Blacklocks- Dozens Still Boil Tap Water
“Currently there are 28 long term drinking water advisories remaining in 26 First Nations communities,” Paula Hadden-Jokiel, assistant deputy minister at the Department of Indigenous Services, testified at the Senate national finance committee. “Of the remaining long term drinking water advisories, all of them have action plans in place,” she added.
Cabinet had promised to ensure all First Nations had safe tap water by March 31, 2021. “The government did not meet is March 31 deadline,” the Budget Office wrote in a 2021 report Clean Water For First Nations.
No one on these reserves has a desire to see the problems fixed, else they would send one of their Youts out to get trained on how to run the reverse osmosis in a trailer unit water plants.
One of the reasons is they get lots of money for bottled water.
FILTHY LIBERALS/ DEI will put a Small Modular Reactor up there.
Dem guys can run the Water Treatment Plant, too, eh?
Which drum do the Indians beat during a meltdown? or do they rub a feather with Neil Young to stop the chain reaction?
…Asking for my Fukushima Friend.
Everyone in Canada who is on a well is responsible for their own water. Everyone who is not has basically contracted it out to their local water supplier and pays good money to get clean water. It’s not hard, but it takes work by either yourself, or who you have contracted it out to. If the indians cared about having clean water they could have clean water, it just takes a bit of effort, BY THEM.
why would they when the have the liberal party cow towing to their every need. I believe clean water for reserves was announced by Pierre Trudeau some 60 years ago
I wonder why the Indians don’t use some of the billions they get from Canadian taxpayers to hire a company to set up a water purification system on the affected reserves. Or as the previous commenter JD put it … send tribe members to get the knowledge about how to supply clean water and do it.
In other words … take responsibility for themselves.
Or … get off the reservation and participate in the mainstream of Canadian society … such as it is.
See? There are always options. ………….. Just a thought.
IMHO, whatever option they exercise, it needs to include self reliance.
But asking for a friend: would you want to join the mainstream society we have today?
(I get the sentiment you’re sharing and I agree. but…see above.)
surely you jest
I agree with all of these comments. Yes, be proud of your aboriginal heritage, but be part of the modern everyday world. Take responsibility for your own lives. But as someone has already noted, they enjoy being the victim.
I once read why Israel was able to “kick ass” in the 7 day war of 1967. Israel and Jews in general belong to the corporate world, in which you trust your superiors to tell you the truth. The Egyptians, Syrians and Jordanians belong to the tribal world, in which you only trust your family and your clan to tell you the truth. So everything which a tank observer would note, would have to be vetted by someone from your clan. And here we are 57 years later, and this is still true. There are many tribal worlds – the indigenous peoples of North and South America, of Australia and of Africa. The corporate worlds are comprised of western Europeans and the countries which they colonized as well as people from India and people from China.
“…Otherwise, new water treatment plants could become at risk of being ineffective if they aren’t adequately staffed and maintained.”
We’ve talked about this issue before and at some point First Nations people are going to have to put on their big boy pants. Not to sound too callous but when you’re given the tools to solve a problem the onus is on you to look after it.
There aren’t a lot of tool users – Indigenous or otherwise – in the world today.
Yep, in one case they were asked why they didn’t test the water daily-the chief’s reply “No one was qualified to do the daily testing”. Seriously, no one could dip a testing strip in and compare the colors with the strip bottle? It’s never their fault.
Instead of banning useful plastic bags, which we need, ban water bottles. Some places in Canada no longer have great water, but Vancouver is fine thank you. Maybe public drinking fountains should re-emerge.
You trust a drinking fountain in freak city not to be smeared with feces or some bodily fluid?
Bad water?
Drink beer
That might stop the meth and fentanyl crises
or wine
P.S. many beers and wines probably have smeared body ingredients too, as well as bottled water.
What did these abo-grifters do before colonialism? What does their oral history say? Maybe their hereditary chiefs remember how to get fresh water. You could always smudge some water and chuck in some sweet grass.
Some problems are meant not to be stopped.
Bingo! Who needs clean drinking water when you’ve got a fresh money supply?
Yes, all the money that gets poured in and you cant get a drop of clean water out.. By design.. Just what is the scope of this promise?.. Well water?.. Town water?.. A PPM chlorine boondoggle that can deliver any answer you want..
A human error moving target that requires constant maintenance.. Obviously, money isn’t the problem.. The treaty water tastes bad and it always will.. Anything less might be mistaken for contentment..
A complain, promise, fail loop.. Everybody gets what they want while they sip on bottled water.. Absurd..
to think the liberals are talking about handing the maintenance contract for the transmountain pipeline to first nations.
apparently they never noticed these nomads cant look after any fixed structure.
Apparently. Has anyone ever seen a well-maintained reserve?
6 Nations on the Grand River.
Even the ones with the casino that brings in the big bucks, if you drive off the approved route, there is no pride of ownership, because there is no individual ownership.
Next time some whackadoodle says “Socialism will work when we do it” ask them to fix the nearest reserve first, because that’s canadian socialism/communism in action.
Tribal (communist) governance is premised on keeping their people down (I know there are a few exceptions who conflate governance with commerce and proudly display their socialist ventures usually coerced through crown land uncertainty). The grievance industry thrives on white guilt and what better way than to keep the whining about drinking water going. The federal government is completely useless as they have a bureaucracy to ensure maximum process with minimal effect. I and I suspect most here could install a UV / filter system that could make almost any water potable for under a thousand per household assuming they have power (at least an intermittent genset) and a water well or surface source.
The only way most Indians will prosper is to abandon racially inspired communism. When an industry is premised on that situation, nothing changes for the better. Getting a real job (anywhere) is a good start.
Reminder: Most Canadian “first nations” folks are actually just small TRIBES with a few other relatives. They should quit whining and move on. I like some of their thoughts/traditions, but the Indian Industry needs to be shut down by repealing all vestiges of the Indian Act and numerous associated bills. All reserve land should be divided for individual ownership. Ditto for Metis.
Agreed!
Deplorable, you nailed it. If we actually had a conservative party in Canada, they’d be advocating for an end to the Indian Act. I guess the CPC is comfortable with Canada’s official apartheid system.
Me, I think it’s a national disgrace, shame, and embarrassment.
If you removed government from my life, I could develop clean drinking water within a week, at no cost. Governments give billions to a bunch of Gomers and they burn it in a fireplace for heat after already burning their walls.
The angst about poor water on reservations is actually misplaced. Travel across Canada and you will find many non First Nations communities have boil water mandates. You’ll see it in Newfoundland, the Maritimes, Quebec, Ontario and the prairies. The reality is that infrastructure in Canada is borderline poor outside of large municipalities. This is all due to incompetent governments at all levels, their careless bureaucrats and mismanagement of priorities.But hey we can paint rainbow cross walks
So MOVE and stop crappy water practices locally.
water by the glass but money by the bucket , of course go for money
The Indians only need to look into a calm pool to see that which reflects back.
If I had to deal with poor water constantly, I would damn soon move to a place where the water was better.
The water is certainly just one of a few symptoms that are substandard and it is well past time to get out.
Drive a drilling rig there in the winter on the ice road, drill a bunch of holes and cap them. If no road exists load the drilling rig in an RCAF Herc, it’s good training for our aircrews.
Govt agencies exist to ‘manage’ problems instead of putting an end to them. If they fix the problems they would be out of work.
l have a picture of the stereotypical Cdn breaucrap.
fully and always so, up on the regs in whatever portfolio.
long experience in navigating the impossible using magical procedures and methods to
-confound the citizen
-keep them at bay and ignorant of options
-cite obscure applicable regulations at ease.
-ironclad union contract.
-liberal
-deathly afraid of completing any project unless ‘backup projects’ are tallied.
you get the idea
From almost a year ago, the advisories are posted, then the gov’t says “we repaired these 5” and another 5 cropped up, so the water advisory’s number stays the same, no increase in wellness, yet they state the number is improving, yet the number stays the same… the same as it ever does…
whack-a-mole?
https://darshanmaharaja.ca/the-complex-math-of-water-advisories/
There’s no shortage of companies in North America which can provide safe water solutions around the world, they build the water plants, you have safe water, you pay the company to install this, you get clean water.
In Canada, the #Libranos are in gov’t, the gov’t is in charge of the Indian Reserves, and people have no idea how things could be messed up for +150 years and exhibit surprise when no improvements are made, yet those in gov’t, make ever increasing amounts of pay for the “work” they do overseeing the mess.
And all the while, citizens vote in the same crew of imbeciles, who have no business running lemonade stands never mind actual gov’t.
There are companies in Alberta who can provide you with a containerized Water Plant, that can be managed remotely, with maintenance every 6 months or so.
Obviously not an option for the First Immigrants.
Yes, I’ve seen them, I’m a fan of them… The company needs to know how large to build the capacity to, and then you pay them for the water plant, and it gets delivered on time, on budget, connected by folks who actually know what they’re doing.
The variable seems to be between what the gov’t promises, what the I.R. wants to pay for, and who has to deliver what apparently hasn’t been paid for yet.
At no point in the arguments should this be an intergenerational problem….
Move to town, pay taxes, turn on the tap.
In town, they have people who are qualified to operate water purification plants. There’s actually a couple of courses taught here in Calgary for this. On reserves there are social workers. 20 years ago one of the reserves in north Ontario “had to be moved” as the water uptake was built DOWNSTREAM from the effluent discharge into the river, there were 4 social workers, and NOBODY on the reserve who had training to switch out a “duck billed valve” which fed 18% clorox into the system at a metered rate and which purified the water through an industrial sized “R/O system” … the $30 duck billed valve is, get this… “threaded in” like a pipe being threaded onto a pipe fitting. You turn the water supply to it to the “off position” and thread out the valve, wrap some teflon tape on it, then thread the new valve in again, turn the water supply on while looking for a leak, and you “call it a day”. This is a 5 minutes job.
Instead, they spent + $150 millions to move the reserve to somewhere else with “good water”.
Dunces in gov’t did this. Apparently nobody on the reserve can be taught to be a plumber. Just sign up for social work and you’re good to go to your permanent gov’t job.
Dunces. All of gov’t is dunce central.
https://catalog.sait.ca/preview_program.php?catoid=164&poid=35219&returnto=4624
A previous listing at SAIT was for “water and wastewater treatment operations” … similar idea.
Tuition is about $10k for each of 2 years. If they put a few people up in hotels!! while taking this course, they’d be far and away ahead of the game.
vs
+ $150 millions to move an entire reserve to somewhere with “good water”
The story I heard – and it was mere civil service gossip, probably not to be taken at face value – was that, back in the original Trudeau years, some concerns were expressed about water supply on reserves. Trudeau’s priority at the time was finding federal money for Quebec engineers, so that the generation of newly-qualified Quebec engineers who couldn’t speak English could be certain of work, so he launched a high-profile campaign to spent lavish amounts of money to have Quebec civil engineers install water treatment systems for natives. All the systems so installed had the intake downstream from the sewer outlet. It took several years before the Quebec engineering faculties began teaching engineers how that part worked.
The coffee tastes better if the latrines are far away from where you get the water.
In hindsight it was probably a dumb idea to shut down the American whiskey traders.
I see three problems here.
My first thought is that there is well-documented corruption all through the indigenous affairs system (all sides) which breeds inherent malfeasance which necessitates failure.
The second is that all of the history for Native Affairs involves one foot in both systems. The white-man governments refused to assimilate the indigenous races and made treaties with the nations (by definition they are nations) yet took responsibility for the nations from the citizens (the “ignorant savages”) of those same nations. In short, the American and Canadian governments transformed proud and noble independent peoples into welfare states. So the indigenous nations are both nations and dependent subjects. They can rule themselves, but only as much as the foreign (by definition) nations allow them. They can work for themselves, but with a guaranteed income from the white man why bother?
The third is the level of incompetence involved in resolving the water problems. It was on SDA that I read an article written by a man involved in an upgrade to an existing water system in a native community. The ineptitude of the–mainly–government engineers was as incomprehensible as it was stunning. Look up Tunnel Mountain in Banff, Alberta or Hell’s Gate on the Frasier River for similar examples.
The lefties are in charge of this all the way through history and the system. As usual, they have achieved precisely the opposite of their stated goals.
The guys from Walkerton are available.
give a big berky to each household
What did they drink before we brought them eyeglasses, the wheel, and iron?
Touché
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vqbk9cDX0l0
“All of them have action plans in place.”
The only meaningful action plan would be mass firings at Indian Affairs.