To Manage Its Growing Drought Crisis, Canada Could Look Across the Pacific
Australia’s unified framework offers lessons for improving freshwater governance and drought resilience across Canada’s stressed water systems.
By: Elena Anceva and Charlie Clark
In 2026, British Columbia’s Okanagan region entered its fourth year of drought conditions, and the impacts are being sorely felt. Fruit farmers fear whether their crops have received enough rain to produce a sufficient yield. Trout and salmon struggle to survive in depleting waterways. Municipalities are urging citizens to conserve as much water as they can as a concerningly dry summer gets underway.
This is not an isolated event.
Throughout 2025, drought conditions stretched across Canada, and by September, approximately 85% of the country was abnormally dry or in drought. Indeed, although many Canadians might believe that freshwater exists in abundance in the country, 98% of the population lives in southern regions that only receive 38% of the nation’s annual water yield.
Canada faces the crucial challenge of protecting its economies, communities, and natural environments from the devastating impacts of future droughts through structural freshwater governance reforms.
The Southern Prairies and the interior of British Columbia are particularly at risk. These arid and semi-arid regions consistently experience periods of significant water stress. Western Canadians know from experience that droughts can decimate agricultural production, impact human health, and increase the risk of wildfire and flood events.
As rising temperatures induced by climate change strain water supplies, these trends will likely worsen. A diminishing snowpack, receding glaciers and drier summers will create significant vulnerabilities for the Saskatchewan, Fraser, Columbia, and Okanagan rivers, leaving the water sources relied on by Western Canadians increasingly under threat.
Is freshwater governance reform the answer?
Freshwater governance in British Columbia and the Prairies is currently fragmented. Interprovincial and international governance arrangements, such as the Prairie Provinces Water Board, the Canada-U.S. International Boundary Waters Treaty, and the International Joint Commission, prescribe extensive yet siloed rules for water management. The South Saskatchewan River Basin alone is governed by a complex and interwoven web of laws, institutions, and policies established by different jurisdictions.
This is not to say that institutions are not dedicated to drought prevention and response. Many entities across government, civil society, and the private sector are trying to address these very questions.
The Prairie Provinces Water Board (now integrated with the federal Canada Water Agency) manages water quantity supply across Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, facilitating equitable sharing between the three provinces. Alberta’s Watershed Resiliency and Restoration Program funds 44 NGOs, 26 municipalities, three irrigation districts, and one First Nations community to further water restoration projects. Additionally, the Okanagan Basin Water Board has consistently researched ways to address water allocation issues for local communities.
Despite these efforts, the initiatives lack any singular coordinating authority, even though they are intended to address water scarcity within the same region — and sometimes even the same river system. Institutional cohesion and cooperation are necessary to manage transboundary freshwater supply in a way that best mitigates the severe economic and environmental damage inflicted by severe droughts. Canada cannot wait for a crisis before it takes action to put such mechanisms in place.
Recent federal developments have created a timely opportunity to reassess the Canadian freshwater governance landscape. The Freshwater Action Plan now provides a federal funding vehicle for freshwater protection, while the National Freshwater Science Agenda identifies national priorities such as water availability, ecosystem resilience, Indigenous science and knowledge, and freshwater decision support systems.
In light of these developments, federal and provincial governments must go one step further by establishing a central coordinating authority responsible for managing and protecting the freshwater systems across Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and British Columbia, with a dedicated focus on water recovery.
Lessons from across the Pacific
The clearest blueprint for such an endeavour lies in another Commonwealth jurisdiction that is perhaps better-known for its drought-susceptible climate.
Crossing four states and one territory, the Murray-Darling Basin is Australia’s largest river system and agricultural region. However, the devastating Millennium Drought of the 2000s exacerbated decades of water over-extraction to create a major scarcity problem contributing to the Basin’s ecological decline.
In response, the federal government cooperated with relevant state governments to develop the Murray-Darling Basin Plan in 2012. This governance framework has the key objective of preserving sufficient water for the Basin’s environmental health while sustaining irrigated agriculture and regional communities. It is overseen by the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, a central coordinating body that receives funding from both the federal government and relevant state governments.
Australia’s Basin Plan offers a blueprint for Canada. It shows that water management and drought prevention strategies don’t have to stop at apportioning water between jurisdictions, and that regulations can also encourage people to recover it.
The Basin Plan successfully made water scarcity visible and measurable by placing limits on how much water could be extracted from the Basin and setting targets for returning water to the environment. The central “Bridging the Gap” recovery target is now 2,075 gigalitres per year, alongside a further 450 gigalitres per year for enhanced environmental outcomes. The Basin Authority used two main tools to reach those targets: buying water entitlements from willing sellers and funding irrigation upgrades intended to enhance the efficiency of water use.
Implementation of the Basin Plan has not been perfect, sometimes falling short of prescribed targets and deadlines. However, progress has been substantial and measurable. By March 2026, water was being recovered at a rate of 2,062.2 gigalitres per year, nearly reaching the ultimate 2,075 gigalitre target. This demonstrates how even an imperfect coordinating framework can drive water recovery.
By capping extraction and allowing water entitlements to be traded, the Basin Plan emphasized a price signal around water. This meant that water became not only a natural resource to be divided for use but an asset to be measured, valued, and managed accordingly.
This has encouraged several innovative practices targeted at water recovery, including: making irrigation efficiency a meaningful priority through projects like the On Farm Irrigation Efficiency Program; encouraging and enabling water banking through initiatives like the Water Banking for Enhanced Drought Resilience Project; and enabling strengthened monitoring to improve water measurement and compliance.
Canada’s path forward
Australia’s experience shows that a single institution focused on water recovery can catalyze innovative practices that support drought resilience.
The Canadian federal government now has a unique opportunity to cooperate with the Western provinces to establish a jointly funded entity to coordinate drought planning across shared basins, set water recovery targets, fund projects that demonstrably reduce pressure on water systems, and maintain shared data. Rather than acting in response to a nationwide drought crisis, as Australia did, Canada can act preventively.
Mitigating the impacts of future drought events requires governments to work together to recover water and reduce pressure on shared systems before scarcity becomes a crisis. In a difficult political environment, water could become another source of regional tension and a further test for Canadian federalism. The question is whether provincial and federal governments will wait until water scarcity sows division or use water as a practical exercise in cooperation before the crisis occurs.