IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jijerp/v11y2014i5p4634-4651d35507.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Drinking Water Quality Guidelines across Canadian Provinces and Territories: Jurisdictional Variation in the Context of Decentralized Water Governance

Author

Listed:
  • Gemma Dunn

    (Program on Water Governance, University of British Columbia, 439-2202 Main Mall, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z4, Canada)

  • Karen Bakker

    (Program on Water Governance, University of British Columbia, 439-2202 Main Mall, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z4, Canada
    Department of Geography, University of British Columbia, 120-1984 West Mall, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z2, Canada)

  • Leila Harris

    (Program on Water Governance, University of British Columbia, 439-2202 Main Mall, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z4, Canada
    Institute of Resources Environment and Sustainability, 421-2202 Main Mall, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z4, Canada)

Abstract

This article presents the first comprehensive review and analysis of the uptake of the Canadian Drinking Water Quality Guidelines (CDWQG) across Canada’s 13 provinces and territories. This review is significant given that Canada’s approach to drinking water governance is: (i) highly decentralized and (ii) discretionary. Canada is (along with Australia) only one of two Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member states that does not comply with the World Health Organization’s (WHO) recommendation that all countries have national, legally binding drinking water quality standards. Our review identifies key differences in the regulatory approaches to drinking water quality across Canada’s 13 jurisdictions. Only 16 of the 94 CDWQG are consistently applied across all 13 jurisdictions; five jurisdictions use voluntary guidelines, whereas eight use mandatory standards. The analysis explores three questions of central importance for water managers and public health officials: (i) should standards be uniform or variable; (ii) should compliance be voluntary or legally binding; and (iii) should regulation and oversight be harmonized or delegated? We conclude with recommendations for further research, with particular reference to the relevance of our findings given the high degree of variability in drinking water management and oversight capacity between urban and rural areas in Canada.

Suggested Citation

  • Gemma Dunn & Karen Bakker & Leila Harris, 2014. "Drinking Water Quality Guidelines across Canadian Provinces and Territories: Jurisdictional Variation in the Context of Decentralized Water Governance," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 11(5), pages 1-18, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:11:y:2014:i:5:p:4634-4651:d:35507
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/11/5/4634/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/11/5/4634/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Karen Bakker & Christina Cook, 2011. "Water Governance in Canada: Innovation and Fragmentation," International Journal of Water Resources Development, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(02), pages 275-289.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lianne McLeod & Lalita Bharadwaj & Tasha Epp & Cheryl L. Waldner, 2017. "Use of Principal Components Analysis and Kriging to Predict Groundwater-Sourced Rural Drinking Water Quality in Saskatchewan," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 14(9), pages 1-25, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Melanie Zurba & Karen F. Beazley & Emilie English & Johanna Buchmann-Duck, 2019. "Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas (IPCAs), Aichi Target 11 and Canada’s Pathway to Target 1: Focusing Conservation on Reconciliation," Land, MDPI, vol. 8(1), pages 1-20, January.
    2. Ayodele Omoniyi Olagunju & Jill A. E. Blakley, 2017. "Towards an Environmental Governance Agenda in Regional Environmental Assessment: A Case Study of the Crown Managers Partnership," Journal of Environmental Assessment Policy and Management (JEAPM), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 19(02), pages 1-33, June.
    3. Diane Dupont & Cheryl Waldner & Lalita Bharadwaj & Ryan Plummer & Blair Carter & Kate Cave & Rebecca Zagozewski, 2014. "Drinking Water Management: Health Risk Perceptions and Choices in First Nations and Non-First Nations Communities in Canada," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 11(6), pages 1-15, May.
    4. Caleb Behn & Karen Bakker, 2019. "Rendering Technical, Rendering Sacred: The Politics of Hydroelectric Development on British Columbia’s Saaghii Naachii/Peace River," Global Environmental Politics, MIT Press, vol. 19(3), pages 98-119, August.
    5. Woods, Bethany & Deaton, B. James, 2014. "Do Water Service Provision Contracts with Neighbouring Population Centres Reduce Drinking Water Risk on Canadian Reserves?," 2014 Annual Meeting, July 27-29, 2014, Minneapolis, Minnesota 171166, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    6. Katrin Pakizer & Eva Lieberherr, 2018. "Alternative governance arrangements for modular water infrastructure: An exploratory review," Competition and Regulation in Network Industries, , vol. 19(1-2), pages 53-68, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:11:y:2014:i:5:p:4634-4651:d:35507. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.