"We witness across Canada a clear and present danger to public health emerging in recent months due to the obvious deteriorating state of our community drinking-water systems,'' Grafstein says.
In all, 357 of 645 Ontario drinking-water systems have failed to meet provincial standards, Grafstein says.
In Newfoundland, some 257 communities have no drinking-water standards at all. About 170 water systems on aboriginal reserves have been found to be polluted.
Canada is the only major industrial country in the world that doesn't have legally enforceable drinking-water standards.

Prime Minister Jean Chrétien has said Ottawa doesn't have the authority to regulate water, which as a natural resource falls in provincial jurisdiction. But many suspect the real issue is cost.
Grafstein has put forward a bill that would amend the Food and Drug Act to cover water. The act now sets enforceable standards for a wide range of products from chewing gum to pharmaceutical drugs. He denied such action would be an invasion of provincial jurisdiction.
"It's not an invasion. On the contrary, what this is doing is forcing the provincial and municipal governments to do what they're supposed to do to begin with.''
Barry Thomas, a scientist who ran the drinking-water program at Heath Canada for nine years, endorsed Grafstein's approach.

He said that while he was at Health Canada, he sought the opinion of the justice department and was told the Food and Drug Act could be amended reasonably easily to cover water.
"It's absolutely not true to say the federal government could not regulate the quality of drinking water,'' said Thomas, who now is a consultant. "If you say that, you would also have to say the Food and Drug Act is unconstitutional.''

He said his superiors at the health department told him cost was the real reason for avoiding clean-water legislation. "It was always made absolutely clear to me that it was politically unacceptable because of the financial liability that went with it. So it's dictated largely by economics.''
A 1996 estimate by the Canadian Water and Wastewater Association said it would cost $90 billion to bring municipal water systems up to scratch by 2002.
The cost of new infrastructure could easily be eclipsed by the cost of bad water to public health, says Hans Peterson of the Saskatoon-based Safe Drinking Water Foundation.
A lot of gastrointestinal illness caused by bad water is never reported or even linked to water quality, he said.

Existing federal-provincial guidelines have no legal force and are widely ignored.
Many rural water systems have no chance of stopping a potentially deadly parasite like cryptospordium, which has hit about 100 people in North Battleford.
The parasite can be removed from the water only by filtration. Chlorine won't kill it. Yet countless towns and even some major cities, including Winnipeg and Vancouver, lack filtration.
"They're both huge cities that have primitive water-treatment systems,'' Thomas said. "Totally vulnerable.''
Victoria, Halifax and St. John's dump raw sewage directly into the ocean, posing a threat to swimmers and marine life, he said, adding the city of Ottawa regularly has chlorine by-product at levels that have been shown to raise the risk of bladder cancer.
These issues have received little attention from the federal government