For the City of Saskatoon, and to a large degree the City of Regina, the water comes from the South Saskatchewan River, which originates in the Rocky Mountains. Calgary and Edmonton waters also come from the Rocky Mountains. A drainage basin in the Rocky Mountains.
Water drains off rocks making the water low in inorganic and organic compounds.
For many farmers in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, the water is collected from agricultural fields which drain into dugouts . Indeed to get treated dugout water to a quality similar to the raw water used by many cities is difficult. Surely then various levels of government have allocated research resources to deal with theses challenging water supplies. The answer to that is a simple no. If the City of Calgary's effort to ensure that it is supplying safe drinking water to its customers is appropriate then research and development laboratories with around 200 people would be an appropriate effort to resolve the much tougher and diverse rural water quality problems on the Canadian Prairie.