A political promise on water that must be kept

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/09/2024 (388 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

“It’s been a long time coming,” wrote the Tragically Hip’s late, lamented frontman, Gord Downie, in the band’s 1991 release Long Time Running. “It’s well worth the wait.”

It’s surely a sentiment Shamattawa First Nation Chief Jordna Hill hopes he — along with his community’s residents, and the chiefs and members of the 58 other First Nations that have joined a class-action lawsuit against the federal government over its failure to ensure the availability of clean drinking water — hope someday to embrace.

Hill held a news conference in Winnipeg last week to demand action from Ottawa with regard to the northern Manitoba community’s lack of safe drinking water. Shamattawa has been under a boil-water advisory for the past six years, and its water treatment plant was supposed to be functional and providing safe water by last year.

“Canada is putting the rights of our people on the back burner and other people are getting sick and youth are dying,” said Hill. “There is hopelessness and youth are pushed to suicides. Our youth and people deserve to live.”

The band will be in court next month to ask a federal judge to rule that First Nations people have a right to safe drinking water in their homes. Shamattawa launched the aforementioned suit against the federal government in 2022; the other First Nations subsequently joined the effort to force Ottawa to take action.

Such action has, as the lyrics to the Hip’s iconic song intone, been a long time coming, indeed. Upon his party’s election to government in 2015, newly minted Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made addressing the provision of safe water to First Nations communities one of his first promises.

“A Canadian government led by me will address this as a top priority because it’s not right in a country like Canada,” he said (at the time there were 133 separate boil-waters in effect, spread among 93 First Nations). “This has gone on for far too long.”

His vow, in October 2015: that the Liberal government would end all boil-water advisories on First Nations within five years.

For myriad logistical, topographical, geological and perhaps even political/ideological reasons, that promise was not kept. Significant progress was made — by April 2022, only 34 advisories remained — but the failure to live up to that fundamental vow remains a stain on Trudeau’s record. Should he be defeated in next year’s federal election — assuming, of course, he remains Liberal leader and his minority government is not forced from office before then — the issue of boil-water advisories will be a significant component of his prime ministerial legacy.

Back when Trudeau’s nascent political career was awash in optimism and sunny ways, folks believed he could/would deliver. At the final concert of the Hip’s 2016 farewell tour, Downie — who died of brain cancer in October 2017 at age 53 — pointed to the PM in the audience and said he would be the one to bring relief to Canada’s Indigenous peoples.

“We’re in good hands, folks,” Downie said. “He cares about the people way up North, who we were trained our whole lives to ignore. … We’re gonna get it fixed, and we’ve got the guy to do it, to start, to help.”

Seven years after Downie’s death, the people of Shamattawa await their day in court. And if current opinion-poll trends hold, it’s entirely likely Trudeau will have been forced from office without ever having delivered on one of his first and most important promises.

A long time coming. With precious little to suggest it has been well worth the wait.