More action needed to ensure safe water for First Nations

All nine community water systems on Lytton First Nation land in B.C. have been under boil water advisories at one time or another. Now the First Nation is taking an innovative approach to resolving its drinking water problems. It’s working with public and private organizations and universities in a “circle of trust” to identify challenges and test solutions in real-world conditions. The approach came about as the result of a partnership with RES’EAU-WATERNET, a strategic research network under the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

Because problems with drinking water systems vary, RES’EAU-WATERNET works with communities like Lytton First Nation to gain insights early on in the process. With Lytton First Nation’s water treatment operators at the centre of an “innovation circle,” they and experts from government, universities, consulting firms, water companies and contractors identified and piloted several options for providing affordable, sustainable water treatment solutions. Community members, including elders and youth, were also included in discussions.

A lab at the University of British Columbia built a mobile, state-of-the-art water treatment plant that can fit on the back of a truck. With help from UBC students, it was up and running at the Lytton First Nation in 2016, providing filtration and disinfection for water from Nickeyeah Creek.

It’s one of several innovative, muchneeded approaches to meeting the federal government’s promise to end all long-term drinking water advisories in First Nations communities by 2021. As commendable as the government’s commitment is, new research shows it’s falling short on progress.

A David Suzuki Foundation report, Reconciling Promises and Reality: Clean Drinking Water for First Nations, finds the government failing on eight of 14 indicators developed to assess its progress.

Lack of clean water in Indigenous communities is astonishing in a country where many of us take that for granted. “Right now, we have elders going down to the lake, chopping holes in the ice to bring water to their households. Right now,” Assembly of First Nations Manitoba regional chief Kevin Hart said at a Vancouver symposium, Reconciliation through Sustainable Water Management, in early February.

As of January 23, there were 91 longterm drinking water advisories affecting First Nations communities on public systems. (Adding short-term advisories brings the number to 147, as of October 31, 2017.) Over the past two years, the government has lifted 32 advisories, but 22 new ones were added over the same time, illustrating the complexity of the problem.

Part of the problem is inadequate funding. The 2016 federal budget included $1.8 billion in new funding to help resolve the crisis, but a December 2017 Parliamentary Budget Officer report found these new investments into waste and water infrastructure represent just 70 per cent of what is needed to end all First Nations drinking water advisories by 2021.

Meeting the government’s commitment will require a number of measures. Ensuring that First Nations lead the processes and have the tools, money and training needed to operate and maintain systems, and recognizing that a one-size-fits-all approach won’t address the varying needs of different communities are among the first steps.

The report recommends a number of ways to improve processes, including the 12 recommendations from the Foundation’s report released a year ago, Glass Half Empty? Year 1 Progress Toward Resolving Drinking Water Advisories in Nine First Nations in Ontario, that still apply.

It also recommends that government invest in and share successful models of First Nations-led approaches to resolving drinking water advisories, including developing and implementing source water protection plans. It should ensure systems are upgraded quickly and effectively, with adequate and transparent funding provided for operations and maintenance. Legislation and regulations should also be developed, with First Nations as equal partners, to hold the federal government accountable to First Nations for safe drinking water.

Support from provincial governments is also necessary, as is being done in Ontario.

“A long history of colonialism has had disastrous effects on social, psychological and economic resilience in communities. Only a holistic approach that builds capacity and infrastructure throughout communities and across sectors

Iwill be successful,” the report notes.

Water is life. We all have the right to safe water for drinking, cooking and bathing. Reconciliation means many things, but access to clean water is an absolute requisite.

David Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster, author and co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation. Written with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Senior Editor Ian Hanington.

Learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org. n last November's Economic Update, Finance Minister Carlos Leitão announced retroactive tax cuts and a $100 cheque to help families pay for school supplies. These election-style announcements come after years of cuts and more cuts that have hurt public services. They have caused many people and social groups to react. Various initiatives have been launched to return these "gifts" to the community, to meet needs that our social safety net should meet. A few days before World Social Justice Day (Feb. 20), the consequences of Québec's tax choices should collectively encourage us to think, to act and to take a stand.

Our work consists, to varying degrees, of supporting the Quebec population. We are worried about seeing more and more people, falling through the cracks of our social safety net.

Despite Quebec's huge budget surplus at the end of 2017-2018, government spending on public services, social programs, and autonomous community action remains largely inadequate and does not even repair the damage created by the austerity policies of recent years.

Severe cuts in health and education have affected the population greatly: think of the multiple costs of extracurricular materials and activities, the lack of specialized services at the elementary and secondary levels, and the increase in various post-secondary expenses. The heartfelt cry of workers in the health and social services network, who are worried about the safety and dignity of their patients or about cuts in public service positions, is also being heard. We could also include the modulation of subsidized childcare fees that have impoverished families, non-indexed social assistance benefits that barely cover half of the basic needs, or the small number of social housing units built every year that are unable to respond to urgent needs in all regions. There are also autonomous community action groups, vital to the vitality of communities and desperately lacking the means to continue their mission.

We are far off the mark with the $200 average tax cut promised to taxpayers, which the government dares to present as a fair return to the population a few months before the election. We believe that we must stop depriving ourselves collectively of funds that would allow us to strengthen our social safety net. Tax cuts benefit primarily the better-off and large corporations. This money is badly needed by the state and should be invested in schools, in health care, particularly in mental health, social services, services for troubled youth, culture, the protection of children and environment, subsidized educational childcare, social housing, social assistance and community-based self-help groups, etc. There are so many things we could do collectively to improve people's lives.

We have the means to do more for a more just society Not only are the budget surpluses gigantic ($4.5 billion last year), but they have been obtained on the backs of citizens and to the detriment of the services to which they and they are entitled. The government can go after billions of dollars with more equitable tax measures, such as those proposed by the Red Hand Coalition, including the greater involvement of large corporations, the wealthiest, and those who resort to tax evasion. We ask the Quebec government to make the choice for social justice: it must reinvest enough to enable public services and social programs to meet the needs of the population, ensure the realization of everybody’s rights and to enable community action groups to play their full part in the mission entrusted to them by their community.

JIMMY FORGUES, COORDINATOR, SOLIDARITÉ POPULAIRE ESTRIE AND 39 OTHER COMMUNITY GROUP REPRESENTATIVES