- World-class source water management meets a demand side that has long relied on abundance over efficiency.
Metro Vancouver supplies safe, high-quality drinking water to more than three million people across one of Canada's fastest-growing regions. The system is genuinely impressive: protected mountain catchments in the Capilano, Seymour, and Coquitlam watersheds, gravity-fed flows, treatment plants running largely on renewable electricity, and over 520 kilometres of transmission mains connecting 21 member jurisdictions. Decades of careful infrastructure investment have produced a supply-side operation that most utilities would envy — all documented in the region's newly adopted Drinking Water Management Plan 2026 (DWMP).
Which makes the demand side of the equation all the more striking.
In 2023, Metro Vancouver's total gross per capita water use — all sectors combined, divided by population — stood at 384 litres per day, one of the highest in Canada, according to the region's own communications. That figure drives infrastructure sizing, supply planning, and long-term capital investment. The newly adopted DWMP sets a regional target to bring it down to 320 litres per capita per day by 2035. It is the first time the region has established a shared, quantified benchmark. Progress, certainly — but the scale of the challenge reflects how much demand management has historically taken a back seat to supply expansion.
In most water utilities the conversation has long since progressed from whether to install meters to the benefits of switching from analog to smart metering infrastructure
The plan is structured around five priority areas:
- Resilient infrastructure and seismic preparedness
- Water supply quantity and quality
- Environmental protection and enhancement
- Conservation and efficiency
- Operational workforce development
For a system of this scale, the first three represent well-established strengths. It is the fourth that marks the clearest departure from the previous plan, reflecting an explicit shift in regional focus from building system capacity to managing water consumption and efficiency for the long term.
A metering problem hiding in plain sight
The structural drivers of high consumption are well understood: a predominantly flat-rate billing system that provides no financial signal to conserve, high seasonal outdoor water use, and the absence of metering across much of the region. Addressing all three is central to the plan.
At the heart of the conservation challenge is a metering situation that is, by the standards of comparable utilities, extraordinary. Metro Vancouver has been described in its own documentation as one of the last utilities of its size to meter drinking water at all properties, noting that in most water utilities the conversation has long since progressed from whether to install meters to the benefits of switching from analog to smart metering infrastructure.
The regional picture is deeply uneven, with some municipalities at near-universal coverage and others barely started. As of 2021, more than half of the region's total water use was unmetered.
The consequences for system-wide demand are predictable. Without meters, leaks go undetected and losses go unquantified, meaning Metro Vancouver cannot accurately measure how much treated, high-quality mountain water is being lost, which makes system management and long-term planning significantly harder.
The DWMP addresses this directly. Members are encouraged to require metering on all new residential construction by 2028, alongside a range of other triggers including properties undergoing major renovation, utility service replacement, or ownership transfer, as well as connections with pools, hot tubs, or secondary suites. Beyond 2028, the plan sets tiered targets for expanding metered coverage across all member jurisdictions by 2035, scaled to each jurisdiction's 2021 baseline. Metro Vancouver will develop implementation guidance and communications materials to support rollout.
A candid plan, and a long road ahead
The plan explicitly acknowledges that the previous focus on supply-side expansion is no longer sufficient on its own — and that the region's ability to serve a growing population will increasingly depend on how well it manages what it already has.
The plan was developed over six years, drawing on engagement with more than 60,000 residents, alongside structured input from First Nations, member jurisdictions, academic institutions, and industry.
For the water sector more broadly, Metro Vancouver's experience is instructive: exceptional source water and supply infrastructure do not automatically translate into efficient consumption. The region is now confronting that gap directly. The targets are set. The harder work of implementation, jurisdiction by jurisdiction, lies ahead.
