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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
'Status quo' budget sidelines Manitoba aboriginals
Tories ignore housing shortage, water issues, education
THERE was no money in the budget to supply northern Manitoba aboriginal communities with safe drinking water.
No substantial new spending to address a chronic housing shortage on reserves or to help more aboriginal students go to university.
There wasn't much of anything, in the view of Manitoba aboriginal leaders, who gave Finance Minister Jim Flaherty an "F" for his budget.
"We're disappointed," said Ron Evans, grand chief of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs. "I'm very disappointed that there is nothing there for water and waste-water (treatment)."
The federal government provided no new dollars to get tap water flowing to any of the nearly 1,500 reserve homes in Manitoba currently without it. Instead, new measures targeting Canada's First Nations were limited to $22 million over the next two years to bring fuel tanks up to environmental standards and $30 million over two years to support the existing 1,000 on-reserve police officers.
A new national volunteer firefighters tax credit was included in the section of Flaherty's budget speech devoted to First Nations. But aboriginal leaders say what their communities desperately need is new firefighting equipment and training -- not tax credits for volunteer firefighters. They say everybody pitches in when there is a fire on a reserve.
Arlen Dumas, vice-grand chief of the Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak, which represents northern Manitoba First Nations, called Flaherty's blueprint a "status quo" budget.
The $22 million to upgrade and replace essential fuel tanks on First Nations is something that must be done in any case to satisfy the government's own environmental rules, he said. Dumas noted these tanks are used to hold fuel to generate power in remote communities, and there are only four Manitoba First Nations that are not hooked up to the Manitoba Hydro grid.
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition March 23, 2011 B4
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