“On the record

Over the years, government officials have repeatedly downplayed mercury poisoning in Grassy Narrows. The following are some statements they have made. The Star has no information suggesting any of these officials knew that the environment ministry was alerted to mercury contamination at the site of the old mill upstream from Grassy Narrows in the 1990s. “I would hope that from the information we’ve got to date that there are no real damages to the Indian people of the Grassy Narrows and White Dog areas. This has been our information. The federal people have verified this; they are responsible, they should know, for the health of Indians on federal Indian reserves. Until some expert, or somebody certainly qualified in the health profession . . . that would relate that information . . . to the Ontario government, then I have to accept what’s been told. . . . I don’t think that we can rely on, you know, some travelling Japanese troubadours coming through and visiting these reserves on a one- or twoday basis and coming up with those kind of findings. They have to be long and detailed and wellresearched.” Leo Bernier Ontario Minister of Natural Resources to CBC’s As It Happens, Aug. 20, 1975 “It seems we have conflicting data and information . . . We have a report, apparently, which says we have a continuing problem and this contrasts with the federal government which is saying, ‘Well, things are under control’.” Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty in Toronto Star, April 6, 2010 "I guess the good news is that we are now smart enough as a society to no longer poison our lakes and our streams and our rivers in the way that we did in the 1960s and 1970s, so we put a stop to that. The problem is the lingering toxic effects of mercury in our water system. It’s ending up in the fish and the community is eating the fish." McGuinty reported by the Canadian Press, April 7, 2010 “This is one of those projects that we had reviewed and determined was safe, but I will follow up further with departmental officials to see what we can do to address the concerns.” Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq in the House of Commons, April 12, 2010 “I have dealt with the dimensions of this problem substantively (and) I am pleased to report that settlements were made with Grassy Narrows First Nation. In fact, that river has gone under a tremendous transformation with the cleanup from all levels of government . . . There is great fishing there now and people are eating that fish. It is a wonderful place.” MP Greg Rickford in House of Commons, June 2, 2010 “Currently there is no evidence to suggest that mercury levels in the river system are such that any remediation, beyond continuing natural sedimentation remediation, would be warranted.” Provincial Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change statement, reported by Kenora Online, Feb. 23, 2016 “We have completed very extensive tests all across the site, with supervision by the First Nations, and found there are no barrels buried and there is no source. We do know, and it has been reported, that the conditions in the river right now lend themselves to higher mercury levels. We also are recognizing in the reports that have just come out recently that a lot of the mercury that’s coming is long-distance-transported. It’s methyl mercury from Ohio and from China. We have a much more complex situation than we imagined, and we are investing heavily to remediate it.” Ontario Environment Minister Glen Murray to the legislature, Nov. 23, 2016.