A ray of hope to lift the environmental gloom

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 09/07/2024 (465 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Impending doom is the dominant motif in most current discussions on politics, the environment or public policy problems in a host of domains.

Public debate in the water sector reflects this trend: The Global Commission on the Economics of Water, convened by the Netherlands, began a recent report by declaring that “the world faces a growing tragedy of water”; the Bank of America Institute agrees and suggests the world may run out of fresh water by 2040; the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in the White House has declared that water insecurity both within the United States and abroad is now a national security threat.

Canada, too, has real water woes. Calgary, a city of 1.6 million, was cut off from more than half of its water supply for a month when its primary water feeder main ruptured on June 5. The city declared an emergency, which is just ending, as citizens had to cut back on showers, laundry and recreational use. (my brother who lives in Calgary is visiting Winnipeg for a vacation and the first thing his family did on arriving was to take a long shower). Calgary’s plight reminded me of a placard I once saw at an Indigenous demonstration over fracking: “if the water runs out, you can’t drink oil.”

At the same time as Calgary was facing a shortage, an article published in the Winnipeg Free Press on June 29 reported that Winnipeg’s combined sewage overflows dumped nearly 5.4 billion litres of sewage into local rivers in 2023. St. Vital Coun. Brian Mayes has led the fight to have adequate overflow capacity in place but, as always with civic infrastructure, money is short. The Winnipeg and Calgary examples demonstrate that there is a real water infrastructure deficit in the country with most existing municipal capacity being over 50 years old, thereby being subject to leaks and breaks. Calgary’s water shortage, and Winnipeg’s pollution of our rivers, verify the conclusion of Soula Chronopoulos, president of AquaAction, that in Canada today “the reality is that we we’re running out of water, and we use it flagrantly.”

But help is on the way. Almost completely unnoticed amid the media’s current concentration on Trudeau and Biden’s political woes, on June 20 the Canada Water Agency Act passed Parliament and received royal assent. The successful passage of this act is the culmination of work over the last decade by a host of water scientists, policy advocates and NGOs making the case that Ottawa had to step up to improve management of our water resources and provide new capacities in the fight to provide clean water and adapt better to flood and drought emergencies.

It is also proof that our political system can respond to new priorities and that individual members of Parliament can make a difference. MP Terry Duguid (Winnipeg South) has worked on water issues since he was the chair of the Manitoba Clean Environment Commission in the early 2000s and as the special adviser for water to the prime minister, he was instrumental in getting the Canada Water Agency established with its headquarters to be in Winnipeg.

Public policy change is the result of “strong and slow boring of hard boards,” according to Max Weber and so it has proved in the creation of the Canada Water Agency. The water community, with advocates like Ralph Pentland from the Forum for Leadership On Water and John Pomeroy, director of the Global Water Futures program at the University of Saskatchewan, pointed out the enormity of Canada’s water challenges and the inadequacy of the federal government’s approach with water responsibilities fragmented in 25 departments and programs. Water needs a champion in the Ottawa policy system, and it needs resources to collaborate with provincial, territorial, municipal and First Nation governments do better science, research, data collection and funding for critical water projects.

The new Canada Water Agency is a start in achieving these goals. It is not as robust as I would have liked: once it begins its operations, I hope that Ottawa’s fragmentation is further reduced with the National Hydrological Service, Water Science and Technology Directorate, and the water-mapping program of NRCan transferred to the agency.

Yet, this is a time for celebration, not quibbling. The work of hundreds, if not thousands, of water scientists, policy advocates and citizens has not been in vain. A Canada Water Agency is a necessary first step in Canada meeting its water challenges. Now the water community must work with the agency as it takes its next steps in recruiting a dynamic president and modernizing the Canada Water Act.

Hope is always better for moving forward than gloom.

Thomas S. Axworthy is public policy chair at Massey College.