The Riverside Press-Enterprise
With water bad, Indigenous bear hardships
NORTH SPIRIT LAKE FIRST NATION, ONTARIO >> There was not enough bottled water to go around. Ida Rae had stashed one overpriced jug in a bedroom that she used sparingly to make her great-granddaughter’s baby formula.
Everyone else in the home that Rae, 75, shares with five people must drink from the kitchen faucet — even though tap water has sickened locals.
For years, and in some cases decades, Canada has failed to provide safe drinking water to many of its Indigenous communities, including North Spirit Lake, a remote reserve in northwestern Ontario that has been under a boil-water advisory nearly continuously since 2001.
Decaying infrastructure at water plants and a lack of trained operators has, on many reserves, rendered the treated water undrinkable. Since 1995, more than 250 First Nations have been affected, according to court records.
As a result, Indigenous people have fallen ill from gastrointestinal infections, respiratory illnesses and severe rashes, with some ending up hospitalized. Boiling water has become a daily inconvenience, and entire communities, struggling with chronic financial hardship, must rely on shipments of expensive bottled water.
The wait for reliable access to the clean water promised by the Canadian government dates back as far as 1977, when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s father, Pierre Trudeau, was in office.
With a government investment of nearly $2 billion in U.S. currency since 2016, the number of boilwater advisories in effect at any given time has fallen considerably, and a 2021 class-action settlement is forcing the government to increase its investment.
But as old advisories are lifted, new ones emerge. Despite Justin Trudeau’s 2015 election promise to eliminate boil-water advisories within five years, they remain on 27 reserves across Canada, each lasting at least a year and nearly half exceeding 10.
“We’re the first peoples, original inhabitants of the country, and we cannot get clean drinking water,” said Derek Fox, the grand chief of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation, an association of 49 First Nations in Ontario, 11 of which are under longterm boil-water advisories. “We signed treaties. Our ancestors did everything that they felt was right to ensure that this wouldn’t happen.”
Last year, Canada’s federal court approved a settlement of a class-action lawsuit filed by three Indigenous communities accusing the government of breaching its legal obligations to First Nations by failing to guarantee access to sanitary drinking water.
As part of the settlement, the federal government agreed to spend at least $6 billion in Canadian dollars over nine years on water infrastructure and operations on hundreds of reserves and pay $1.5 billion in damages to roughly 140,000 Indigenous people for the years they had no reliable access to clean water.
“Working with First Nations and communities to support sustainable access to safe drinking water is at the heart of the federal government’s commitment to Indigenous Peoples,” Randy Legault-rankin, a spokesperson for Indigenous Services Canada, the federal agency in charge of Indigenous affairs, said.
In the year since the settlement, Canada has spent more than the agreement requires, and several First Nations have received new infrastructure, which “represents important progress,” Michael Rosenberg, a lawyer for the First Nations, said in an email. But the government is still a long way from solving the problem.
“We’re at a point where the lack of drinkable water on First Nations stands as a really sharp symbol of the failures of the Canadian state,” said Adele Perry, a history professor and director of the Centre for Human Rights Research at the University of Manitoba.
One challenge to providing safe tap water is recruiting and training qualified plant operators, who tend to be paid significantly less if they work on reserves, making it difficult to retain them, according to an independent government audit last year.
It is one obstacle in a Gordian knot of challenges that have rendered the problem intractable for decades, as underscored by conditions in North Spirit Lake, a close-knit community of roughly 300 people.
The federal government financed the construction of a water treatment plant in North Spirit Lake in 1999 as part of a push to bring the same level of water infrastructure to Indigenous reserves as was available to other Canadians.
But electrical problems caused a chlorine distribution system to fail, and a boil-water advisory was issued in 2001. After 18 years, the advisory was lifted following the expenditure of close to $1 million (Canadian) on plant upgrades.
It only lasted for five weeks. A leak triggered a new boil order.
Since the leak was repaired in 2019, the boil order has remained in place because “the community’s water operators were unable to maintain the necessary monitoring of the water plant and water quality,” Vincent Gauthier, another spokesperson for Indigenous Services Canada, said.
It does not help that the last time federally funded experts visited the community to train the operators was, according to Gauthier, nearly three years ago.
“Really shabby” construction has also contributed to the plant’s woes, said Steven Laronde, an Indigenous public works official from the Keewaytinook Okimakanak, a council representing six northern First Nations.
Today, water from the lake is processed and piped from the treatment plant to about 40 homes and government buildings on the reserve, which is encircled by forests of black spruce and jack pine. Most homes were built after the plant was constructed and are not connected to the facility by pipes — which would be costly to lay — so they get water trucked to them from the plant.
Tom Meekis was making deliveries on a weekday in October, taking the wheel of a Ford F-250 that made a couple of stops before zipping along a pitted dirt road to the water plant for a refill.
On winter days, deliveries are sometimes canceled because the refill pipes freeze.
Neskantaga First Nation, in northwestern Ontario, has been under a boil-water advisory since 1995, the longest in Canada, and, despite attempts at repairs, its treatment plant still is not working properly.