Climate change hits First Nations hardest
Secret briefings say remote areas at greatest risk
Secret briefings to Canada’s indigenous affairs minister warn that natural disasters are increasing in number and severity, disproportionately affecting remote reserve communities.
First Nations assert they are first and worst affected by a rapidly shifting environment. The Liberal government has put new money toward supporting First Nations infrastructure and “resilience.” But chiefs and opposition parties say it’s not enough.
After she took up her mantle, bureaucrats warned Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett catastrophes are getting worse and more frequent over time.
Advice labelled as “secret” says First Nations communities are at greater risk of emergencies, suffering “more intense” impact, with climate change causing “extreme weather” in the North.
“The frequency of natural disasters is also increasing on-reserve,” says the document, comparing 118 incidents in 2011-12 to 76 in 2010-11 and 54 the year before that. Between 2009 and 2015, 480 “natural hazards” affected reserves, it says.
First Nations chiefs have declared 20 emergencies since April 2015, Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada confirmed, not including health crises.
The department reimburses First Nations and provincial and territorial governments for emergency services out of an annual $67-million emergency management budget.
Trudeau waffled on connecting the Fort McMurray fire to climate change. “A greater prevalence of extreme weather events” is expected, he said, but people shouldn’t “make a political argument out of one particular disaster.”
Still, the Assembly of First Nations regional chief for Alberta, Craig Makinaw, acknowledged climate change may have made wildfires more extreme.
Chief Leo Friday of Ontario’s Kashechewan First Nation, where flooding forces people to evacuate yearly, agreed climate change has an impact. “I think it does change a lot of people’s lives … weather being changed all of a sudden,” he said.
Kashechewan is in the riding of NDP indigenous affairs critic Charlie Angus. He said he sees evidence of “major risks” in northern Ontario communities, including with the degradation of traditional ice roads.
“There’s no real plan for addressing this,” said Angus, warning climate change mitigation is still under-funded. “These communities are more isolated. They’re much more susceptible to risk.”