AWA’s Recommendations for Phase 2 of the Water Availability Engagement: summary, detailed answers, and FOIP update

June 24, 2025

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• Action Alerts
• Wildwater

The government’s Water Availability Engagement is open for public comment until June 30. In this phase, the government is asking about potential changes to the Water Act, apparently informed by the engagement’s first phase, held from November to January. I say apparently because we don’t know its results!

When I asked when the engagement results would be published and made available to the public, government staff declined to provide an answer.

This is particularly problematic as we’ve also had confirmation that the input is being used to justify recent policy decisions (like removing conservation holdbacks on water licence transfers). Without the survey results, there’s no way to verify this was popular public opinion (and considering holdbacks were briefly mentioned just once throughout the survey’s 100+ questions, it’s hard to believe).

I submitted a Freedom of Information and Access Request to bring those results into the public domain, which likely isn’t what the Auditor General had in mind when he emphasized that Environment and Protected Areas must demonstrate greater accountability and transparency in his reporting last year.

EPA initially requested $700+ in payment for the information, which we’ve since successfully challenged out of public interest (and principle). With the fees now waived, EPA says they will send us the information by August.

While we won’t have it in time to help inform participation in the second Phase of the engagement, I’ve provided both a summary of recommendations below and a link to AWA’s detailed answers to keep in mind as you complete the government’s survey.

-Kennedy Halvorson, Conservation Specialist

Summarized Recommendations:

• Water is Life. Therefore, its management must be informed by public consultation, current, comprehensive data, and the best available research and knowledge, where stringent, rigorous regulatory processes ensure responsible, sustainable use.
• Many of the changes that are proposed to streamline the process for Water Licences, Amendments, and Transfers needlessly increase undue risk and potential harm to the public and environment, in direct contrast to the precautionary principle and should not be supported. These include:
  • 1.1 – Point of Use
  • 1.2 – Point of Diversion
  • 1.3 – Director-initiated amendments that correct certain errors to benefit of licensee
  • 1.5 – Time limits on issuance of authorizations
  • 1.6 – Limit supplemental information requests
  • 1.7 – New and expanded exemptions
  • 2.1.4 – Amalgamation of licences while preserving priority of original allocations
  • 3 – Enabling lower risk inter-basin transfers
  • 4.4 Return Flow
• Changes that serve to increase accessibility of information, opportunities for public consultation, and transparency and accountability in decision-making under the Water Act should be supported. These include:
  • 1.4 Notice to appropriate parties
  • 2.1.1 Authority for introducing new, standardized measurement and reporting conditions
  • 2.1.2 Applying measurement and reporting conditions to deemed licences
  • 2.1.3 Standardizing measurement and reporting conditions
  • 2.2 Defining licences in good standing
  • 2.3 Transparency to support water licence transfers
• Some of the proposed changes should be strengthened to improve environmental outcomes.
  • Under Section 2.1 – Standardizing measurement and reporting, no licences, including those issued prior to 1999, should be exempt from monitoring, reporting, and inspection requirements, or conditions like Water Conservation Objectives. This would ensure all licences adhere to the same environmental standards and regulatory safeguards.
• Section 4 seeks to enable the use of alternative water sources and bypass the need for licences. These have risks that must be better understood before any changes are implemented.
  • For 4.1 – Wastewater reuse, what are the impacts of not prioritizing the treatment of polluted water, and loss of these volumes in the watershed?
  • For 4.2 – Rainwater, and 4.3 – Stormwater, what are the cumulative effects of allowing use of alternative sources of water outside the existing licencing system?
• The intent behind this engagement is to determine how the government can increase water availability, or in other words, intensify use. It’s important to be critical of this narrative, and ask,
  • Is it responsible to increase water consumption in already overstrained basins? In drought-prone areas? Under current climate change predictions?
  • What are the risks associated with doing so?
  • What is the value of tools within the Act like Conservation Objectives or Conservation Holdbacks if we do not implement them?
• Further to this point, the engagement is devoid of the recognition that water must also be available for the needs and maintenance of the rivers, including the ecosystems and ecological processes they support. The public must ask how the Water Act could be amended to,
  • Reduce demand?
  • Lower consumptive uses and losses?
  • Support robust, resilient rivers and watershed security?