Practising shared water governance in Canada

When you turn on the tap in Canada, you expect water to flow, and you expect that water to be clean. When you go to a river to fish or swim, you expect that water also to be abundant and safe. And whether you use water to grow crops, generate power, flush out waste, or for another industrial or commercial purpose, you have similar expectations of water's availability and quality. In Canada, governments have historically had the sole responsibility for making the decisions that will lead to these results and meet these public expectations. Yet the convergence of a number of trends--greater public expectation of participation, diminished government resources, the realization that expertise is found in many quarters, the increasing complexity of coordinating different levels of government, industries and nonprofit bodies--point to a new way of making decisions about resources such as water, involving a much broader spectrum of groups beyond bureaucrats. While this phenomenon is known by a variety of names, this Primer uses the term "shared governance" to describe it.