Investing in the Future: Upgrading Canada’s Wastewater Infrastructure


The Canadian challenge
Canada’s wastewater systems are grappling
with aging infrastructure and workforce
exacerbated by high variability in influent
due to increased loads on plants, growing
population, and competing with other
industries for talent. The environmental,
health, and economic costs of inaction are
too high not to act now. In Canada, we
still discharge raw sewage discharge into
natural water bodies. We can all do better.
Global insights: Funding models
and strategies
what can we learn from the rest of the
world? The first thing we can learn is the
age-old lesson: where there are issues that
are clear and immediate people will work
to solve them. A lot of countries have
issues that bear relevance to Canada and
the solutions could be used as well.
Spain offered billions of dollars in funding to support drought relief efforts, the
latest coming in the form of $13 billion
in December 2023. Germany combines
federal funding, state contributions, and
environmental charges, ensuring steady
investment into wastewater management
where they have declared “All members of
the general public must be able to rely on
safe, affordable, and efficient water supply
and wastewater disposal systems now
and in the future.” Japan’s public-private
partnerships (P3s) leverage private sector
innovation while ensuring public oversight. Australia’s National Urban Water
and Desalination Plan demonstrates the
value of targeted federal funding in driving large-scale projects. The United States
employs State Revolving Funds (SRFs),
providing low-interest loans for water
quality projects through a sustainable
funding mechanism.
All of this to say, we do have some great
programs in Canada in general but not
water specific. I would say that funding
programs in Canada are challenging for
WAT E R C A N A D A . N E T
WATER C AN ADA • M ARCH/APRIL 2024
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