Environment Committee on May 26th, 2026

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

I'm still struggling to figure out what exactly you do here. ECCC still does all of the freshwater science and the monitoring. The provinces still manage water overall. Municipalities manage their local infrastructure and watershed bodies and do a lot of the delivery of programming.

Beyond the general coordination, the bringing together, meetings and maybe some branding, is it grants? What exactly do you do?

[Gemma Boag]

In those eight major basins, we deliver grants and contributions funding in collaboration with provinces, territories and indigenous partners to address significant freshwater issues that have been identified, together with partners, in those regions. Some of those collaborations are long-standing. On the Great Lakes, it reaches back a couple of decades and looks at addressing water quality issues and also restoring areas of concern in the Great Lakes. That would be an example of—

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

I'm from Manitoba, so I have some bias here. You mentioned the fact that the Great Lakes have received the lion's share of this. My understanding is that it's about $420 million to the Great Lakes initially, yet you decided to headquarter the office, whether it falls under ECCC or whatever ends up happening now, in Winnipeg.

How much total funding has been allocated to Lake Winnipeg?

[Gemma Boag]

In budget 2023, there was an investment of $650 million over 10 years in all of the freshwater ecosystem initiatives. As you mentioned, $420 million was allocated to the Great Lakes. The agency works to deliver the remaining funding in the other ecosystem initiatives over that period.

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

How much have they gotten at Lake Winnipeg?

[Gemma Boag]

My colleague who runs those programs is not here today, but I could offer to share the funding that has been—

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Sure. If you could send it, that would be great.

Could you also have them send us—or maybe you could tell us today—what exactly has been improved since that money started flowing, particularly to Lake Winnipeg? Have we seen a reduction in phosphorus, nutrient-loading and algae blooms, or improved monitoring of coverage regions or any enforcement outcomes?

What I'd love to know, and what I'm driving at here, is what the measurable results are of the Canada Water Agency. It's lovely to talk about announcements of dollar values being sent to somebody to do something, but I'd love to know what's actually being achieved. Do you have anything to offer today, or could you have your colleague submit that same information in data form?

[Gemma Boag]

Yes, we could send a written follow-up with some of the results information.

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

As the agency, can you compel any federal department, province, municipality or funding recipient to change course if the freshwater outcomes are not improving, if your data shows that really nothing has changed, or as an agency, are you limited to convening those coordinating conferences and advising? Do you have any sort of capacity to compel changes when things aren't actually improving on the ground?

[Gemma Boag]

In those water bodies, that work is primarily done through intergovernmental agreements and interdepartmental agreements, where we work with other federal departments and agencies to, for example, set priorities or results that we're looking to achieve. Those are generally set through collaborative mechanisms. The agreements and approaches are reviewed regularly. If there was to be a change, it would likely be done through that process. It would depend in each context.

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Given that there are 20 existing departments involved in water, if the Canada Water Agency just didn't exist tomorrow, what can you point to that Canadians would see disappear? I'm not talking about a meeting or a framework, but what would change?

[Gemma Boag]

To answer that question, I would go back to the functions of the programs that the agency does have—for example, those eight large ecosystem initiatives across the country that are delivering that on-the-ground programming. That would be the nature of the programming that the agency delivers.

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

It's handing the money to somebody else and hoping.

[Gemma Boag]

In terms of being able to summarize the current functions and programs of the agency, that is an example of what the agency's working on.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shannon Miedema]

Thank you very much, Mr. Leslie.

We'll now go to Mr. Greaves and Mr. Malette for six minutes.

[Will Greaves, Liberal, Victoria, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'll be sharing my time with the honourable gentleman from Bay of Quinte.

Good afternoon, witnesses. Thank you so much for joining us.

I'm not entirely sure whom to direct this to, but potentially it's Mr. Vu. If somebody else is better suited, please feel free to direct the question to them.

I'm wondering if you could explain, for the benefit of the committee, how it is that the federal government currently tracks key infrastructure across the country for vulnerability to extreme weather events such as flooding, drought or wildfires. Is there currently a system that identifies particularly vulnerable infrastructure? What does that process look like?

[Hieu Vu, Director General, Canada Centre for Mapping and Earth Observation, Department of Natural Resources]

Within Natural Resources Canada, we have the centre for mapping and earth observation. It's basically all the maps. We map multiple layers. That includes buildings and infrastructure.

We also work very closely with provinces and territories. We have a geospatial strategy and the Canadian Council on Geomatics, where we work with provinces and territories. We try to share standardized data to the extent possible so that the information can be bought once and reused often. Then we try to update those maps as regularly as we can for multiple purposes.

[Will Greaves, Liberal, Victoria, BC]

In your view, then, if there were a system that made it easier to compare data from different provinces and territories and across jurisdictions around, obviously, flood and drought risk, would that data facilitate measures to ensure the safety of critical infrastructure around the country?

[Hieu Vu]

Interoperability is something that we find very important. The Canadian Council on Geomatics, which is the FPT partnership, just recently published our geospatial strategy in 2025 to deal with that exact issue: how to standardize data and how to make sure that data is interoperable and that we're not overspending but spending once and then reusing the data for multiple purposes.

[Will Greaves, Liberal, Victoria, BC]

Thank you.

In my remaining time, I'll quickly move to Ms. El Bied.

Thank you for being here.

One of the risks that we're obviously facing in British Columbia, as well as in other parts of the country, is extreme wildfires. Could you speak to how better mapping and data around drought might more effectively inform your team on wildfire risks?

[Kenza El Bied, Director General, Emergency Management Policy and Outreach, Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

At the moment, as you know, Public Safety is the lead for collecting the data and sharing a forecast for wildfires and floods with provinces, territories and stakeholders.

In terms of drought data, that is not data that Public Safety has, but this information would definitely help us to expand our risk assessment when we will be delivering that on a seasonal basis.

[Will Greaves, Liberal, Victoria, BC]

Thank you very much.

I'll pass along my time now, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shannon Miedema]

Go ahead.

[Chris Malette, Liberal, Bay of Quinte, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair. Through you, I'll direct my question to Director Fortin.

From your agency's perspective, what are the biggest gaps in Canada's current flood and drought forecasting system?

[Doris Fortin]

Thank you very much for the question.

At the meteorological service of Canada, as I mentioned earlier, we have the responsibility of coordinating and working with provinces and territories to collect data about water levels and flow in rivers across all provinces and territories. Because there is a division of jurisdictional powers between the federal government and the provinces and territories, the provinces and territories take this data to forecast floods in their territories—in some but not all cases. They do that with varying levels of ability. By having a more coordinated approach through harmonization, we can build on the system and learn from one another, thereby strengthening the system as a whole. That's definitely a possibility.

From the perspective of the meteorological service of Canada.... You can understand, of course, that weather conditions are impacting flood and drought forecasting. Provincial, territorial and federal collaboration means we can put these different systems together so that they're interlinked. We can then take this weather information and inform provinces on what's going to happen and help them figure things out from a flood or drought perspective.