Abstract

The relationship between drinking water regulatory stringency, water quality and health outcomes are not well understood. Systemic gaps in water quality data, underreporting of waterborne outbreaks, treatment processes and variations in water quality between regions make it difficult to determine whether regulatory levels play a causal role or not in improving water quality outcomes. This is particularly interesting in a water rich country like Canada.
Canadian drinking water regulation is unique among developed nations in that it is nonbinding at the Federal level. Provinces and territories have autonomy in determining which contaminants (if any) to regulate, and to what level, giving rise to heterogeneous levels of water regulation. This diversity in regulation allows us to explore the relationship between water regulation, quality outcome and effects of both short term exposure to biological contaminants and long term exposures to chemical contaminants. This thesis serves as a first approximation of the relationships between drinking water standards, health and water quality outcomes. We use Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), a multi-criteria decision analysis method to evaluate the efficiency of provinces and territories.