Action Alert
Alberta Wilderness Association
Action Alert: Talk to your MLA about Bill 7, the Water Amendment Act
November 18, 2025
Hiking the Upper Oldman. Photo © L. Wallis.
Calling all Albertans! We need you to speak with your MLA and request that they oppose amendments to the Water Act proposed in Bill 7 before it becomes law.
Introduced into legislature on October 30, Bill 7 is currently going through its second reading and is seeking amendments that would negatively impact the function and health of rivers in Alberta.
These include:
Permitting “low-risk” inter-basin transfers (inter-basin transfers describe moving water from one river to another in a separate basin).
Combining the Peace-Slave and Athabasca River Basins into a single basin.
Expanding Ministerial power and discretion under the Act.
These changes would collectively reduce necessary limits and oversight that currently help protect the ecological integrity of Alberta’s watersheds; their implications are discussed in more detail below.
The proposed changes are also not consistent with the public feedback the Government of Alberta received from their Water Availability Engagement, despite their assertions that public consultation informed this Bill.
We know this only because of a successful Freedom of Information and Privacy (FOIP) request; the results of the Water Availability Engagement have not been released publicly by the Province.
The FOIP results also revealed that when making decisions about water management and availability, the public expects environmental protection to be a top priority for government.
The engagement found “strong cross sector support for establishing and maintaining instream flow needs and water conservation objectives (WCOs) for all rivers, with WCOs as a key policy tool”.
Instream flow needs describe the quantity, quality, and timing of water flow necessary to preserve and protect the function and processes of healthy, diverse, aquatic ecosystems long-term, while water conservation objectives are the targets set by the government to mark the minimum volume and quality of water that should remain in rivers.
So, what can you do?
Please consider phoning your MLA and asking that they reject these amendments and instead push for provisions that would better protect the environment (like establishing water conservation objectives based on the instream flow needs for all rivers in Alberta).
In our experience, this is the most direct and reliable way to speak directly with elected representatives. If you are unable to make a call, an email or letter is also appreciated!
Background
Since November last year, the Government of Alberta has completed two rounds of public engagement on how to make water “more available” in Alberta, which included surveys, open houses, and industry-specific consultation. Both public surveys were very onerous to fill out, the first scheduled over the holiday season and the second having little to no lead time. The consultation revealed some large policy shifts being considered in how water is managed and shared in Alberta.
The government has stated Bill 7 was shaped as a direct result of this consultation, but the results of the engagement were never summarized or made public. Though heavily redacted, the FOIP results from the first survey reveal some major differences in what is being proposed versus what the feedback collected through the public engagement recommended.
It appears that many changes proposed through Bill 7 are to benefit a few large industries without due consideration for the protection of the long-term health of our aquatic ecosystems and river basins.
Inter-basin transfers
Inter-basin transfers involve moving water from one watershed to another. Currently, they are scrutinized on a case-by-case basis, requiring a special Act of legislature to proceed (consistent with global best practices), because they are inherently risky.
Each river basin has unique chemical, physical, and biological compositions. Moving water from one to the other risks changing chemical concentrations, pH, temperature, and introducing disease or invasive species into the receiving waterbody. Inter-basin transfers also reduce flows for users downstream in the basin the water originates.
Bill 7 wants to remove the current level of review and scrutiny, allowing increased “low-risk” inter-basin transfers without any clear science, research, or public demand to support this change.
The FOIP results indicate that “Most (78%) recognize there are impacts to removing the requirements of the special Act, and written response indicate a continued expectation for careful, case-by-case analysis of inter-basin transfer applications and transparency of decision-making”.
Amalgamating the Peace-Slave and Athabasca River Basins
This amendment would create a single management basin across half of the province. While we do not yet know what public feedback was on this change (it was consulted on in the second phase of the Water Availability Engagement, the results of which have not been made available by the government), this amendment unifies two basins into one, making moving water between them even easier as there is now no legal need to consider the implications of doing so.
Indigenous leaders have denounced Alberta’s plans to merge the basins. According to the FOIP results in the first phase of engagement, there were very few public responses from either of these basins, which also raises concerns over whether engagement was sufficient in these basins to make such a substantial change.
More Ministerial power and discretion
Under the proposed amendments, Ministers can authorize “low-risk” inter-basin transfers as long as they “consult with the public” in a “manner and form” they themselves deem “satisfactory”. This gives too much discretionary power to the Minister, who typically is not a subject matter expert in the field of water management, but an elected official assigned to the role by the governing party.
For more information, the Environmental Law Centre has recently published a more in-depth legal analysis on the changes proposed by Bill 7 and its implications.