NAN calls for more accountability on First Nations drinking water advisories

The Grand Chief of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation says the federal government needs to improve its commitment to bringing clean drinking water to First Nations.

The auditor general released a report Friday finding that Indigenous Services Canada has not provided enough support to ensure that First Nations have ongoing access to safe drinking water.

She issued five recommendations aimed at rectifying the problems.

The federal government agreed with all of the recommendations and recommitted itself to working with First Nations and assuring adequate funding to address water quality issues.

But Alvin Fiddler called the government's plans "vague, open-ended goals without firm timelines or accountability," in a statement released Saturday.

The federal government committed in 2015 to eliminating all long-term drinking water advisories on First Nations public water systems by March 31, 2021.

The report found that, while 100 advisories had been lifted as of November 2020, 60 remained in placeand many of the delays in meeting the March 2021 target predated the COVID-19 pandemic.

More than 15 of the communities still facing advisories are in northwestern Ontario, according to the government's website, including Muskrat Dam, Gull Bay and Neskantaga which faced evacuation late last year due to new problems with its water supply.

What's more, 15 of the 100 advisories that had been lifted had been lifted using temporary measures, according to the reportand permanent solutions to the water problems wouldn't be in place until between 2022 and 2024. Five of the 100 communities where advisories had been lifted experienced subsequent long-term drinking water advisories.

In addition, there was no change in the risk ratings of First Nations' water infrastructure between 2015 and 2020, Auditor General Karen Hogan found. Forty-three per cent of the 699 water systems assessed in the 2014-2015 fiscal year were found to be at high or medium risk. Five years later, 306 of 718 water systems received the same assessment.

"If Canada is truly committed to ending the ongoing water crisis, they need to establish new, clear policies to ensure that funding structures for new plants, upgrades, and operation and maintenance truly meet the needs of our communities," Fiddler said in the statement.

The government has failed to update its funding formula for First Nations water systems in the 30 years since it was first drafted, the report found, meaning there's been no way to ensure that funding provided to First Nations actually meets its stated objective of funding 80 per cent of maintenance and operational costs.

The government updated the formula annually to account for inflation, the report said, but it never accounted for changes in technology or the actual increase in costs of maintaining and operating infrastructure.What's more, the government's formula never considered the condition of infrastructure as determined by its annual risk assessment, so there was no guarantee that water systems in need of extra maintenance actually received sufficient funds.

"Our own research places federal funding at less than 50 per cent of the actual costs for many of our communities," Fiddler said.

Even if communities actually received the full 80 per cent of the funds, some struggled to pay the additional 20 per cent, the report found.

The government committed additional funds in the 2020 fall economic statement that it said were intended to cover 100 per cent of maintenance and operating costs of water systems, but without an updated formula, the report said, there is no way to know if the funding is actually sufficient.

The report also found that salaries of water system operators in First Nation communities were 30 per cent lower than elsewhere, leading to problems retaining qualified operators in First Nations.

Twenty-six per cent of 717 public water systems in First Nation communities lacked a fully trained and certified operator, it said. A total of 56 per cent lacked a fully trained and certified backup operator.

In addition, the report found that there is still no regulatory regime in place to ensure access to safe drinking water in First Nations, despite the fact that such a regime was first recommended in a report in 2005.

Indigenous Services Canada responded that it is working with First Nations to develop a legislative framework to support the development of a regulatory regime.