Water security : Sécurité hydrique : guide d'introduction

Is Canada's water secure? According to Environment Canada, one quarter of all Canadian communities experienced water shortages during the latter half of the 1990s. Water quality in over a thousand small and rural communities is as bad as or worse than that in many developing countries. Likewise, at the time of writing, more than 100 First Nations communities live with permanent boil water advisories (Phare 2009). Across the country the effects of decades of under-investment in water treatment networks are now apparent: over the next two decades, Canada's aging water networks will have to be replaced at the cost of an estimated $100 billion (Bakker 2009; Environment Canada 2004).