COST OF BILL S- 8

Metro fears cost of bill aimed to improve water quality on reserves.

It’s inhumane to expect our neighbours and fellow citizens to live in primitive conditions while the rest of us enjoy the basic services that developed societies take for granted.

We all have a right to clean drinking water, safe sewage disposal, a healthy place for our kids to grow up.

Basic common sense argues that when Canadian municipalities can extend those services to First Nations neighbours, then that’s what they should do.

This is cost effective, it’s easier to operate and it acknowledges simple justice.

We don’t hesitate to extend other civic infrastructure. Roads passing through First Nations lands don’t suddenly turn to muddy ruts at the reserve boundaries. CN and CPR trains don’t stop at reserve borders so that freight can be carried across to the next railhead by horse- drawn wagons. We don’t stop and canoe across rivers instead of driving over a publicly built and maintained bridge.

So arguments against extending essential services don’t carry much moral weight. And who better to provide those services than municipal governments which have the greatest expertise and generally do an outstanding job?

Thus, a charitable view of Bill S- 8, the Safe Drinking Water for First Nations Act, is that the federal government is finally acknowledging the fundamental inequities in people’s lives and seeks to address them at the most basic level.

So, on the surface, good idea: Let’s stop wrangling about constitutional minutiae, complaining about whether the level of consultation met this test or that and just get on with a crash program of providing these essential services to those who don’t have them.

You can bet that parents whose kids play on school grounds swamped with raw sewage or who have to boil water for half an hour to make sure they don’t catch typhoid don’t give two hoots about whether fixing the problem now might offend some treaty clause 10 or 20 years from now.

However, one can also sympathize with municipalities expressing concern.

Given several decades of provincial and federal governments enthusiastically offloading costs for programs and services onto junior governments, it’s perfectly reasonable for municipalities to be fearful.

First Nations are a federal responsibility. The federal government owes it to everyone to clarify and secure adequate funding and not to find an expedient way to off- load costs onto municipal taxpayers.

It’s entirely fair for municipalities to ask to see the money.

While Ottawa waxes enthusiastic about the federal government’s investment of $ 2.5 billion in water and waste- water infrastructure and related public health activities in First Nations communities since 2006, skepticism remains.

NDP aboriginal affairs critic Jean Crowder of Nanaimo, a community with adjacent First Nations reserves, points out that the government’s own estimates identify a $ 5.8- billion shortfall just in dealing with the existing First Nations waste and waste- water capacity gap.

Others worry that inadequate input from First Nations and municipal governments mean there is no consensus on achieving the integrated response that everyone, including Ottawa, seems to want.

Then there are concerns about jurisdiction. If the safety and environmental regulations that govern municipalities meet different standards and are effectively unenforceable on First Nations’ reserves, how can those differences be reconciled?

Metro Vancouver, for example, has developed an intelligent working paper which notes that while its safety regulations might be unenforceable on reserves, the act would make Metro liable as the service provider for any consequences of safety infractions. This is clearly both unjust and unworkable.

Metro wonders who would enforce bylaws intended to ensure safe delivery of clean drinking water — would it be the local band; the federal government; the service provider? And it wonders from whence is the funding for infrastructure improvements to come?

Seems to me that what we have here is a good idea that’s got considerably ahead of itself in a rush that puts political expediency ahead of practical efficiency.