Water use account
Archived Content
Information identified as archived is provided for reference, research or recordkeeping purposes. It is not subject to the Government of Canada Web Standards and has not been altered or updated since it was archived. Please "contact us" to request a format other than those available.
Physical flow accounts for water describe in physical units of measure (cubic metres) the abstraction of water from the environment as a natural input, its use as a product (e.g. treated municipal water supply), and its eventual return to the environment as a residual (wastewater). These accounts are treated in section 3.5 of the United Nations System of Environmental-Economic Accounting: Central Framework (SEEA-CF).
The water use account produced by Statistics Canada focuses on water intake: either self-supplied (i.e. direct abstraction from the environment) or supplied from municipal systems. It does not include an estimate for the volume of water that passes through hydro-electric turbines, nor of the water that flows through agricultural crops and cultivated forests as a result of the uptake of soil water by plants. These flows are both considered abstraction according to the SEEA-CF but they do not correspond to the general interpretation of water intake. The water use account is thus a combination of a physical flow account for natural inputs (self-supplied water) and a physical flow account for products (municipal water) but is placed under Natural Input Flow Accounts since the bulk of the flows are self-supplied (i.e. the natural input).
Access the data table and methodological information through the following link:
- Date modified: