Who owns our water? This is a question that we, as Ontario MPPs, are asking on behalf of Ontarians.
Across the province, the question of water ownership and protection has become increasingly worrisome, with issues like suspected carcinogens in Tottenham tap water, mercury poisoning in Grassy Narrows and lead in water pipes provincewide.
For many Indigenous communities, access to clean drinking water has been a long-standing crisis successive governments have failed to address. Sol has repeatedly spoken in the Legislature of the 15 First Nations in his riding who don't have access to clean drinking water, including Grassy Narrows, and who live every day with Boil Water Advisories — some as long as 25 years. On nearby Six Nations reserve, water quality is worse than in surrounding, non-First Nations communities, with many lacking access to clean water.
We believe that the quality of water on reserves is one of the standards by which reconciliation should be measured.
In Hamilton, residents are still coming to terms with Sewergate, a massive sewage spill that contaminated Chedoke Creek and Cootes Paradise. When the news broke that 24 billion litres of untreated sewage had leaked into the wetland, Sandy shared the outrage and concern of her fellow Hamiltonians. In the days following news of the leak, Sandy was equally appalled to learn that sewage spilling into lakes and waterways across Ontario is a far more routine occurrence than many people know.
Since then, Sandy has been working to protect our local water, writing to the Minister of Environment to ask why, despite knowing about the spill for over a year and a half, no one from the Ministry or the City of Hamilton was required to inform the public. Her office also submitted a Freedom of Information Request asking the Ministry of Environment to release all documents related to the spill, including water testing samples dating back to 2012. She has yet to receive a response, and repeated questions to the Premier have gone unanswered.
Further, Sandy recently hosted a workshop discussing citizens' environmental rights around mass corporate extraction of groundwater. As with the regularity of sewage overflows, many Hamiltonians are likely unaware that successive governments have allowed companies like Nestlé to extract millions of litres of our groundwater for bottled water each year.
Nestlé pays $503 per one million litres that it extracts, then sells it back to us with an approximately 1,000 per cent markup. If one wanted to purchase this same groundwater commercially, $503 would buy only 1,000 litres. In all of Ontario, commercial water bottlers extracted 1.7 billion litres of water in 2017, producing the equivalent of 1.5 billion bottles that likely ended up in landfill or as litter.
Again, who owns our water? More importantly, who protects it?
For both of us, it has become abundantly clear that water protection is one of the most important issues in our communities and our province. It is evident to both of us that Ontario's failure to monitor and improve mechanisms to prevent the contamination of waterways, the absence of laws to ensure that the public is informed of contamination, and inadequate investment in infrastructure by governments past and present reveal our systemic refusal to recognize water as a human right.
Faced with a climate crisis, it is all the more important that Ontarians radically rethink our relationship with water. We are therefore inviting the community to join us discussing issues of water insecurity and protection at our Water is Life Town Hall Saturday, Feb. 8, at 4 p.m., at The Westdale Theatre. We will be joined by Kelsey Leonard, Indigenous water scientist. We are eager to hear your concerns and ideas, and we hope you will join us. Nibi Bimaadiziwin. Water is life.
Sol Mamakwa is MPP for Kiiwetinoong. Sandy Shaw is MPP Hamilton West-Ancaster-Dundas