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Latest news about the Safe Drinking Water Team
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is promising a new version of the Canada Water Act – and one of the improvements, he says, will be in the area of Indigenous rights. What that might mean for Indigenous people and communities is the focus of APTN Investigates: Liquid Law. Earlier this year at the fork of the Red and Assiniboine rivers in Winnipeg, the prime minister announced not just the updated Water Act – but a new agency to administer the regulation of water across the country.
The Canadian government is facing new calls to stop violating the rights of First Nations, Inuit and Métis people as UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous Peoples Francisco Calí Tzay kicks off his 10-day visit to Canada. Calí Tzay and his delegation will tour Canada from March 1 to March 10. The Special Rapporteur’s mandate includes reporting on the human rights situation of Indigenous Peoples worldwide and addressing specific alleged cases of violations of Indigenous rights.
A prominent human-rights group says Canada is failing to address long-standing abuses, delivering a rebuke of what it calls the federal government’s inadequate climate policy and violations of the rights of Indigenous people and immigration detainees. Human Rights Watch says more than two dozen First Nations remain under long-term drinking water advisories, despite Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s promise to bring that number down to zero.
Jagmeet Singh is to tell the first meeting of the NDP caucus that pursuing Indigenous rights including access to clean drinking water will be a key priority for the party in this Parliament. The first meeting of all New Democrat MPs since the election will take place in Ottawa on Wednesday afternoon. Five new MPs will be introduced at the caucus meeting, including Blake Desjarlais, a two-spirit Metis leader, who defeated the sitting Tory in Edmonton Griesbach. The NDP returned 25 MPs one more than last time and was the only major party to increase its share of the vote.
The federal government is hard at work finalizing a budget that will underwrite our path forward out of the pandemic as a country. That's why 50 women leaders from diverse regions and sectors, and across Indigenous, Black, racialized and LGBTQ2IS+ communities, are writing to Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland this week to remind her that nature's recovery is essential to our own.
The Saskatchewan government has announced a $4-billion plan to expand irrigation out of the Lake Diefenbaker reservoir. Work is set to begin immediately, and will be completed in three phases over the next decade. CBC reporter Jason Warick spoke Friday with John Pomeroy, a Canada Research chair and director of the University of Saskatchewan's Global Water Futures program.
The Columbia River Treaty, an international agreement governing the flow of water between British Columbia and six U.S. states, will be 55 years old this year. It has not aged well. The river springs from the Columbia Icefield in the Rocky Mountains of B.C. and winds 1,930 kilometres through the Northwestern United States – Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Nevada and Wyoming. No other river in North America spills more water into the Pacific Ocean.
