Canadian Water Network’s (CWN) Canadian Municipal Water Consortium is hosting a Leaders Workshop to discuss current and emerging trends in the water utility space.
During this working session, participants will review and reflect on the trends identified in CWN’s report on Canada’s Municipal Water Sector: Key Trends, Needs, Leading Practices and Innovations. The report was completed in 2019 for the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM).
At that time, the broad water sector trends highlighted:
- That utilities are striving to identify costs better, as well as achieve greater financial independence and sustainability.
- The expanding roles of utilities beyond behind-the-scenes service delivery and system compliance. There was a trend toward utilities being more directly involved in land-use planning and management, disaster and extreme event management, and achieving broader triple-bottom-line goals.
- An increase in public expectations and input on the role and function of water utilities beyond meeting regulatory compliance.
- Uncertainty around issues like climate change, contaminants of emerging concern and new technologies.
- The potential benefits of using new technologies like smart systems. At the time the report was developed, many utilities were collecting lots of data but not using it to its full potential.
CWN’s workshop on October 20, 2022 will review the trends above with water leaders and see if they still resonate. The workshop will also provide a platform for senior water utility leaders to share the strategic or system-level trends their utilities might be experiencing in the foreseeable future.
For more information about the Leaders Workshop, please contact Sandra Cooke, director of the Municipal Consortium, at [email protected]