Asbestos Free Water, a Canadian advocacy campaign founded by Human Rights lawyer Rana Bokhari, based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Treaty 1 Territory, was designated a Blue Community by the Council of Canadians.
Rana Bokhari founded Asbestos Free Water on a simple belief: water is a public good and a fundamental human right. Every Canadian family has the right to know what flows through their tap. And nearly 50 years of federal inaction on asbestos in Canadian drinking water is not a regulatory oversight, it is a failure of the Country’s most basic obligation to the people it serves.
In March 2023, W5 — Canada’s longest-running investigative newsmagazine independently tested tap water across six Winnipeg neighbourhoods and found approximately 60,000 asbestos fibres per litre in residential samples. There are 721 kilometres of asbestos cement pipes beneath Winnipeg’s streets alone, and approximately 14,000 kilometres still active across Canada.
A 1977 federal government study confirmed 6.5 million asbestos fibres per litre in Winnipeg’s water and active pipe erosion. Canada has no Maximum Acceptable Concentration for asbestos in drinking water.
The United States has had an enforceable limit since 1992. Canada does not.
In 2026, Health Canada published a draft guidance document proposing no enforceable limit. In response, Asbestos Free Water submitted a formal consultation response to Health Canada on March 24, 2026, and simultaneously submitted a civil society communication to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Safe Drinking Water on April 3, 2026.
Asbestos Free Water built a free public map of every asbestos cement pipe beneath Winnipeg’s streets using the city’s own publicly available data — so that ordinary families could access information their government had never made easy to find. That map is live here.
Asbestos Free Water’s self-commitment as a Blue Community organization:
Asbestos Free Water commits to the belief that water is a public good and a fundamental human right — not a commodity to be managed in silence. We commit to building public awareness of asbestos contamination in Canadian drinking water. We commit to demanding that the Canadian government fulfil its obligation to the people it serves. We commit to supporting affected communities in exercising their right to information and their right to safety. And we commit to working in solidarity with Indigenous communities whose right to safe water is protected under international law including UNDRIP and Section 35 of the Canadian Constitution — and who have borne the weight of Canada’s water failures longest and most deeply.
Canadians deserve to know what is in their tap water. We are going to make sure they do — until the government acts. The health of our Nation depends on it.
