Terry Duguid, Liberal member of Parliament for Winnipeg South, was given the task of turning the notion into reality, a fairly straightforward assignment given the unusual clarity of the promise; at least one would think. Ottawa is spending billions of dollars on water-related programs scattered among more than a dozen departments with co-ordination and common direction lacking for all but a few of these. The guiding policy — federal water policy — was crafted in 1987 and has been a dead letter for at least a couple of decades. An academic study of federal water expenditures conducted in 2020 found it impossible to determine from public records exactly how much Ottawa was spending on water and for what specific purposes.