The issue
Greater Victoria is running out of water
Not drinking water — swimming water. In two years the region has lost twenty-two 25-metre lanes of public pool space, and the largest of those closures lasts about five years. This page sets out what is happening, why it is a regional problem rather than one municipality's problem, and what we think should be done.
What has closed and what is closing
McKinnon Pool — closed September 2024
McKinnon Pool sits on the UVic campus, on land within Saanich. Its closure removed six 25-metre lanes from the regional pool. It served students, varsity athletes, community clubs and drop-in swimmers from across the Capital Region, not just from one municipality.
Crystal Pool — closed September 2026
The City of Victoria's Crystal Pool closed in September 2026 so its replacement can be built. That removes another sixteen 25-metre lanes for a construction period expected to run about five years.
City staff briefed rental groups in June 2026 on the interim arrangement. The points that matter most for users:
- Roughly a 70% reduction in capacity compared with Crystal Pool.
- A maximum of four lanes, plus a fifth lane described as suitable for private lessons but not for club use.
- Programming expected to start in January 2027, with limited or no space between September and December 2026.
- A small warm-water pool, roughly nine metres square, suitable for learn-to-swim.
- Increased dryland training space — useful, but not a substitute for water.
Under the draft allocation approach described to rental groups, City of Victoria programs come first, followed by equity, diversity and inclusion programming, youth, non-profits, public drop-in, and commercial use. Learn-to-swim is a stated priority. Public drop-in lane swimming was placed lower on the list on the basis that other facilities in the region offer it.
Taken together: the region loses twenty-two lanes, gains back the equivalent of about four for part of that period, and has a gap of several months in late 2026 where there is very little to gain back at all.
And the rest of the stock is aging
The two closures are the visible part. Behind them, most of the region's remaining aquatic facilities are reaching the end of a normal service life at roughly the same time:
- McKinnon Pool — closed after more than fifty years of service. closure year to confirm
- Gordon Head Recreation Centre — opened 1971. Saanich's own facilities planning has identified pressure on pool space and the need for greater capacity.
- Oak Bay Recreation Centre — built 1975, and likewise approaching more than fifty years of service.
- Crystal Pool — closing September 2026, with a replacement under construction.
Replacing facilities one at a time as each one fails is not a plan. It is a sequence of emergencies, and the region is partway into it.
Why this is a regional problem
When a pool closes, the swimmers don’t disappear. They move to the remaining pools.
Residents do not swim within their municipal boundaries. A family in Esquimalt drives to Saanich for a lesson; a masters swimmer in Oak Bay trains in Victoria; a club draws members from a dozen municipalities. But the cost of building and operating each pool falls on the municipality that owns it, or on a sub-regional service.
That mismatch has a predictable result. Every council can reasonably say that aquatic capacity is somebody else's problem, and no council is accountable for whether the region as a whole has enough water. Meanwhile the Capital Regional District has no clear mandate to fix it.
Panorama Recreation on the Saanich Peninsula operates as a CRD service overseen by the Peninsula Recreation Commission — several municipalities funding and governing one facility together. Elsewhere on the Island, the Comox Valley Aquatic Centre is a regional district facility funded across the whole region. The question is not whether regional aquatic funding can work in British Columbia. It is whether the Capital Region will use it.
What we do not yet know
We are honest about the limits of our own evidence. Our group is working to establish, and will publish when we have it:
- How much water space the region has per resident, and how that compares with other Canadian regions of similar size.
- Where swimmers actually come from — aggregate postal-code data from clubs, showing which municipalities' residents use which facilities. No individual data, only municipal totals.
- Real unmet demand: waitlists, how quickly programs fill, programs cancelled for lack of space, and families who could not register at all.
- How many swimmers and programs are displaced or cut in the fall of 2026 as Crystal Pool closes.
Some numbers in circulation we have not yet confirmed, and we flag them rather than repeat them as fact. Reopening McKinnon Pool has been discussed as costing in the region of $300,000 per year in operating support unverified. We will publish a source when we have one, or drop the figure.
The case beyond swimming clubs
It would be easy to read this as competitive swimmers asking for lane time. It is not. Public pools carry a set of jobs that nothing else in a community does:
Water safety
Drowning is preventable, and learn-to-swim is the prevention. A child who does not get a lesson spot does not simply miss an activity — they grow up on an island without knowing how to swim.
Health and ageing
Rehabilitation after injury or surgery, arthritis and chronic pain management, and the low-impact exercise that keeps older residents mobile all depend on warm, accessible water.
Heat
Summers are getting hotter and lake advisories more frequent. Victoria has no publicly accessible outdoor pool. As one commentary in the Times Colonist put it in August 2026, access to public swimming space is a concrete way for a region to help residents cope with heat.
Youth and belonging
For a lot of young people, a pool is the third place — not home, not school — where they build friendships, discipline and a reason to be somewhere on a Tuesday night.
What we are asking candidates to commit to
Two timeframes, because the region needs both.
Short term — get through the closure
- Examine seriously whether McKinnon Pool can be reopened on a shared-cost basis, and say what conditions would need to be met.
- Coordinate allocation across municipalities, so displaced groups are not negotiating with five facilities separately.
- Extend hours where staffing and budget allow, including early-morning and weekend blocks.
Long term — fix the structure
- Publicly track unmet demand for aquatic services across the CRD, including cross-municipal use.
- Support regional planning for aquatic facilities, and explore a regional funding model on the Panorama Recreation pattern.
- Begin formal planning or a feasibility study for additional aquatic capacity, including in Saanich.
- Open discussions among UVic, the municipalities, the CRD, the Province and user groups about whether a partnership at CARSA could meet part of the regional need.
Those are the commitments we put to candidates. Our own four asks — reopening McKinnon, planning replacements for Gordon Head and Oak Bay, and a partnership at UVic — are set out in full on what we’re asking for.