The federal government two years ago announced its boldest water investment in decades: $650 million over 10 years to renew and expand its national plan for freshwater resources, plus $85 million for a new independent body to oversee their management and conservation.
The Canada Water Agency was touted as the first of its kind. But the more important question is whether the allotted cash will stitch together the country’s patchwork water governance into a cohesive plan. Or will it simply scatter funds across familiar agencies and mandates? Will the agency help lead a shift to an interconnected strategy for conservation, watershed restoration, water reuse and treatment of drinking and wastewater? Or will it repeat decades of fragmented, reactive policies?
Breaking the pattern
Canada has been here before. Ottawa released federal water policy in 1987 that promised integrated management based on ecosystems. But without dedicated funding, it faded. Since then, water responsibilities have been splintered across 20-plus federal departments (including Health Canada, Fisheries and Oceans and Indigenous Services), 13 provinces and territories and countless municipalities. The commissioner of the environment and sustainable development has repeatedly called this a “fragmented water governance regime.”
The water agency is meant to fix that by co-ordinating freshwater policy and bringing together expertise. But if the agency continues to fund disconnected projects, it will simply entrench the same approach with a new nameplate.
This matters because Canada manages water in separate “lanes.” Conservation as a land use issue. Restoration as an environment issue. Treatment as an engineering issue and governance as a policy issue. Each has its experts, budgets and metrics. This results in great projects that rarely connect. Wetlands get restored without being linked to municipal leak detection. Treatment plants get built without questioning the demand that made them necessary.
The Canada Water Agency must tap into the sector’s innovations
Canada’s response to water stress has focused on building more treatment plants, laying more pipes and expanding capacity. That made sense when populations were booming and climate impacts felt distant. But every expansion creates a treadmill. Expanding capacity enables more consumption — already roughly twice the global average — which in turn drives the next expansion. Every litre of water treated is a litre already extracted, pumped and powered with a heavy carbon footprint.
Breaking this pattern doesn’t mean abandoning treatment plants or pipes. It means using them within a policy context that shrinks demand, makes reuse the norm and focuses on water consumption by households and industry.
Other countries have already begun making this shift. The Environmental Protection Agency in the United States has a water plan that integrates reuse, conservation and public engagement through education, outreach and stakeholder partnerships. Australia’s Water Act gives natural infrastructure (wetlands, aquifers, river systems) legal and financial standing.
Shifts our freshwater plan must drive
For the government’s freshwater plan to be more than fragmented funding and fixes it needs to redefine how Canada approaches water. This could be achieved in several ways.
First, we need to rethink how water is used before it ever reaches a treatment plant. Conservation, reuse and restoration aren’t separate boxes to tick. They’re parts of the same strategy. Easing demand through leak detection and smarter irrigation only works if conservation becomes an expectation.
Every litre of water reused — whether in factories, new developments or municipalities — is one that never needs to be withdrawn from natural sources. And rebuilding wetlands and floodplains to provide “living” infrastructure can filter and store water for decades. Together, these moves could shrink the volume of water we extract, treat and pump.
They could also help build the physical foundation (wetlands, restored floodplains and reuse facilities) and cultural basis (public norms and expectations of conservation) needed for an integrated approach to water management. No single field can do the job. It requires engineers, planners, economists and communities working together.
Second, we need to change the mindset inside professions themselves. Engineers alone can’t deliver circular water management. It’s a cross-disciplinary challenge that includes:
- Engineers and hydrologists to rethink infrastructure design.
- Water economists to reshape pricing signals.
- Sociologists and psychologists to help shift habits and norms.
- Policy scientists to navigate the politics of shared resources.
Just as importantly, these professions must move away from narrow technical expertise toward transdisciplinary work that includes hydrologists, economists, anthropologists, planners and local governments designing urban water supply and management strategies.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) underscores in a 2020 report that experts’ work must anticipate reform rather than merely react to crisis. For communities not yet hit by water scarcity, a shift in thinking is crucial to prepare them for new policies and cultural norms before they face shortages, rather than assuming that “we’ll be fine forever.”
What Ottawa can – and must – do
The $650 million on the table won’t transform Canada’s water future unless the federal government uses it to rewrite the rules rather than just fund more of the same. This could include:
Tying money to integration, not isolation. Don’t fund one-off projects in neat silos: conservation here, treatment there, governance somewhere else. Every dollar should be contingent on connecting at least two areas, for example, restoration and reuse, or conservation and community education. This forces ministries, disciplines and sectors to work together and prevents meaningful projects from staying isolated.
Building a “nerve centre.” The Canada Water Agency should bring together Health Canada, Indigenous Services, Agriculture and Environment and Climate Change Canada to develop a uniform water strategy. That would require staffing the agency not only with policy analysts, but also cross-disciplinary teams, including engineers, economists, sociologists and Indigenous water leaders.
Revamping federal-provincial deals. This would include striking agreements to align provincial rules with national water goals. Federal dollars could be offered for leak detection, reuse and restoration if provinces updated permitting, codes and pricing signals. Money should buy policy reform, not just pipes.
Funding cultural momentum. Water management will fail if Canadians don’t see themselves in it. Ottawa should back water literacy campaigns, citizen monitoring and Indigenous led stewardship programs, so that the public feels involved. Without societal buy-in, even the best technology and infrastructure won’t stick.
Turning research into real-world decisions. Right now, research on water management and behavioral change sits largely in journals. Ottawa should fund researchers to create faster pathways for pilot projects. It should also require projects to share data, so science doesn’t trickle into policy years late, but drives decisions in real time.
The tipping point
Canada’s plan for freshwater is likely to develop in one of two ways. It can become another round of good projects, wetlands restored and ribbons cut — but with missed opportunities. Or it can be the impetus for Canada to finally weave water conservation, restoration, reuse, treatment and governance together.
The choice is also political and cultural. If Ottawa and the provinces can design this or similar future funds to integrate all aspects of water management, the federal government will avoid decades of reactive spending. Canada will instead be a leader in water strategy that’s proactive and global in its ambition.
