Haitians gather water from a damaged water main Tuesday in Port-au-Prince. (Rodrigo Abd/Associated Press)

A Canadian military medical clinic in the Haitian town of Jacmel is now operating at almost full capacity, treating victims of the earthquake that shattered the country.

Lt.-Col. Bruce Ewing, the commander of Canada's Disaster Assistance Response Team, told CBC on Tuesday that the DART field clinic in the town treated 246 people on Monday.

"My clinic is designed to treat up to 250 people a day," Ewing said. "We will keep treating as long as they show up, and the moment they stop showing up here, I am going to be sending my medical teams out into the surrounding mountains to try and treat anyone that can’t get to us."

Ewing said the Canadians have started to produce potable water, but are not ready to hand it out yet.

"We cannot distribute any water until it obtains an appropriate standard because we don’t want to make people any sicker than they already are," he said.

Ewing said the water in Jacmel is extremely dirty, and it took the Canadian military time to get a large purifier to the town on Haiti's south coast because the road to the area was badly damaged.

Two weeks after the magnitude 7.0-earthquake hit Haiti, the United Nations estimates that up to a million people are homeless.

On Monday, Haitian President René Préval issued an urgent call for 200,000 tents. Préval stressed that aircraft carrying tents should get landing priority at the crowded Port-au-Prince airport.

Mark Fried of Oxfam International told CBC that the rainy season is coming and people need protection from the elements.

"We have hundreds of thousands of people living in vacant lots, in churchyards, on a golf course — wherever they can find an open space outside," he said from Port-au-Prince.

Fried said the government has proposed establishing large tent camps outside the city. This could be a temporary solution "but it certainly would not be a permanent one," Fried said.

"We'd be fearful if people are left there, far from their jobs, far from school, it became a permanent situation, it would be the worst outcome altogether."

Oxfam hopes that many Haitians will move back into their homes if they can be made habitable again. An engineering firm will be going into the country later this week to do structural assessments.

Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs said Tuesday that 21 Canadians are confirmed dead in the quake, while 148 Canadians are still missing.