Ontario Water Privatization

Ontario's drinking water systems represent one of the largest public assets in the province — valued at $175.8 billion in infrastructure. The Ford government has pursued what critics call a three-pronged privatization agenda:

1. Privatizing water delivery infrastructure through Bill 60's Water and Wastewater Public Corporations Act (November 2025)
2. Deregulating groundwater extraction through changes to the Ontario Water Resources Act (2025) and the proposed exemption of mining companies from Permit to Take Water requirements (December 2025)
3. Dismantling the oversight system through Bill 56's Clean Water Act amendments and Bill 68's Conservation Authority amalgamations

Bill 60 and the Privatization of Water Delivery

Buried in the omnibus Fighting Delays, Building Faster Act, 2025 is the Water and Wastewater Public Corporations Act, which empowers the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing to designate corporations to deliver water and wastewater services for municipalities. The bill was time-allocated — giving the government control to bypass committee comment and limit debate to less than 10 hours in total for a bill determining the future of Ontario's water systems.

A legal opinion by Simon Archer of Goldblatt LLP, commissioned by CUPE Ontario and released March 13, 2026, found that: the term "public" in the legislation's title "does not have any real legal effect"; the government's repeated use of "municipal service corporations" to describe these entities is "incorrect and misleading" because that language appears nowhere in the Act; and the Minister has unfettered discretion to determine ownership, meaning corporations could be privately owned without any further legislative debate. Archer drew a direct parallel to Ontario's privatization of local electricity distribution companies in the early 2000s, which began as public entities and were gradually opened to private investors.

The government's own Environmental Registry proposal confirmed the first application of the legislation is Peel Region — whose regional government the province is simultaneously dissolving. Critics warned the Peel Transition Board's draft recommendation that water and wastewater services transition to a "provincially regulated utility" was a roadmap to privatization.

Groundwater Deregulation

Separately, the Ford government proposed changes to Ontario Regulation 387/04 under the Ontario Water Resources Act (public consultation: July 2–August 1, 2025) that would allow Permits to Take Water to be transferred between companies — and even reinstated after they had been cancelled, revoked or expired — without any new public review, environmental assessment, or Indigenous consultation. Under existing law, a cancelled or revoked permit had previously required the full application process, precisely because permits are most often cancelled due to overuse, contamination, or violation of permit conditions. Ontario law requires a permit for any taking exceeding 50,000 litres per day from lakes, rivers, streams, or groundwater.

In December 2025, the government went further: proposing to exempt hundreds of mineral exploration companies from needing any permit to take water for early-stage work, framing it as support for the province's Critical Mineral Strategy.

The Waterloo Crisis

The real-world consequences became visible in early 2026. A Canada's National Observer investigation (January 2026) found the Ford government approved more than 100 water-taking permits in Waterloo Region over five years — some flagged by the province's own assessments as carrying the highest risk of unacceptable environmental impact. The Waterloo Moraine supplies roughly 80 per cent of drinking water to the region's 600,000+ residents. By early 2026, the Region of Waterloo had hit its water capacity limit and was forced to halt all new development approvals in portions of Kitchener, Waterloo, and Cambridge. Environmental Defence called on the province to reject pending water-taking permit applications, and the Ontario Greens asked for a moratorium on commercial water permits in the region. The Ford government declined.

Dismantling Post-Walkerton Protections

Bill 56 (Building a More Competitive Economy Act, 2025), which received Royal Assent November 27, 2025, amended the Clean Water Act to centralize power over source water protection plans at Queen's Park and reduce local input. Source protection plans — the first line of defence against contamination events like the Walkerton E. coli outbreak that killed seven Ontarians and sickened 2,000 in 2000 — can now be deemed approved if the Minister fails to respond within 120 days. Combined with Bill 68's collapse of 36 Conservation Authorities into seven, critics say Ontario is systematically dismantling the post-Walkerton framework in ways that echo the Harris government's deregulation that enabled that disaster.

Background: Water Bottling and the Moratorium

The Ford government's record on water extraction precedes 2025. In 2017, the Liberal government imposed a moratorium on new water-bottling permits to study environmental impacts. Ford extended it briefly, then lifted it in 2021, introducing new regulations. That same year, the government granted BlueTriton (formerly Nestlé Waters) a five-year renewal to extract up to 4.7 million litres of groundwater per day from two wells in Wellington County — a total over the permit's life of more than 8 billion litres from the Aberfoyle (Puslinch) and Hillsburgh (Erin) aquifers. BlueTriton exited Ontario in late 2024 amid community opposition; in January 2025, its Hillsburgh well was purchased by White Wolf Property Management, run by the Gott family — who also own Ice River Springs, another bottled water company. Centre Wellington township separately purchased the Elora well for $1.8 million in April 2025, returning it to public ownership.

The most immediate consequence was in Waterloo Region, where the Ford government's permit approvals drove the region to its groundwater limit. By early 2026, all new development in the Mannheim Service Area — covering Kitchener, Waterloo, and parts of Cambridge — was halted. Regional councillors formally pushed the Ford government on water permits in February 2026; Canada's National Observer reported the province showed no sign of pausing approvals.

The First Nations response has been sharp. Ontario Regional Chief Abram Benedict stated that removing the water-permit trigger for mining exploration "violates treaty rights, including the right to free, prior and informed consent." The permit application process is a key trigger point where companies must consult Indigenous communities before work begins — without it, companies could proceed in ways that harm water quality and traditional use. Nine First Nations went to court seeking an injunction against Bill 5 and its mining-focused provisions. The Chiefs of Ontario demanded the province withdraw the proposed changes and consult before proceeding.

The Keep Water Public coalition — comprising CUPE, The Council of Canadians, ACORN Ontario, the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, and Ontario Nature — has run an active public campaign and is supporting legal challenges. Environmental Defence endorsed the March 2026 legal opinion and called on the government to amend Bill 60 to explicitly bar private ownership of water and wastewater corporations.

The Ontario NDP, led on this issue by MPP Catherine Fife (Waterloo), have been the primary legislative opposition — calling for a moratorium on commercial water-taking permits in the Waterloo Region and pushing for explicit public-ownership language in the Water and Wastewater Public Corporations Act. The Ontario Greens launched a petition and a moratorium demand in March 2026.

The timing is notable: the Ford government introduced its proposed FOI exemptions for the Premier's Office and cabinet ministers on March 13, 2026 — the same day the CUPE legal opinion on water privatization dropped, raising concerns the FOI changes would prevent future scrutiny of water-related ministerial decisions.

Internationally, the pattern echoes failed water privatization experiments — most infamously in Cochabamba, Bolivia (2000), and the UK, where private water companies have faced years of regulatory battles over sewage dumping and rate increases. Closer to home, Ontario's own partial privatization of electricity distribution companies in the early 2000s — the precise structural model identified by Simon Archer's legal opinion — resulted in years of controversy over rates and accountability. Experts warn that once water infrastructure is incorporated under the Business Corporations Act, the fiduciary duty to shareholders creates structural pressure to prioritize returns over public health, even without formal government instruction to do so.