Canada Water Act annual report for 2019 to 2020: chapter 2

2 Highlights

• The agreements with provinces and territories on aquatic ecosystem health continue to be at the heart of the water quality monitoring and research activities in support of the Canada Water Act. Efforts continue to strengthen these partnerships to foster advancements in scientific knowledge, support ecosystem protection and enhancement, promote regional collaboration, and outreach to water stakeholders with the latest example being the renewal of the Canada-Ontario Agreement on Great Lakes Water Quality and Ecosystem Health in 2020.

• The water quality in Canadian rivers indicator released in January 2020 is based on data collected from 2002 to 2018. For the 2016 to 2018 period, water quality in rivers in Canada was rated fair to excellent at 80% of the monitored sites.

• In 2019-2020, 160 of the 560 stations with creosote stilling well sites were decommissioned.

• The water quantity in Canada rivers indicator, updated in January 2020, provides a summary of trends in water quantity in rivers across Canada from 2001 to 2017. During that period, most Canadian rivers had normal water quantity. Since 2010, there has been an increase in sites with a higher-than-normal water quantity.

• In autumn 2019, National Hydrological Service (NHS) began to disseminate provisional daily water level and discharge to the real-time graphic and tabular page of the Wateroffice website. Provincial and territorial partners can now view daily values online the next day. By making provisional daily water level and discharge data available online, NHS is providing partners with data in a more timely fashion to conduct important hydrological analysis.

• A major milestone was achieved in 2019-2020 with the implementation of the upgraded hydrometric workstation time-series software, Aquarius Next Generation. The Meteorological Service of Canada service standard of publishing hydrometric data on the web within six hours of occurrence was achieved 100% of the time.