Canada needs national system to track health and stress assessment of fresh water

The absence of data deficiency at the national level, continued the report, to depict health and quality of Canada's watersheds, was a great concern, in view of the fact that Canada’s large population, industry, agriculture and over 100 at-risk species depended on these watersheds.

"It's a very patchy system," he said. "For example, if the urban area of Calgary is measuring the health of the Bow River, but upstream is not being measured, you don't have a proper and full picture," David Miller, president of World Wildlife Fund-Canada, told CBCNews.

Canada has five major ocean watersheds: the Arctic, the Atlantic (including the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River), Hudson Bay, the Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico, the report said.

Major rivers in these regions, which are fed by smaller rivers called sub-watersheds, drain their water into ocean watersheds.

The result of health assessment, to determine the state of health of each sub-watershed, and a threat assessment, to learn what human activities on each of the 167 sub-watersheds, revealed that every sub-watershed in Canada had already been impacted by climate change, more than half experienced habitat loss due both to climate change and construction of homes and buildings too close to the water, and fair or poor water quality in almost two thirds of the sub-watersheds.

"Like most Canadians, I have an image of our country as a haven of fresh water. When I started canoeing I could dip my cup in a lake in Algonquin Park and I could drink it without treating it and that's not true anymore," Miller told CBCNews.

Areas lacking detailed information about the water quality, identified by the report were: the North and South Saskatchewan watersheds, the Peace-Athabasca watershed and, the Great Lakes and the Ottawa River.

Data collected, about the health of sub-watersheds, by WWF-Canada from public sources including universities and Statistics Canada, revealed that about 60 percent had poor or fair water quality and one third watersheds’ flow was interrupted by dams, roads or railways.

"We have a pretty good handle on what the threats are and potential impacts of those threats, so not having the information to measure the actual health of a majority of watersheds is extremely concerning," said Miller.

Marie-Pascale Des Rosiers, Press secretary to Min. Catherine McKenna, the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, said water being a shared responsibility, federal government had been collaborating with provinces, territories and municipalities and aboriginal people to protect water.

"Our government has a comprehensive approach to help ensure clean, secure and sustainable water resources for present and future generations," Des Rosiers told CBCNews.

She added that the government of Canada had invested millions of dollars, for protection of freshwater, in the last two budgets including $197.1 million in 2016 for promoting ocean and freshwater research, $3.1 million to improve shore and ecosystem health in the Great Lakes and $70.5 million in the 2017 budget to protect water in the Great Lakes and Lake Winnipeg basins.

A 11-year plan to improve wastewater systems across the country was also introduced by the federal government.

But a national system, argued Miller from WWF-Canada, is urgently needed to properly track the health of fresh water and the impacts from human activity.
 

(Reporting by Asha Bajaj)