Comment January 7, 2026
By Thomas Saleh, Policy Advisor, Data and Technology
“No water, no life. No blue, no green” – Dr. Sylvia Earle
We all know it’s true.
Our identity as Canadians is deeply tied to our land’s waters, whether it’s weekends by the lake, canoeing down a river in the summer, or diligently rehydrating after a night of downing Molson Canadians. And this is partly because we are lucky to house around 25% of the world’s available fresh water within our borders.
But our relationship with these ecosystems is also somewhat fraught. While we cherish our lakes and rivers for recreation and sustenance, we should also be taking much better care of them.
While there are many reasons why Canada finds it tough to manage its vast wealth of freshwater resources, part of the issue is size. A large federation of municipalities and provinces stretched across the world’s second largest country can make sharing information and solutions between scientists, local stakeholders, and different levels of government a massive challenge.
When it comes to data about the health of our fresh water, we need more of it—and now.
It’s impossible to make informed decisions about freshwater protection when we don’t have a clear picture of what the current landscape looks like. For example, when conducting their recent 2025 national assessment, the Water Rangers discovered that 87 out of 164 sub-watersheds in Canada should be characterized as “data deficient” for water quality.
Where are the major spots of pollution? Which lakes are in most urgent need? How do we deploy our limited resources in the most efficient and effective way?
For us, this is why we have been collecting data on the health of our lakes at IISD Experimental Lakes Area—whether we are currently researching on them or leaving them as reference lakes—since we started research in the 1960s. Chemistry, flow rates, details on the thickness and duration of ice cover—we track it all.
It’s also why we now make sure this unparalleled environmental data set is available to others. And uploading our data to open access platforms, such as DataStream, makes this possible. For us, open data and platforms that collect and make data on water health accessible are not just about the data. Data itself is the root of knowledge, and essential, but it’s also about facilitating communication, which, as we have established, is critical in Canada.
DataStream, for example, serves as a central hub where Canadians—ranging from scientists and government officials to conservationists and concerned citizens—can connect, share resources, and gain a comprehensive understanding of each other’s diverse research and monitoring efforts. And this is all essential when attempting to build a robust picture of what Canada’s freshwater landscape looks like today, and where it needs to go.
Thanks to DataStream’s mapping tool, for example, those who live around IISD-ELA, Ontario and Canada more broadly can easily learn more about what we do and why it matters and then access our data to understand patterns and priorities.
Other scientists can use the platform to take our long-term data a step further, such as a bunch of researchers at the University of Winnipeg who use our data on the impact of climate change to inform projects exploring carbon cycles.
And we also love finding data on there that helps us do what we need to do. It’s a two-way street. Take Lake Winnipeg for example. The data we have accessed on DataStream has allowed us to understand more deeply how phosphorus is entering the lake and to connect with those involved in monitoring those rivers that are most impacted.
Better policy and practice are always the answer.
Robust science and diligent monitoring of freshwater systems are the foundation of freshwater protection, but it’s only when we use those findings as hard evidence for actionable change on the ground that the impact really takes place. And things get better.
At IISD-ELA we know that better than most. Take our unprecedented discovery that phosphorus is the key cause of algal blooms. It was this piece of evidence that led to wholesale change and the reduction of phosphorus in many household and industrial products across the world.
But, as we have learned, policy can’t happen in a vacuum.
It’s the exact central hub that DataStream provides that allows those working on a particular issue—say, algal blooms—to find data on that topic, find other individuals or organizations who are building bigger projects and policy recommendations to tackle that issue, all in the spirit of combining efforts and sharpening impact, so that Canadians can continue to enjoy vast, healthy lakes and rivers, right here in our back yard, for generations to come.