Earlier this year, leaked text messages revealed a plan for deep cuts to the newly formed Canada Water Agency. These cuts follow an earlier threat by the Trump administration which has been signaling that it considers Canada’s fresh water to be for sale, a “giant faucet” to compensate for depleted groundwater south of the border.
The anticipated cuts to the Agency are part of a larger austerity agenda mandated by the Prime Minister, who has asked many departments to cut billions from their budgets.
Across the border, cuts to work on the safeguarding of water are taking place under a broader effort to gut climate programs of every type. Trump’s claims to water from Canada were parallel to DOGE purges at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and withdrawal from the Paris Agreement.
Trump has also threatened to tear up cross-border agreements about the Great Lakes. A rollback or potential change of 13 key regulations could have far-reaching effects on the Canadian side, including pollutants and invasive species.
The aides quoted in the leaked text messages were careful to say that Great Lakes remediation would not be cut directly. However, as the single unified voice of Canada’s water policy, cuts of 15 per cent or more would weaken the country’s ability to negotiate with southern neighbours.
Similar Trump-related issues plague the Columbia River, where the White House has pulled out of agreements about salmon run restoration, and renewed support for hydroelectric generation. This reversal threatens historic agreements that saw salmon return to the Canadian section of the Columbia River for the first time in over a century. Canada Water Agency cuts could wilt efforts to preserve these precious gains.
Meanwhile, access to potable water is still out of reach for many. While 148 long term drinking advisories have been lifted since 2015, there are still 39 long term drinking water advisories in 37 communities.
Drought is becoming endemic across Canada, and could worsen significantly. Hundreds of thousands of hectares burned due to drought in the Prairies, and droughts have hit the Okanagan as well. If issues like water levels in the St Lawrence River seem less pressing, it’s only because they aren’t literally on fire. If we successfully head off future drought-based disasters, the potential coordinating role of the Canada Water Agency would almost certainly play a central role in preventing catastrophes before they are upon us.
In the 2000s, the Harper government stripped protections under the Waters Protections Act. While Liberals faced criticism (from us, for example) for not fully restoring the protections that had been removed, the Canada Water Agency was a major, if imperfect, step in the right direction.
The Agency only became operable in 2023, and is still building Canada’s “fresh water agenda”, supporting data collection and research, working with Indigenous nations and peoples to ensure treaty obligations are met.
CWA programs affect watersheds across Canada, from Wolastoq to the Fraser River, from Lake Winnipeg to the Mackenzie River, the Okanagan and the St Lawrence, among others. In 2019, the late Ken Dryden, the famed Canadiens goalie and a passionate defender of water protections and a student of Ralph Nader, spoke to student organizers on the importance of these issues. When I asked him where he saw the most important area of work for youth interested in the public interest, he immediately noted climate change and water protections, and correctly predicted the continued cutbacks to climate related legislation and the ossification of all that protects us.
As Maude Barlow put it last year, “The planet is running out of clean accessible fresh water. One quarter of the world’s population is now without adequate access to clean water and one half does not have access to adequate sanitation. For those of us who are blessed to live in a country that still has freshwater supplies, there is a special responsibility to care for it.”
