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Latest news about the Safe Drinking Water Team
Indigenous Services Minister Patty Hajdu hopes Canada will be able to lift its remaining long-term drinking water advisories by 2025 – the year a deal between the NDP and the Liberal government is set to expire. Hajdu has declined to put a firm deadline on the commitment since coming into the role last fall, saying there are many technical challenges with the task.
The deadline has been extended for livestock producers wanting to apply to the Farm and Ranch Water Infrastructure Program. The announcement for the temporary enhanced funding came Tuesday from the Canadian and Saskatchewan governments. In a release, the provincial government acknowledged that producers have experienced difficulties in sourcing materials and contractors to build water development projects following 2021’s drought conditions. The program is now adjusted to allow producers who plan to claim more than $50,000 in rebates to submit a preliminary application by Mar. 31, 2022 in order to complete their projects.
Canada's new minister of Indigenous services says she's considering what the new timeline should be to lift remaining long-term drinking-water advisories on First Nations. Patty Hajdu enters the role with 43 advisories still in place in 31 different communities mostly in Ontario, but also in Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised to end all drinking-water advisories by 2021 when the Liberals were swept to power in 2015.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau no longer gives a specific date for fulfilling his broken 2015 election promise to end all long-term boil-water advisories on Indigenous reserves and it’s not hard to see why. He broke that promise when he failed to achieve the March 31, 2021 deadline he set for himself. On Monday, Trudeau said his government has eliminated 109 long-term boil advisories since coming to power in 2015 and will finish the job … eventually. Actually, they’ve eliminated 108 long-term advisories, and now have 51 (not 50) outstanding ones. That’s because the feds, as of Monday, hadn’t updated their own website to report the boil-water advisory for Okanese First Nation in Saskatchewan has changed from short-term to long-term.
Indigenous Services Canada has announced it won’t end long-term advisories until 2023 at the earliest. In 2015, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau committed to ending all long-term drinking water advisories by March 2021. When that deadline passed, the government recommitted to ending long-term advisories without a target date. This announcement comes as no surprise to many First Nations outraged by the lack of progress on ending drinking water advisories in their communities, and the growing divide and gap that exists between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities.
Kenora MP Eric Melillo says he doesn't accept the federal government's decision to delay, when it comes to providing clean drinking water to all First Nation members. "This is a crisis that has been going on forever in the history of Canada, and yet it has not been responded to. We're going to keep the pressure on, and we want to see them commit to meeting their deadline," he said yesterday.
Nova Scotia Premier Stephen McNeil has sided against a pulp mill’s plea for a lifeline in a move that has bitterly split his province, earning praise from environmental, fisheries and Indigenous groups, but angering many in the province’s forestry sector. The Northern Pulp mill in Pictou had been asking for an extension on a provincially imposed deadline to stop dumping contaminated wastewater in Boat Harbour, next to the Pictou Landing First Nation, in what many have called one of the province’s worst examples of pollution linked to racism.
