For 60 years, this Canada-U.S. treaty governed money, power and a river. With Trump's threats, what now?

B.C. MLA Adrian Dix says he gets texts, emails, and even stopped at his local Safeway. He says people urge him to cut off power or even water to the U.S.

"People are angry," said Dix, B.C.'s Minister of Energy and Climate Solutions and the minister responsible for the Columbia River Treaty.

"They ask me, well, can't we cut off something? People want to take action."

This is happening as tensions rise over U.S. President Donald Trump's tariff threats and repeated calls to make Canada his country's 51st state, while eyeing Canadian resources, like water.

Last year he mused about a "very large faucet" that could be diverted to the U.S. While the faucet is fiction, questions about what will happen next for the 61-year-old water treaty under renegotiation are very real.

The waters of the mighty Columbia River — with headwaters north of Cranbrook in southeastern B.C. — are at the heart of a key cross-border pact.

Since 1964, the Columbia River Treaty has required Canada to control the flow of the river, via dams, to meet U.S. needs for hydropower and flood prevention — in exchange for half the proceeds from the power generation downstream.

Provisions expired in September. A three-year interim agreement is in place to allow continued operations of flood control and some components of a new agreement, but the renegotiated, modernized treaty isn't finalized and is expected to stall longer under the new U.S. administration.

Dix says B.C. and Canada are "fiercely defending Canadian interests" and staying the course on renegotiations. Meanwhile, some observers are now wanting to see it scrapped, arguing that with the shifting cross-border relationship, the stakes have changed.

The Columbia River is the fourth largest watershed in North America, flowing about 2,000 kilometres from B.C's Columbia Lake into Washington State, entering the Pacific near Astoria, Ore. With some 60 dams on the river and tributaries, it today delivers more than 40 per cent of U.S. hydroelectric power, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, and about half the hydropower in B.C.

When the treaty was ratified in 1964, Canada agreed to build three dams in B.C. to manage the flow of the Columbia, flooding 110,000 hectares in southeastern B.C.

Salmon were blocked from swimming upstream, and First Nations lands lost.

"It inundated sacred sites and burial sites, and commenced a lot of damage," said Jay Johnson, chief negotiator and senior policy advisor to the Okanagan Nation Alliance (ONA)'s Chiefs Executive Council last July.

The Secwépemc, Syilx Okanagan and Ktunaxa Nations, who were not part of the original Columbia River Treaty, were part of the negotiation team when treaty modernization talks began in 2018. The Sinixt, whose traditional territory includes flooded lands, are also vying for a seat at the negotiations, following a court ruling in 2021.