CELA stresses that, regardless of whatever water charge is required to recover actual management costs, the amount of water that is available based on long term sustainability and other goals such as meeting population growth targets, ensuring climate change resiliency, and realizing benefits to future generations is finite. As such, simply recovering the province’s water management costs must not be used as the determinant as to whether a water permit ought to be issued or a specific water use ought to be prioritized. Second, while not directly related to the new proposed charge, we believe our general comments and recommendations discussed above are important considerations to ensuring the aims of the water charges program are met.