Canada’s First Nations water policy defies common sense

Billions in taxpayer dollars won’t solve a policy that ignores the real issue

“Everyone in Canada should have access to reliable, safe and clean drinking water.”

That’s the claim the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) National Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak makes when she demands $44.2 billion to address the water needs of Canada’s 3,426 reserves, instead of the $4.6 billion proposed by Indigenous Services Minister Mandy Gull-Masty in Bill C-37, the First Nations Clean Water Act.

Indians on reserves deserve clean water. The real question is how to provide it. Can Canada realistically build and maintain modern water systems in every remote settlement, regardless of cost or geography?

Most Canadians pay for the water they use. On reserves, taxpayers pay the bill. But why? There is no reference to water in any of the numbered treaties. Governments have nevertheless assumed responsibility for paying for water services on reserves. It is a policy choice, not a treaty obligation.

With Bill C-37, Ottawa wants to upgrade water treatment plants and wastewater systems. It estimates that addressing the remaining 36 to 38 long-term drinking water advisories will require roughly $778 million. The AFN says far more money is needed. But after decades of spending billions, Canadians should ask whether the problem is a lack of funding or a policy that ignores geography.

Mismanagement by some band councils has contributed to past failures. Treatment plants are poorly maintained and money is misspent. But geography is just as important. Providing municipal services to tiny communities on remote Canadian Shield rock is enormously expensive.

Wawakapewin is a case in point. A reserve in northern Ontario still under a boil-water advisory, it has 37 people in 15 homes. A treatment plant there could cost as much as $1 million per home because all heavy equipment, electrical components and specialized engineers must be flown in by charter or hauled over seasonal ice roads. It is far cheaper to fly in bottled water. Flying in designer water from Paris might even be cheaper.

But Wawakapewin produces nothing of value. There is virtually no employment. The community is entirely dependent on government for survival. Were these not government-supported reserves, the population would have moved elsewhere long ago.

At what point does building permanent infrastructure for tiny, isolated communities become less practical than helping people move to places where schools, jobs and municipal services already exist?

The late Gordon Gibson, a former British Columbia cabinet minister, spent much of his life arguing that governments should relocate entire remote communities nearer to job centres, keeping families together while educators helped them adjust before moving on to employment in the cities. It would give young people access to education, employment and opportunity instead of permanent dependence.

Instead, the AFN has encouraged residents of economically hopeless communities to stay put. It clings to the unrealistic notions of the 1996 Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, which held that places like Wawakapewin were “nations” destined to become prosperous if only more money and powers envisioned under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) were granted.

The results speak for themselves. Such communities grow ever more dependent, and dysfunction like addiction only increases.

Shamattawa, in northern Manitoba, is now suing Ottawa over water. The suit will probably succeed, more money will be spent, and nothing will change. Shamattawa has a rapidly growing youth population and one of the highest rates of fetal alcohol spectrum disorder in the world.

Instead of demanding more money and more race-based powers, why don’t the chiefs make demands on each other? Why not help young people move where education and employment are possible, and graduate the engineers, doctors and tradesmen their communities need so badly? Indigenous people are five per cent of Canada’s population but fewer than one per cent of engineers.

Ottawa continues to respond to failing policies with more funding while avoiding the harder question of whether the policy itself needs to change.

Some wise person defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result. Someone should tell that to Ottawa and the Chiefs.

Brian Giesbrecht is a retired Manitoba Provincial Court judge and Senior Fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. Drawing on three decades of judicial experience, he provides expert analysis on Canadian legal trends, social policy, and justice reform, advocating for evidence-based policymaking.