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By Mia Rabson
Northern Manitoba First Nations are taking their plea for running water to Canada’s provincial premiers as they began their annual meeting Wednesday in Vancouver.
Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakinak Grand Chief David Harper Wednesday called on the premiers to amend their year-old Water Charter to include making access to clean running water a basic human right of all Canadians.
The charter was endorsed at the premier’s meeting in Winnipeg last August. The charter acknowledges access to clean water is necessary for both the health, sanitation and livability of Canadian communities but the calls for action focused on conservation and efforts to enhance water safety.
Harper wants it to include bringing water to aboriginal Canadians, whose health and standard of living suffer greatly due to a lack of access to clean water.
The premiers’ meeting began with a session with national aboriginal leaders Wednesday to discuss how to improve the standard of living for aboriginal Canadians.
Manitoba Premier Greg Selinger was not available to discuss the issue Wednesday, but Aboriginal Affairs Minister Eric Robinson said Manitoba has been championing the issue at the federal level for months.
Robinson said he could not predict whether the subject would be raised by Selinger or the aboriginal leaders, noting there are a lot of competing priorities when it comes to improving the standard of living for aboriginal Canadians.
In 2009, the premiers created an aboriginal working group following their annual meeting and Manitoba has already raised the issue of the lack of running water on reserves with that group.
Harper’s plea to the premiers on water comes less than a week after a national assessment on First Nations water systems barely touched on the fact more than 1,800 homes on reserves in Canada lack indoor plumbing.
Harper was frustrated by the report because it recommended Canada spend up to $6 billion over the next decade to improve and expand water and wastewater systems on the nation’s reserves but was silent on the fact thousands of aboriginals don’t even have toilets or kitchen sinks.
Harper also called for Manitoba Premier Greg Selinger to show leadership by working to bring running water to homes in Island Lake within two years.
MKO has been pushing the province to contribute financially to solve the problem based on an agreement between Canada and Ontario in the 1990s that saw the two governments join forces to bring electricity, running water and indoor plumbing to 3,800 homes in Northern Ontario reserves.
More than 800 homes in the Island Lake area of Manitoba have no indoor plumbing and rely mainly on untreated water toted from nearby lakes and rivers. Residents who live in those homes often have less access to clean water than do refugees in United Nations-sponsored camps.
MKO believes the federal government has already contributed most of what it did in the Canada-Ontario retrofit program for northern reserves in the 1990s. Now it wants the province to step up.