Abstract
Although Canada is perceived as a water-rich country, this privileged status needs to be demystified. Water-related problems are indeed multiplying: spring flooding in the Ottawa Valley, droughts in the southern Prairies, eutrophication in the Great Lakes, contamination of the Saint Lawrence River, disastrous water quality on Aboriginal reserves, etc. Water issues are having increasingly broad effects. Their geographic extent is increasing and their impact on the human and non-human environment is growing. There is no longer any doubt; Canada now faces an emerging water crisis.From a legal point of view, these issues generate extremely complex challenges. Indeed, since each order of government has a capacity to act regarding water, management mechanisms are characterized by a profoundly interjurisdictional nature. This results in sectoral initiatives, fragmented action and a significant lack of harmonisation between water stakeholders. While Canadian water law has developed significantly since the 1960s, the legislative, regulatory and policy tools remain multiple and dispersed. Accordingly, Canada is still not equipped to fully respond to contemporary water issues and the management processes they require. As a result, there have been repeated calls for a national water strategy in Canada from the literature and experts in the field.Given the need to address Canadian water issues, our thesis seeks to determine how the necessary implementation of a national water strategy in Canada can be accommodated with the specificities of the hydrosocial environment. The conceptual analysis of water management and the contextual study of the Canadian hydrosocial environment reveal certain obstacles to the implementation of a national strategy: what scale, agents and regulatory logic should articulate the legal construction of a water management framework in Canada? To answer these questions, we have developed twelve guiding principles to lay the building blocks for a water legal regime adapted to Canadian realities. While government reflections on a future Canadian water agency are under way, our thesis advocates for a Canada-wide institutional model based on the watershed scale, resulting from intergovernmental cooperation and maintained through a collaboration process between water stakeholders that is representative of territorial dynamics.