Across Canada, water utilities are facing mounting pressures — from aging infrastructure and climate uncertainty to affordability concerns and workforce changes. These challenges demand forward-thinking strategies that go beyond day-to-day operations. That’s why Canadian Water Network (CWN) is convening leaders to explore practical solutions that strengthen resilience and financial sustainability.

What does financial sustainability mean?

Financial sustainability is about ensuring that water utilities can consistently generate enough revenue to cover all system costs — both operational and capital — while maintaining infrastructure in a state of good repair, servicing debt, building reserves for future investments, and preparing for unexpected challenges. Achieving this requires a comprehensive approach that reflects full cost recovery, accounts for risks and uncertainties, and ensures fairness, affordability, and intergenerational equity.

Strengthening the financial sustainability of water services nationwide

With financial sustainability becoming an increasing priority for municipalities and utilities across Canada, CWN is undertaking a national initiative to better understand the challenges utilities face in managing costs and ensuring long-term resilience. This effort, in collaboration with Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Canada (HICC), focuses on identifying barriers and uncovering strategies that strengthen the financial sustainability of water services.

To kick off this initiative, CWN is conducting a needs assessment to identify key barriers to financial sustainability. This includes a literature review and interviews with municipalities, including members of CWN’s Municipal Water Consortium and others. We’re now expanding our outreach to utility leaders across the country to uncover more financing success stories. This work will inform a national report for HICC.

Planning for the future

This September, CWN’s Consortium Leaders Group convened in Ottawa for a two-day meeting focused on how integrating future scenario planning into long-term planning can lead to more resilient and financially sustainable infrastructure decisions. Day two featured a hands-on workshop on scenario planning, where participants identified emerging risks, developed plausible future scenarios, and explored how different outcomes could shape infrastructure decisions.

Key themes from the meeting included the growing need for adaptive planning, data-driven decision-making, and clearer communication with councils and the public. Utilities are navigating a shifting landscape shaped by a changing workforce, evolving policy frameworks, and budget constraints. This makes collaboration, innovation, and achieving a shared understanding of risk essential for building resilient, financially sustainable water utilities that are ready for the future.

Strengthening capital planning and tracking

On October 29, the Municipal Water Consortium hosted a roundtable featuring guest speakers from the Region of Waterloo who have developed a robust approach to capital project planning and tracking. Over the last number of years, staff have been expected to delivery increasingly more from its capital program. To achieve this demand, the Region improved alignment and efficiency through its Project Status Reporting program and “PeTey,” a custom Power BI tool. PeTey centralizes project data, supports QA/QC-reviewed updates, and provides dashboards that help identify risks, delays, and resource imbalances. While not a full project management system, it has enhanced forecasting and planning, and its flexible design has sparked interest in potential collaboration with other municipalities.

Tackling emerging challenges

To close out 2025, CWN hosted a series of virtual events that tackled key challenges related to stormwater and bioresources management. The Stormwater Strategic Sharing Group’s annual check-in highlighted York Region’s innovative Inflow and Infiltration Reduction Strategy. The newly launched Bioresources Strategic Sharing Group featured Richard Lancaster, Global Bioresources Director at AtkinsRéalis. He discussed how global trends in bioresources management and adaptive planning can help Canadian municipalities develop strategies that are cost-effective, resilient, and provide multiple pathways for action. Together, these initiatives reflect the Municipal Water Consortium’s commitment to advancing practical solutions and peer learning across Canada.