We would literally get our identities from our land, so we have more than a
passing need for water. It's a spiritual, cultural relationship
that has been interfered with. If the water's doing not well, human beings
are going to reflect that. It's something we take for granted in Canada, access to fresh
drinking water at the turn of a tap.
But believe it or not, there are some communities in
our country that are still without it.
Trudeau promised to eliminate boil water advisories on First Nations reserves
within five years.
By now, you've probably heard of the story of how many First Nations communities
across Canada do not have access to safe drinking water.
But what you might not know is how this became a reality for so many people living on
reserves and why, after years of efforts and billions of dollars in
government spending, people still do not have clean water running from their taps.
Water is the liquid of life.
Let's start with the basics, water advisories are issued to warn people not to drink
their water when it's thought to be unsafe.
There are three types of water advisories, but boil water advisories
are by far the most common.
When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took office, he promised to end long term
boil water advisories by 2021.
So not all water advisories, just ones that have been in place for more than a
year.
We are still very confident that we are going to be able to end the long term boil water
advisories across indigenous communities in this country within the five years we set
out.
There were 105 long term advisories when Trudeau came into office.
And right now, according to government data, 56 remain.
This data excludes the territories and British Columbia.
It also doesn't account for situations where a long term advisory has been lifted,
only to have a new short term advisory issued within weeks or months
of the eighty-seven long term advisories.
The government says it has lifted to date 33 of those systems have experienced
short term advisories since the causes of water advisories
varies across the country.
Everything from where the water comes from to the pipes underground to how
remote the community is can impact how vulnerable it is.
For example, facilities relying on surface water such as a river or a lake
have a higher chance of experiencing water advisories due to the fact that rivers
and lakes are more prone to contamination.
We pride ourselves on our high sanitary standards,
yet we deliberately make open source of our waterways.
Each year, the government assesses public water systems on reserves.
It looks at the system's design, how well it's being operated and maintained,
its record keeping, the quality of the source, water and
operator's qualifications.
It then combines all those factors to give the system a score between one
and 10 10 being extreme risk.
See, I tend to regard a boil water advisory as the most extreme outcome
that you can get. The risk scores can tell you about systems that have problems
that are not on boil water advisories yet.
So it's just it's just another element of information you can use to get a more complete
picture.
That's Matt McLaren. He recently analyzed more than a decade of government data
on risk scores for the Globe and Mail.
What Matt found is that despite the government's progress on eliminating long term
advisories, the national average of risk scores have not changed
that much since 2015.
The risk scores are changing a lot more slowly than the number of boil water advisories
that are being eliminated. You know, there's a lot of systems across this country
on First Nations reserves that are in poor shape, that aren't on a boil water advisory.
And the the risk scores reflect that.
So just because a community doesn't have a boil water advisory doesn't mean that they're
happy with their level of water service. They may indeed have very serious problems.
It's possible that new or recently repaired systems haven't been reinspected yet
and therefore would be left out of this data.
So far, the government's strategy has been to build or repair infrastructure on
reserves like water treatment plants.
But this doesn't always solve the problem, which is the case at Six Nations Reserve
and Ontario. They got a new treatment plant in 2014, but it
only serves a very small percentage of the population.
That's because many households here don't even have functioning water pipes,
forcing the people that live here to buy big jugs of water that they then have to
transport to their houses.
They get a pot of money and they'll say, OK, you can do this one time deal.
Do we go get a treatment plant? Has this may not come along again in another 20
years, right. But there is no money to run it.
There was no money, money to operate it.
There is no there is just money to build treatment, plant
the budgets that they receive from the federal government to actually operate their
systems are much lower than you would get at a at a
city of similar size.
First, we had different kinds of chemicals and mixed them up in the water, kill the
germs.
I've spoken to a few water operators who have told me that in some cases they've actually
had to pay out of their own pockets for chemicals to keep the
plant running.
To understand how the system became so unequal, we have to go
back to the birth of Canada as a nation also known as colonization.
Long ago, when explorers sailed west from Europe and their wooden ships,
what they found was a new world, a land that was vast, rugged
and empty.
The reserve system, as we largely know it today, was established at 1876
when parliament passed the Indian Act, the act along with existing treaties.
Out specific tracts of land for First Nations people to allow European
farmers access to their traditional lands, the Indian Act also gave the
government control over most aspects of First Nations people's lives, their
status, land, infrastructure, education, governance
and so on. Its aim was to force First Nations people to assimilate
into settler society by stripping them of their autonomy, money,
culture and rights.
So our social, political, economic and spiritual life were
basically attacked and destroyed.
And part of colonialism is to then destroy the indigenous population
and recreate them in your image so they can be managed.
John A.. MacDonald himself said The great aim of our legislation
has been to do away with the tribal system and assimilate the Indian people in
all respects
so that early settling, if you will, of Canada is what
kind of dictated what we have today.
Reserve land is owned and under the jurisdiction of the federal government,
meaning that the federal government is responsible for services and infrastructure
on reserves, whereas typically water is governed by provincial and
municipal governments.
The Trudeau government has committed more than two billion dollars towards water
and wastewater infrastructure since 2016.
And while there has been progress on lifting, Advisory's water is just one
part of Canada's colonial legacy that has disenfranchized indigenous people
in this country.
There's so many injustices and racism and discrimination.
That is. Where do you begin with the land, with the sterilization of our women, with the
abduction of our children? Residential schools like.
It's like, where do you begin? I mean, they never thought we would still be here and the
fact that we are a testimony to our resilience and our strength as a people to
to not follow their plan, if you will.