Wednesday, February 11, 2026
A series of experts highlighted both the need to share water data at a national level and the challenges in doing so while pursuing a national freshwater data strategy.
The Canada Water Agency (CWA) presented a webinar on Jan. 28 titled National Freshwater Data Strategy Webinar: Data Governance for Informed Decision-Making” that dived into the many factors needed to improve freshwater data collection and collaboration.
The webinar presenters were CWA freshwater policy and engagement directorate director general Gemma Boag, senior policy advisor for the federal government’s Office of the Chief Science Advisor Alexandre Bourque-Viens, Canadian Institute for Health Information (CAHI) data stewardship initiative director Maureen Kelly and CWA chief data officer Jim M.C. Young.
Boag outlined the progress made thus far as the CWA and other organizations work toward a national freshwater strategy.
“While Canada has about seven per cent of the world’s renewable supply of fresh water, it’s unevenly distributed throughout the country and it’s not always available in the quantities that we need and when we need it,” Boag said.
She added climate change means growing pressure on freshwater supply in the form of floods, droughts and other events along with climate change infrastructure that is aging faster than it can be renewed.
“(There are) contaminants that weren’t on our radar a generation ago and a steady, ongoing loss of biodiversity in our lakes, rivers and wetlands,” Boag added.
She stressed the importance of freshwater to not only the ecosystem but the political and economic health of the country.
“What happens to water affects everything else. Our food, our housing, our health and our economic competitiveness,” she said. “Addressing these challenges along with taking advantage of the tremendous opportunities provided by clean, accessible freshwater depends on our ability to act collaboratively.”
Boag said a national freshwater data strategy cuts across CWA’s core mission, actioned through:
- restoring and protecting with partners trans-boundary and nationally significant ecosystems,
- anticipate and proactively respond to Canada’s most pressing freshwater challenges and opportunities,
- create impactful partnerships to responsibly steward and sustainably use Canada’s trans-boundary freshwater ecosystems,
- cultivate water awareness in Canada,
- and translate freshwater science and data into knowledge to inform decision making.
“The national freshwater data strategy is an opportunity to meaningfully work towards each of these priorities in collaboration with partners,” Boag said.
Work began on a freshwater data strategy in February. 2024 she said, “and continuing development of this strategy has continued to be a priority for CWA since it was established as a stand-alone agency in the federal system in Oct. 2024.”
“The main goal of the data strategy put simply is to make it easier for Canadians to find, access and use and combine freshwater data,” she said. “But that’s not a simple task.”
“Canada has an abundance of freshwater data but it’s not always easily available or easy to integrate across data sets. The national freshwater data strategy aims to help establish guidelines and principles for how freshwater data should be organized, stored and shared in Canada,” Boag said.
She added once implemented the CWA’s hope is that the strategy will ensure Canadians can “find and access freshwater data that strengthens freshwater decision making and knowledge generation going forward.”
Young went into further detail on the surfeit of data now available for collection and analysis along with the challenges inherent in sharing and distributing that data.
“Freshwater data is organized, shared, stored and used in many different ways right across governments, sectors and different institutions. Data is at the foundation of informed decision making but it also needs to be readily available and accessible,” Young said.
A big challenge is the fragmentation of water data across different sectors and jurisdictions he said, “and in many ways we don’t have that single, authoritative go-to source.”
“Data may not be centrally catalogued or standardized…and sometimes there’s a lack of availability where we don’t think it’s available but it is there, it’s just not accessible or inter-operable.”
It matters, Young said, because implementation of a national strategy means to strengthen several areas.
“Development of a strategy will support better real-time decision making such as flood responses, national reporting such as trends changing over time and better eco-system health management.”
“Multiple sources of data could be used to determine if a lake needs protection, to manage fisheries or recreation (as well as) better management of cumulative effects related to multiple users of a watershed which enables much more sustainable decision making.”
More data allows for better modelling, he added.
“We hear from modellers all the time (that) they have a need for more and more different types of datasets to build better models,” he said.
He also pointed to a rise in water-related events as an additional challenge both now and in future.
“We expect droughts based on multiple sources of data such as streamflows, snowpack melt, precipitation, groundwater licensing. All those things factor in and yet all these different datasets are in different parts and it’s difficult to bring together,” Young said.
The National Freshwater Strategy as proposed is intended to modernize and coordinate freshwater data collection, governance and use, Young said.
“It’s a collaborative effort amongst everyone. Provinces, territories, Indigenous peoples, all the federal departments, academia, and non-governmental organizations.”
“We’re really understanding the Canadian context (as well), with respect to jurisdictions and building upon existing strengths. We’re not about to tear down any existing structures or bodies that are already in place and working,” he said.
“We’re looking at building support for data-informed governance as a whole,” he said.
Borque-Viens took a broader perspective on freshwater data governance in the context of how Canada broadly governs scientific data as a strategic asset.
“Data is not being collected once and being used for a single purpose, increasingly its value comes from reuse across disciplines, jurisdictions, over time and increasingly re-use by machines as well as by people,’ Borque-Viens said.
Data governance is another essential element in proper handling of freshwater information, he added.
“Effective data governance is what allows Canada to maximize benefits to its research and innovation ecosystem while still protecting sensitive information and respecting legal, ethical and Indigenous data considerations,” Borque-Viens said.
“Freshwater data is mission critical, high value, and deeply interconnected across institutions and jurisdictions, so the issue is sharing,” he said.
Canada must adopt a national scientific data governance framework, he said, “to protect and effectively manage data arising from publicly funded scientific activities and promote its reuse as a cornerstone of discovery, innovation and economic prosperity.”
Kelly said there are parallels between the challenges faced by water data management and similar efforts in the health sector, such as the multiple health systems across Canada which all need to share information amongst themselves while providing an overview of health data as a whole.
“All of the complexities of the health system manifest themselves in the data and how we can manage it,” Kelly said.
Fragmentation and data silos in the health space lead to loss of productivity, increased costs which ultimately results in poorer outcomes and quality of care.
Data stewardship means making quality data accessible and useful to those who need it across a variety of users, she said, as well as safeguarding data against misuse and applying ethical standards while being transparent as to how data is being used.
“Key to the work is our engagement. We need to build up public trust and engagement to make sure however we’re using the data as a society matches and reflects public values, needs and expectations,” Kelly said.
