Mercury crisis continues to plague Grassy Narrows

Ontario took another step Tuesday on the long road towards cleaning up mercury contamination upstream from the Grassy Narrows First Nation — a community that also wants the federal Liberal government to help generations of residents deal with the toxic aftermath.

Chief Simon Fobister cheered the Ontario government for a fiscal update that sets in motion a previously announced plan to put $85 million towards cleaning up the mess left behind by a paper mill that dumped the neurotoxin into the Wabigoon River in the 1960s.

Now, Fobister is setting his sights on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government, which he’s been pressing to build a facility he calls a “mercury home” in the community so three generations of locals can get treatment for the effects of mercury poisoning closer to home.

“What has he done for us?” Fobister said of Trudeau, to whom he said he has reached out three separate times, never once receiving a reply.

“It has been documented so many times. I’m frustrated that Canada doesn’t step up and deal with this national issue ... if industry poisons people ... it is a man-made disaster.”

In a statement late Tuesday after the Ontario government tabled its fiscal update, Fobister applauded Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals and urged her government to “honour its promises” by cleaning up once and for all the infamously polluted and remote site in northwestern Ontario, a 2.5hour drive northwest of the city of Dryden.