping.

Siemens has repeatedly said that international diplomatic efforts led by the American and Canadian federal governments are needed to reduce the Nooksack’s long-term threat to his community. And although the American river unique geography and Donald Trump’s negotiating history pose a variety of diplomatic hurdles, Siemens said he hopes a new Prime Minister and President might finally prompt their respective governments to start talking about the pesky river.

“As mayor, I’m optimistic that, with new leadership at the federal level for both countries on the horizon, we will have some federal involvement and begin to see some forward movement,” Siemens wrote in a recent email to The Current.

The Nooksack River’s penchant to flood Sumas Prairie is a complex geographic and political conundrum that straddles the Canada-US border and has persisted for decades.

Although the Nooksack and its watershed lie entirely in the United States, Canada functions as a relief valve for the river. When it rises high enough, water from the Nooksack escapes into the Fraser River’s watershed and begins flowing north, threatening homes and farms in Abbotsford while at the same time mitigating flood damage downstream in the US. That makes every flood of the Nooksack into Abbotsford an international incident—even if Canadian politicians tend to quickly drop the matter when flooding recedes.

BC and Abbotsford officials have long hoped—often in lieu of spending money within their own domains—that the Americans would one day build a dike to keep the Nooksack’s floodwaters south of the 49th parallel. But they haven’t been able to do much to turn those hopes into reality.

Because the floodwaters that enter the Fraser’s drainage system reduce the scale of flooding downstream along the Nooksack, officials in Whatcom County officials have consistently declined to build a dike on their side of the border. And despite the billion-dollar price tag of events like 2021’s Sumas Prairie flood and the area’s importance to critical trans-continental trade, Canada’s federal government has refused to intervene.

(This FVC story from 2022 recounts those previous discussions, and why Americans consider building a dike ‘not politically feasible.’)

Such challenges can be resolved by crossborder talks. Elsewhere along the border, an organization called the International Joint Commission (IJC) deals with shared water issues. The IJC regulates shared water uses at places like Niagara Falls and on the Columbia River.

But leaders in the Canadian and US capitals have never called upon the IJC to sort out the Nooksack’s flooding problem.

Neil Peters, BC’s former Inspector of Dikes, told The Current last year that during his time as co-chair of a crossborder taskforce in the 1990s and 2000s, he and his colleagues had considered how to get the International Joint Commission to assist the negotiations.

(Because an agreement that reduces the flood risk in Canada could increase the flood risk in the United States, the Canadian government would presumably have to help pay for extensive flood protections south of the border.)

The problem was that the federal governments in Canada and the United States both had to invite the IJC to participate in the discussions, and Peters said neither government was enthusiastic about the idea.

That still seems to be the case.

Although the 2021 Sumas Prairie flood closed the Trans-Canada Highway and highlighted the Nooksack’s uniquely international danger, federal governments on both sides of the border continue to leave the issue to local and provincial politicians without the leverage to negotiate a cross-border solution.

Last year, the British Columbian and Washington State governments finalized a crossborder “Initiative” to allow officials and governments—including First Nations—in both countries to collaborate on new flood mitigation projects.

But although those talks have involved some discussion of the “flow split”—the share of water that goes north during flooding—there has been little indication that stopping the northbound flow of water is on the table. Instead talks have discussed a range of steps to guide water through northern Washington and into Canada when the Nooksack experiences a major flood. Local governments on both sides of the border have sketched out proposed “floodways” to transport floodwaters with as little damage as possible from the Nooksack to the Fraser.

The governments and diplomats with experience hammering out international deals have kept their hands clean of the Nooksack’s cross-border challenge.

It’s not for lack of asking. Last year, BC Emergency Management and Climate Readiness Minister Bowinn Ma wrote to the federal government asking it to co-ordinate the planning of flood protections on Sumas Prairie, as well as join the Transboundary Nooksack Initiative. That participation could be a precursor to a federal invitation to the IJC. But the federal government has thus far ignored the request, instead pointing to various funding announcements it has made. (The Current has repeatedly requested an interview with Canada’s Emergency Preparedness Minister Harjit Sajjan without success.)

Having failed to persuade the federal government to fund more than $1 billion in flood improvement works on Sumas Prairie, Siemens has been increasingly insistent on the need for international talks to solve the problem.

“We’re making some good headway, but we do need the federal government to be at the table, because I think we have to escalate that watershed to the same degree as the Skagit and the Columbia,” Siemens told The Current last September, referring to two waterways that are governed by treaties and which have involved the IJC previously.

In an email to The Current last week, Siemens reiterated that both Abbotsford and their American counterparts are urging both federal governments to participate in discussions.

“For any meaningful progress to take place, the Transboundary Flood Initiative needs more support and involvement at the national and international level, including a clear commitment from federal governments on both sides of the border.”

But even if the next Canadian government is more willing to take a role in Nooksack talks, getting the Americans to the table might be an even harder sell than it was four years ago.

Persuading any administration that reducing flood risk in some far away valley is worth the potential trade-offs south of the border will always be a challenge.

But Donald Trump and his administration could be a particularly hard nut to crack. Trump has already struck an antagonistic tone toward Canada, suggesting his northern neighbours have been taking advantage of their proximity to the US. And getting Trump to see the benefits of co-operation may be difficult.

“Even at the best of times, it would be difficult to get Americans to co-operate effectively” on an issue like the Nooksack, SFU political science professor Stewart Prest told The Current. Still, he noted that there might still be reason to at least try to find common cause along the border. He noted that Trump can sometimes be persuaded to sign off on a deal if it appears there is a political win to be had.

“Trump and Trump's administrations do try to drive some form of hard bargain, but it is a quirky sort where, quite often, the victory can be symbolic in nature,” Prest said. “So trying to find ways in which the issue creates a ‘win’ for the Trump administration can take a number of different forms.”

Prest said international talks about the Nooksack River don’t have to only involve the Nooksack. Indeed, finding a crossborder solution might involve horse-trading on issues elsewhere along the massive international border.

But that would require Ottawa to put the Nooksack issue on the table in the first place.

“It really will be incumbent on Canada to significantly step up its own investment and really try to frame the ways in which co-operation can stand to benefit Americans, either on this issue, or log-rolling it with other similar issues, where perhaps the advantage runs the other way,” he said. “It is such a long border with so many interconnections that that should be possible, but that then requires a much more vigorous and nimble federal government, which we currently do not have.”

Prest said the Nooksack can also demonstrate that, contrary to Trump’s recent rhetoric, Canada doesn’t necessarily always benefit from its close proximity to the United States.

“This idea that Canada is somehow benefiting unambiguously and unidirectionally from the US and the US is propping up Canada is just untrue in so many ways, and this is a great example of why,” he said.

“This is a complex relationship and we, as a pair of closely connected countries, really do tend to benefit from deep crossborder co-operation on all these fronts. Canada really needs to find ways to much more vigorously make all these arguments to themselves, but also to Americans.”