How Canada’s water (in)security affects First Nations peoples
March 13th, 2018
Scott N. Romaniuk, University of Trento, Italy
Water is intricately tied to the cultural livelihood of Canada’s First Nations peoples, playing a significant customary and ceremonial role in their daily activities. Yet, First Nations communities in Canada continue to face many problems of water security affecting their access to safe drinking water. Common challenges include frequent or long-standing water advisories, old or obsolete infrastructure, a preclusion of water from source to tap, and an uneven distribution of water quality across communities.
This article engages with the (in)security of water and its affects on First Nations peoples and communities in Canada. The primary method of data collection for this research was through a series of semi-structured interviews conducted with First Nations community leaders during August 2016. The data was then triangulated through the use of data from the Government of Canada and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). This article seeks to shed light on the issue of water security in a country rarely associated with issues of water scarcity and water security.
Canada’s people are not all created equal when it comes to water
Not all Canadians share the same access to fresh and safe water. First Nations peoples and communities in Canada have faced water insecurity issues for over two decades, leading to calls that the Canadian government has failed to provide an essential resource to a part of its population. Poor and unsanitary water conditions have forced entire families to change their lifestyles by altering the way they bathe, wash, and clean, how and when they consume water, and the types of cooking products used.
Since the 1990’s, unsuitable drinking water has been causing skin infections and other health problems due to reports of coliform, Escherichia coli (E. coli), carcinogenic Trihalomethanes, as well as uranium in the water.1 On some reserves, Health Canada – the department concerned with Canada’s national public health – has been forced to declare water “undrinkable,” leading to a public health advisory or “boil-water advisory” (BWA) by the government that calls for water to be boiled prior to consumption or use to avoid the effects of dangerous pathogens.
The government directive is in place in a limited number of reserves, but the figures presented by the Federal Government of Canada are discordant with those presented by Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC) – the department of the Federal Government of Canada supporting First Nations, Inuit, and Métis in their efforts to improve socio-economic welfare, healthy and sustainable communities, and Canada’s broader national development. This discrepancy has resulted in mutual distrust about effective water governance and some concerns being raised by First Nations about racial discrimination by the Canadian government against its own citizens.2
Finding solutions at the source
In 2015, the Canadian government announced a new commitment to address water infrastructure in First Nations reserves focused on financial investment or money pledges.3 Yet, the allocation and distribution of funds has been problematic. Two years into the new programs, questions have surfaced over the Federal Government’s approach to water security due to the response being focused singularly on improving conditions through financial projects rather than addressing the multiple dimensions of water insecurity affecting First Nations peoples.4
Although at the rhetorical level, water security is related to standards, rules, and regulations, as established by the federal, provincial, and territorial (i.e., Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut) governments. In practice, water security for First Nations peoples shifts beyond institutionalized rules and regulations. For example, in a series of conversational interviews conducted on August 15, 17, and 24 2016 with three First Nations leaders from three separate communities facing systemic water scarcity, the importance of funding and the channeling of monetary resources with the aim of building human capacity rather than just infrastructure, was emphasised.
One First Nations leader expressed that, “[t]his isn’t about water scarcity per se, this is about creating the problem of water scarcity by allowing abundant fresh water sources to become unusable, undrinkable. It affects livelihoods in nearly every way. It’s deeply disruptive and paralyzes entire communities, and damages our culture”.
A second First Nations leader referred to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s promise to end water advisories by 2020 noting that, “efforts required to achieve these goals should have and could have been made many years ago. The public discourse around water security doesn’t help people when ‘efforts’ remain stuck in their discursive form.”
A third First Nations community leader stressed the need to “depart from community preference, and to look at all communities evenly and fairly. Access to clean water in Canada is a Canada right but it goes further than that – it’s a human right. Without equal water security across Canada, you can’t have equality, you can’t preserve diversity.”
Sketching out a policy plan
The federal government has afforded comparably less attention to the communities’ perceptions of sources of the major problems associated with unsuitable water than what experts perceive as problems and solutions. Yet, it is critical that the voices of community members are heard when assessing Canada’s First Nations communities’ water security woes and determining new courses of action for addressing them because they come from those experiencing first-hand the effects of unsuitable water on daily activities, health, and livelihoods. The World Health Organization (WHO) highlighted the importance hearing the voices of First Nations when addressing water management challenging, saying they “constitute distinct systems of knowledge and behavior.”5
Water source and water infrastructure restoration projects6 have to be designed in accordance with an understanding of the possible impact they may cause. When designing solutions, authorities need to consider how industrial activity can negatively impact fragile communities experiencing social, economic, and health challenges.
Although it is acknowledged that water infrastructure is an important aspect of achieving and maintaining water security7, a major problem with the government’s commitment is that comprehensive water infrastructure restoration could take many years in spite of the establishment of clean water funds and intended to accelerate development. This lag in responding to problems affecting communities today poses, not only serious health problems for thousands of people, including children years from now, but further raises concern about the cultural destruction that inattentive water security planning has on subsequent generations.
It is clear that water insecurity can be perpetuated and exacerbated at the political level, where some governing authorities might not consider water security a top priority. While efforts have been made at the federal and provincial levels to address First Nations communities’ unsuitable water conditions, the past two decades have failed to yield a promising regulatory framework. An effective framework should include a greater political voice for First Nations leaders, and their capacity to determine their own economic needs. There is a need for coordinated and consistent funding schemes to address a water security situation. Water standards and requirements should be established in close consultation with community members.
- Bakker, K. (ed.), 2007. Eau Canada: The future of Canada’s water. Vancouver: UBC Press.
- Cabral, J. P. S., 2010. Water microbiology. Bacterial pathogens and water. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2996186/
- Grey, D. and Sadoff, C. W., 2007. Sink or swim? Water security for growth and development. Water Policy, Vol 9, 545– Retrieved from http://cip.management.dal.ca/publications/Water%20security%20for%20growth%20and%20development.pdf
- Lui, E., 2016, March 23. Council of Canadians lukewarm on water funding in federal budget. The Council of Canadians, Ottawa, Canada. Retrieved from https://canadians.org/blog/council-canadians-lukewarm-water-funding-federal-budget
- Misiedjan D. and Gupta, J., 2014. Indigenous communities: Analyzing their right to water under different international legal regimes. Retrieved from https://www.utrechtlawreview.org/articles/10.18352/ulr.270/
- Patterson, B., 2015, October 31. Trudeau must ensure the right to water and sanitation for First Nations within five years. The Council of Canadian, Ottawa, Canada. Retrieved from https://canadians.org/blog/trudeau-must-ensure-right-water-and-sanitation-first-nations-within-five-years
- World Health Organization, 2003, March 22. Water & culture: The international decade for water 2005-2015, 3rd World Water Forum. Retrieved from http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/Water&cultureEnglishv2.pdf
Scott N. Romaniuk is a Doctoral Researcher in the School of International Studies, University of Trento, Italy. His research bridges International Relations, Critical Security, and Peace and Conflict Studies. He is the Editor of Development and the Politics of Human Rights (2015), Democracy and Civil Society in a Global Era (2016), and The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Global Security Studies (2018).
The views expressed in this article belong to the individual authors and do not represent the views of the Global Water Forum, the UNESCO Chair in Water Economics and Transboundary Water Governance, UNESCO, the Australian National University, Oxford University, or any of the institutions to which the authors are associated. Please see the Global Water Forum terms and conditions here.