Trump talked about diverting water from Canada on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast. It’s not the first time he’s floated the idea.
It’s massive, five times the size of Joe Rogan’s ceiling and takes a whole day to turn.

That’s how former president and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, while on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast last week, described a “valve” that he hopes will redirect water from Canada down into California.

“Water isn’t allowed to flow down (into California),” Trump told Rogan. “It’s got a natural flow from Canada, all the way up north, more water than they could ever use.
“In order to protect a tiny little fish,” he went on, “the water up north gets routed into the Pacific Ocean.”

Trump had floated the idea back in September, at a press conference in California.

“You have millions of gallons of water pouring down from the north, with the snow caps and Canada, all pouring down,” Trump said at a press conference in California on Sept 13.
And they have a very large faucet,” Trump continued. It’s unclear who “they” are or where the “faucet” is. Requests for clarification from Trump’s team were not answered before publication.

Trump is likely talking about diverting fresh water from the Columbia River, which forms in the Rocky Mountains and flows through B.C. and into Washington and Oregon — and though ideas proposing as much have been floated in the past, experts told the Star that we’re unlikely to ever see it happen.
Trump proposed the diverted water would help keep the soil moist to prevent wildfires that have been plaguing California for years.

“Vote for me, California. I’m gonna give you safety. I’m gonna give you a great border and I’m gonna give you more water than almost anybody has.”

Could California take Canada’s water?

The short answer is no, at least according to Ralph Pentland, who was Canada’s director of water planning and management for 13 years from 1978 to 1991.

But it touches on deep-seated anxieties about our southern neighbours muscling their way into our water supply. It was the plot of a fictional 2004 miniseries that aired on CBC, where Canada’s prime minister is assassinated and his son is influenced by corporate interests into supporting a water pipeline from Canada into the States.

Plots like those, however, aren’t realistic, thanks to legislation Pentland helped pass in 2013 that banned bulk water exports from Canada for environmental reasons.
n top of that, the Columbia River flows into the U.S., which means Trump could divert water from the Oregon or Washington segments of the Columbia without having to deal with Canada, he explained. And even then, there has been resistance from northern states, including those along the Great Lakes, against mass water transfers. 

And, he added, the U.S. only consumes about 10 per cent of its renewable water supply, meaning it likely doesn’t need to turn to Canada for help, especially as water use continues to be on the decline.

“There is a growing consensus in both Canada and the United States that water should generally be kept within its natural drainage basins and used more efficiently,” Pentland said.