Hill Times March 8, 2021<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhen it comes to the safety of drinking water, residents of First Nations communities do not benefit from a level of protection comparable to that of people who live off reserves,\u201d reported the auditor general in 2005. The Council of Canadians, meanwhile, declared \u201clittle progress with First Nations drinking water\u201d in 2012. In 2016, Human Rights Watch reported \u201ca primary contributor to this inertia is the legal discrimination that exists related to the regulation and protection of drinking water for First Nations reserves. \u2026 The Canadian government\u2019s failings with respect to water and sanitation constitute a violation of these rights for many First Nations persons living on reserves in Ontario.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 2019, Policy Options<\/em> said: \u201cFirst Nations water problems a crisis of Canada\u2019s own making.\u201d In 2021, Environmental Science & Engineering Magazine<\/em> reported the \u201cauditor general \u2018disheartened\u2019 by failure to meet First Nations drinking water targets,\u201d while Indigenous Services Canada (ISC) officially reported that 59 First Nations communities are currently on long-term drinking water advisories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Is it a problem of not enough people working on the clean water file? No. According to the Treasury Board\u2019s GC Infobase, ISC planned for about 200 full-time equivalents to work on water and wastewater this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Is it a problem of not enough money? Probably. But the funds allocated to communities to build and fix water infrastructure is rarely spent in full by the department, and the funds take too long to get out the door. The $150-million recently touted by the Minister is for 2026-2027, but it seems the department carries over significant portions every year anyhow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When hand-washing is our best defence in the midst of a pandemic, the federal government chose to stall its work on clean water for a portion of its citizens. The pandemic is the reason this file stalled? It\u2019s like saying \u2018bleeding\u2019 is a reason not to bandage. It\u2019s ludicrous. This stall tactic simply would not have been allowed in Walkerton, Ont., or Ottawa, or any other Canadian community served by the provinces or territories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is a problem of outdated and colonial procedures? The answer is yes, a resounding yes. A First Nations community submits a lengthy plan to build or replace a water treatment plan to the department, then a more detailed plan, and then maybe revisions to that plan as demanded by federal bureaucrats, and years pass. It\u2019s takes so long to get a plan approved by the powers that be in Ottawa that the engineering firms and construction companies have long gone. And the community is forced to start again in the years-long process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And here\u2019s the root issue. The feds don\u2019t fund the basic infrastructure in communities or the maintenance. They might cut the ribbon on the water treatment plant, but there\u2019s no water pipes to houses. There\u2019s no wastewater infrastructure to sewers, no fire hydrants, and no water fountains. There\u2019s also the lack of insulated houses so any pipes to houses would just freeze. So don\u2019t get sucked into the \u201c59 communities\u201d farce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A barrier is the pure nature of bureaucracy and its inability to change\u2014apparently the policies on water infrastructure funding are 30 years old. They might as well be using faxes, while they\u2019re at it. And it\u2019s partly because they haven\u2019t received a clear and fully funded mandate to truly resolve water and infrastructure issues\u2014they have received Band-aid solutions to keep the First Nations quiet enough. Somewhere in the machinery of government, somewhere in the \u201cThe Centre,\u201d the request for the basics of life for First Nations gets watered down to discriminatory, poor service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here\u2019s an idea: let\u2019s put the Indigenous Services Canada in charge of water and infrastructure for Ottawa residents and Parliament Hill. Anybody want to do this? I didn\u2019t think so.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hill Times March 8, 2021 \u201cWhen it comes to the safety of drinking water, residents of First Nations communities do not benefit from a level of protection comparable to that of people who live off reserves,\u201d reported the auditor general in 2005. The Council of Canadians, meanwhile, declared \u201clittle progress with First Nations drinking water\u201d in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false,"trp-custom-language-flag":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"whcrand","author_link":"https:\/\/the-irg.ca\/fr\/author\/whcrand\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Hill Times March 8, 2021 \u201cWhen it comes to the safety of drinking water, residents of First Nations communities do not benefit from a level of protection comparable to that of people who live off reserves,\u201d reported the auditor general in 2005. The Council of Canadians, meanwhile, declared \u201clittle progress with First Nations drinking water\u201d in…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-irg.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-irg.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-irg.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-irg.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-irg.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3460"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the-irg.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3460\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-irg.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-irg.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-irg.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}