"Everyone in Canada should have access to reliable, safe and clean drinking water."It’s hard to argue with that sentiment. And that’s the claim that Assembly of First Nations (AFN) National Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak makes when she demands $44.2 billion dollars to address the water needs of Canada’s 3,426 Indian reserves, instead of the 4.6 billion being offered by Minister of Services Gull-Masty in Bill C-37, the First Nations Clean Water Act.Indians on reserves deserve to have clean water. So do all Canadians. But the difference between Indians on reserves and other Canadians is that other Canadians have to pay for that clean water. Indians on reserves get it free, courtesy of the taxpayer. So, the guarantee of clean water for Indians on reserves must be a treaty right?Not so. There is no reference in any of the numbered treaties to water. But just like housing — which is not mentioned in any treaty — the convention has grown that taxpayers must pay for the water used by Indians on reserves, in addition to paying for their own water. And that convention applies to free housing and other services on reserves as well.In any event, with Bill-37 Ottawa wants to allocate monies directly to fixing the immediate physical water plants and wastewater systems. They estimate that specifically addressing the remaining 36 to 38 active long-term drinking water advisories will require roughly $778 million. The AFN, as usual is attempting to use the clean water issue to add extra billions to the already bloated Indigenous affairs budget.The $4.6 billion Ottawa plans to spend is in addition to the incredible sums of money it has already has spent over the years on the water problem on reserves. Mismanagement by band councils has been part of the reason for the massive spending — water treatment plans are not properly maintained, money is misspent etc. But another major reason for the large sums needed to address the water problems on reserves are the practical problems inherent in trying to provide modern services to small communities often sitting on remote parts of Canadian Shield rock. In past times Indians would get their water from the lakes and streams where they camped. Nowadays digging wells through solid rock, or building water treatment plants for tiny communities is a logistical nightmare.An example of the logistics problem is one of the 36 reserves still under a boil water advisory — Wawakapewin. It is a reserve in Northern Ontario. It has a population of 37 people living in 15 homes. To build a water treatment plant to serve those 15 families in such a remote location will cost millions. In fact, the cost might be as much as one million dollars per home. The cost is so high compared to southern projects because all heavy equipment, electrical components, and specialized engineers must be flown in via chartered aircraft or transported over seasonal ice roads. It is actually far less expensive to fly in bottled water for those 15 families than it is to build and maintain a water treatment plant. Flying in designer bottled water from Paris might even be cheaper.For the AFN the solution is simple: build the treatment plant, regardless of the cost. And give AFN an additional 40 billion dollars too. These are all chiefs who have been on the government payroll all of their lives. To them, “government money” is an inexhaustible source that just magically appears.But to the people who have to earn the money to pay these huge sums it might be time to ask some questions.For one thing, Wawakapewin produces nothing of value for Canada. There is virtually no employment there. The community is entirely dependent on the government for their survival. The cost of housing, feeding and providing clean water to those 15 families is enormous. If these weren’t government-supported Indian reserves the populations would have moved elsewhere long ago.Wouldn’t it make a lot more sense to provide financial assistance to help those families move to a location closer to some educational and employment opportunities? This is not something easily done, but does it make sense to keep funding communities that will never be able to provide for themselves?The late Gordon Gibson spent most of his life writing about Canada’s “Indian problem”. One of his ideas was to relocate entire remote communities to areas closer to job centres. Instead of having Indian families move into cities, completely unprepared for modern life, he proposed keeping the families together where educators and service providers would help them adjust to life in the south. Only when they had made the adjustment would they move on to employment and life in the cities.That idea went nowhere. AFN has never been interested in exploring any such ideas. In fact, they have encouraged residents of those economically hopeless communities to stay where they are. They have stuck to the wildly unrealistic ideas put forward by the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP) in 1996 that communities like Wawakapewin were “nations” that would somehow become self-supporting and prosperous if only more money and more special UNDRIP-type powers were given to them.The reality is the opposite. Communities like Wawakapewin become ever more dependent on the taxpayer. Dysfunctional behaviour, like addictions, only increase. We can pretend that they are “First Nations” but the stark reality is that they are the “fenceless concentration camps” Farley Mowatt clearly saw decades ago.And the boys and girls growing up in those communities don’t have a chance. The quaint idea that those remote families are living a traditional lifestyle is simply not true. That traditional life was a life that had meaning - it was built around hunting and fishing to survive. Those ancient people deserve our respect. For thousands of years their rich cultures survived in an extremely hostile climate and geography. That meaningful life is long gone. Now, survival comes from a welfare cheque or transfer payments from the government (transfer payments that are, in reality, just glorified welfare cheques). The AFN claim that Wawakapewin is a “nation” that will somehow have a glorious future if only yet more money and more UNDRIP-type tribal rights are given to it is pure fiction.There are probably young people in those communities with the potential to be the next Wab Kinews or Jody Wilson-Rayboulds, but that potential will never be realized. Instead, the young people will repeat their parents’ stunted lives.Wawakapewin is just one of many economically hopeless reserves. Shamattawa, in northern Manitoba, is another. It is currently in a lawsuit with the federal government over water. In all probability the lawsuits and other claims for incredibly expensive water will succeed. More money will be spent on the community, but nothing will change. Shamattawa has both a rapidly growing youth population along with one of the highest rates of fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) anywhere in the world. The costs to the taxpayer to fund these communities and their many problems will grow ever higher. More money will not improve the lives of the residents. In many ways that additional cash just makes their desperate lives worse.Instead of just repeating demands on the government for yet more money and yet more race-based powers why don’t the chiefs make some demands on each other? Why not find ways of giving some of the young people in those hopelessly uneconomic communities a chance to have a better life - assisting them to move to centres where education and employment are possible? Why not help graduate the engineers, doctors, skilled tradesmen and entrepreneurs that the Indian communities need so badly? Indigenous people make up 5% of Canada’s population, but far fewer than 1% of engineers are indigenous. And that applies to the other professions as well. Isn’t it clear that more money and more UNDRIP powers are not the answer to Canada’s endemic Indian problem? Why not show a little more creativity, chiefs, and look within for some answers instead of expecting others to solve your problems for you?But that won’t happen. The AFN is a “one-trick pony”. It only knows how to make demands on others , and has never even tried to solve its own problems.As for Ottawa, it shows no more imagination than the chiefs. Since Pierre Trudeau’s half-hearted attempt in 1969 to do away with the reserve system failed Ottawa has resorted to basically sending cheques to the chiefs, and pretending that they are doing something meaningful.Some wise person said the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.Someone should tell that to Ottawa and the Indian chiefs.
