Safe drinking water policy for Canada turning hindsight into foresight

Summary: Drinking water is essential to human health and well-being. Currently, throughout much of the developed, industrialized world, including most of urbanized Canada, public drinking water generally poses a negligible health risk to consumers. But the regulation of drinking water in Canada is generally guided and managed in a fragmented, almost ad hoc, manner that leaves us vulnerable to future water-quality failures, most likely in smaller systems. The problem is not that numerical water safety criteria are inadequately stringent; the documented failures have been caused by an inability to operate water systems effectively, pointing to inadequate competence.