Jeremy J. Schmidt

In Alberta, Canada’s freewheeling, economic success story, a market-based economy rules. So it’s not surprising that in 2002, the Alberta government chose to counter growing water problems in Southern Alberta with the province’s first water market. In anticipation, Theodore Horbyluk, an economist at the University of Calgary, said he believed the new system would effectively “transform historical licences into marketable commodities.” And in Southern Alberta, where some 20,000 licences make claims on water, there is considerable history to market. ...