In crisis, the saying goes, lies opportunity.

And that’s Ontario’s approach toward the looming worldwide shortage of water.

In its recent Speech from the Throne, Premier Dalton McGuinty’s government declared it would make the province “the clean water capital of North America.”

The speech promised a Water Opportunities Act “would lay the foundation for new Ontario jobs and make our province the North American leader in the development and sale of new technologies and services for water conservation and treatment.”

There’s no doubt we face a global water crisis. Nearly a billion people lack an “adequate” supply of drinking water and 2.6 billion don’t have it for sanitation. In developing countries, 90 per cent of sewage and 80 per cent of industrial waste goes into rivers, lakes or oceans untreated. Some 2.2 million people die very year from diarrhea, mainly from bad water, and a child under 5 succumbs to a water-borne disease, on average, every 20 seconds.

Climate change and pollution are reducing the water supply in many parts of the world, and growing populations are placing increasing demands on that shrinking pool. People are flocking to cities where water and sewage treatment systems don’t exist or are decrepit and overwhelmed.

The human toll is heartbreaking. Imagine your life if every day you had to line up for water at a dribbling tap in a filthy slum or spend hours fetching water from a polluted pond and sticks of wood to boil it to something less than lethal. What if you could only defecate in a ditch or lived on streets flowing with sewage?

The perceived opportunities riding on this mess are estimated at $400 billion a year, and rising fast.

So it makes sense for Ontario to try to help out abroad and create jobs here — but only if it’s done right, and that remains to be seen.

In an interview this week, Environment Minister John Gerretsen said the legislation is based on two ideas:

l Efforts to improve the Great Lakes and prevent another Walkerton tragedy have given Ontario expertise in managing and treating water. Some companies are already working in developed and developing countries. This business can and should be expanded.

l We can’t expect the rest of the world to take us seriously unless we “walk the talk,” taking much better care of a resource that we now use, and abuse, more than almost anywhere else in the world.

As is often the case with this government, announcement came before plan. “We’re still at the exploratory stage,” Gerretsen said.

The legislation, to be ready this spring, might include higher prices for water here, or measures to promote or require water-saving technologies such as low-flow toilets and efficient washing machines.

There could be subsidies to develop water-treatment technologies, or some other export aid. Or not. “We’re working ..... to see the possibilities,” Gerretsen said.

The scheme will only succeed, however, if the view extends beyond jobs and profits to what’s really required.

That starts with thinking about how water is used, and why.

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One example: About 70 per cent of water consumption is for agriculture. Much of it evaporates or, laden with nutrients and pesticides, flows into lakes or rivers, making them unfit for other potential users. How can it be managed so less is required in the first place, and the run-off can be captured and cleaned, with the nutrients and chemicals available for reuse?

Is the solution a high-tech fix, or education and new management methods?

I’m not sure this is what the province has in mind. It should be, to truly turn crisis into opportunity.