Water use account

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: