Canadian investors own about two Sydney Harbour's worth of Aussie water.
Super funds from Canada have a well known thirst for irrigation water where agriculture is concerned.
The Canadian slice of Australian water has risen by 282 per cent in four years.
The Canadians have stayed well out in front in terms of the top 10 overseas countries with the biggest stake in Australian water.
It is interesting the biggest foreign water owners and Aussie farm land owners do not line up.
China is the biggest foreign owner of Australian farm land - Canada comes in at number five.
The size of the water holdings they have a financial interest in relates to the type of invests they like to invest in - horticulture, grazing and cropping.
The Foreign Investment Review Board has produced two yearly reports of late - foreign ownership of agricultural land - and water ownership.
The 10 foreign owners of water (in gigalitres) are:
Canada 810, USA 626, China 604, UK 377, France 161, Hong Kong 134, Netherlands 109, Germany 108, Belgium 103, Switzerland 103.
When total foreign freehold and leasehold interests are combined China has the largest holding of agricultural land at 2.3pc, shadowed by the United Kingdom (2.2pc), the USA (0.8pc), Netherlands 0.7pc, and then comes Canada with 0.6pc.
Foreign involvement is defined under Australian law as being of 20pc and more.
The Bureau of Meteorology calculated 39,739 gigalitres of water entitlements were on issue in Australia by the end of June last year.
Foreign owners are involved in more than 10 per cent of these entitlements.
The government water register found the total volume of foreign held water entitlements in Australia with a level of foreign ownership rose from 4299 gigalitres to 4389 gigalitres in the past year.
Using the BOM measure of Australian water entitlements on issue, the estimated proportion of water entitlements with a level of foreign ownership was 11pc.
The top four water entitlement holders by country are:
Canada (2pc), US (1.6pc), China (1.5pc), UK (1pc).
China and the US swapped rankings from the year before.
Canada was well down on the list four years ago when it had an involvement in 212 gigalitres of Australian water.
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Of the 4389 gigalitres of foreign held water entitlement, 71.4pc is held by those top 10 countries.
The main uses of this foreign held water entitlements is agriculture (65.3pc) and mining (23.8pc).
Mining swallows the lion's share of the water entitlement in WA.
Just over half (2229 GL) of foreign held water entitlements are within the Murray-Darling Basin.
This number is about 11.3pc of the total Murray-Darling Basin water entitlement on issue.
There was a rise in the amount of foreign held water entitlement in each state for the past year, other than Queensland which had a fall of 4.3pc.
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