The U.S.-Canada Relationship and Great Lakes Funding – Is it safe or on the chopping block?

This is part 1 in a two-part series.

Can the past half-century of Canada-U.S. cooperation on the Great Lakes withstand the current political climate? What’s in store for critical Great Lakes funding in this era of uncertainty? And, maybe most important, what can you do to navigate these turbulent waters?

Strip away all posturing, politics, and polemics, and we’re left with these certainties:

– We all need fresh water to survive and thrive.
– The Great Lakes are the largest ecosystem on Earth, with some 20 percent of the Earth’s and 83 percent of North America’s fresh surface water supply providing drinking water for some 30 million Americans (roughly 10 percent of the U.S. population) and 10 million Canadians (roughly 25 percent of Canada’s population).
– According to the Great Lakes Commission, the ecosystem supports 1.5 million jobs and $60 billion in wages.

In other words, a healthy, clean Great Lakes ecosystem is the foundation for a wide swath of North Americans, their health, and their economy. Just like homeowners’ insurance provides a safety net for one of our most important assets, we all need protective policies as a safety net for the vital Great Lakes ecosystem. And there’s no getting around the reality that the U.S. and Canadian federal governments have an important (probably the most important) responsibility for these protections.

A quilt of Great Lakes binational policies protects these ecological and economic imperatives for a reason: Elected leaders from different parties, across branches and levels of government, and over a span of generations understood that to protect the U.S. and Canada, cooperative policy protections were critical for the mutual interests of each nation. Binational Great Lakes policies have become vital threads for the industrial, recreational, and public health of our North American tapestry.

So, what are some of these domestic and binational policies? Understanding them is the basis for navigating today’s uncertainties.

1972 was a big year for binationalism in the Great Lakes, with the Nixon and Trudeau (the first) administrations signing the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement. Over the years, this agreement has provided a roadmap for:

• habitat restoration
• cleaning up toxic hotspots
• reducing polluted runoff
• beating back invasive species, and
• many others.

Later the same year, the U.S. Congress passed the modern Clean Water Act, which funded infrastructure upgrades to reduce sewage overflows and instituted a pollution discharge permit system. Over the following decades, the two federal governments layered on more protections to address emerging threats.

With the policies of protection in place, the two countries needed one more thing to implement those policies: Funding. In 2010, President Obama established the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI) to fund the execution of many of the needs under the Agreement. In 2019, Congress passed an amendment to its Clean Water Act making the GLRI official. And in 2023, Canada responded in kind, establishing its own federal funding mechanism called the Great Lakes Freshwater Ecosystem Initiative (GLFEI).

Other polices have united Canada and the United States in mutual ecosystem management. Undoing these efforts won’t be easy. Nor should it be, because these policies are in place for critical reasons. Plus, they span different jurisdictional levels that one federal government alone can’t unwind. But that doesn’t mean potential fund recipients and project principals are risk free. So, where might changes to these programs be headed? And, how can understanding that trajectory help you navigate funding challenges and opportunities?

What’s the likely fate of GLRI and GLFEI?

As mentioned, the Great Lakes region has a long and proud legacy of binationalism and bipartisanship. In an era where controversy pervades the media, the Great Lakes have inspired the opposite.

For example, during its first term, the Trump White House tried to all but eliminate the U.S. funding program, the GLRI. Republican members of congress intervened. The White House reversed course for FY2020 and proposed full funding.

This solid stable of bipartisan support for the GLRI is its best line of defense in today’s times of uncertainty. This strong history of bipartisanship (and binationalism) suggests that Great Lakes programs might withstand significant funding cuts.

Another proof point: In January 2025, a bipartisan coalition of U.S. representatives introduced H.R. 284 to keep the GLRI funded at $500 million per year through FY2030.

Yet another: in May 2025, the White House released its “skinny budget” (a budget outline for a new administration). There were no hints of a Great Lakes budget cut.

And maybe the biggest proof point of all is that all Americans want clean water. Republicans, Democrats, Independents… it doesn’t matter. Time and time again, poll after poll, generation after generation, ill-advised attempts to undermine clean water protections are defeated in legislatures, including Congress.

So, if public sentiment and bipartisanship are so strong for Great Lakes and clean water, what’s the threat?

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Statements from Trump administration officials have thrown uncertainty into the mix though, generally, the White House can’t directly dismantle binational policies. Most would take an act of Congress. But the White House can indirectly undermine binational policies by thwarting the expenditure of staff time and by withholding funds that otherwise should be delivered to recipients. Many of these indirect attempts to stymie implementation, however, have been defeated when challenged in courts. Still, court challenges are expensive and risky.

The bottom line: the bulk of our binational policies – including funding – are on strong footing but their future is not risk free. That leaves a last important question we’ll tackle in my next post: what can project proponents do to navigate these risks? Stay tuned. And reach out.