[Witness speaks in Oneida].
That was a greeting in my language of the Oneida Nation.
I'm the Grand Chief of the Association of Iroquois and Allied Indians. We're an advocacy organization. We serve the seven first nations of the Batchewana in and around southwestern Ontario. The members we serve are Batchewana First Nation in Sault Ste. Marie, Hiawatha First Nation near Peterborough, Oneida Nation of the Thames near London, Delaware Nation near Chatham, the Wahta Mohawks north of Orillia, the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte near Belleville, and also as far south as Caldwell First Nation near Leamington. We represent around 20,000 first nations members.
Thank you, committee members, for hearing me today.
With regard to Bill C-326, it appears to have few teeth in raising national drinking water standards, besides the Minister of Health justifying why the standards are where they are. Also, because it's a provincial jurisdiction constitutionally, except for first nations, there are already drinking water standards for first nations passed in the Safe Drinking Water for First Nations Act. That act is not adhered to either, due to lack of capacity in first nations, as our previous speaker alluded to. Also, there is the failure of any legislation to include guaranteed funding triggers for first nations when water does not meet the standards.
We recently lobbied the federal government on the water issue. There's a lot of concern among first nations. Three-quarters of the boil water advisories in first nations are within Ontario, yet the Ontario region receives only 12% of the capital nationwide.
If this bill is passed, it will not have an impact on first nations drinking water. That is worth raising in itself, as first nations' drinking water standards are a federal responsibility. Once the national drinking water standards are raised, the standards in the first nations drinking water act will also go along with that. We think it probably should, in having a bare minimum that the rest of the country is going to enjoy. First nations should hopefully enjoy that too, as drinking water is a basic human right.
Right now, as it stands, the drinking water of several of our first nations does not meet the drinking water standards of the province; it's not even close. For instance, Oneida Nation of the Thames and Delaware Nation both have GUDI water systems, meaning groundwater under the direct influence of surface water. Our aquifers flow underneath the Thames River. We're downstream from London. Every time they have a storm surge, millions of tonnes of partially treated sewage goes directly into the Thames, which also affects the aquifer we take our water from. The filtration doesn't meet the standards to take a lot of that stuff out, so there are a lot of odours in the water and some.... There's a lot of concern about that.
We are looking to co-develop a new regulatory framework for drinking water that would ensure that funding for first nations is triggered as soon as the water does not meet quality standards. We saw a situation with the Municipality of Swan River where they had an issue with their drinking water facility, and within 24 hours a federal-provincial task force was looking into solving the issue. Within 48 hours, they had it identified and a solution was well under way. Another criterion is that you have to be on a boil water advisory for at least a year to even get on the page for possibly getting funding sometime in the future. In the meantime, other first nations who do have treatment facilities but do not meet the provincial drinking water standards are left in the lurch. By the time funding appears for them, they may be on boil water advisories also.
Federally there is not enough of a press forward to address first nations issues. We understand that there should be a good minimum drinking water standard federally, but how does that tie into first nations drinking water standards? Right now it doesn't appear that it does through this bill or through the Safe Drinking Water for First Nations Act either.
We need to remove the federal ranking system as a formula for capital allocations. It's very unclear. We established a needs-based budget to ensure safe drinking water in all first nations. Also, we need established budgets again for operation and maintenance to ensure that the water standards are maintained. Again, there is very little support in terms of the human resources needed. Right now in Ontario, the Ontario First Nations Technical Services Corporation does provide training to first nations water operators. However, the funding to actually pay the water operators does not exist in a lot of cases, and so first nations are forced to rob Peter to pay Paul in order to have a good number of drinking water operators so that they can have safe water. Again, that impacts other areas of our budgets.
Those are the main issues I have, and there are first nations that may want to enter into municipal partnerships for drinking water. Again, we'd like to raise our first nation issues with Bill C-326, because if a national drinking water standard is raised because of this bill, the first nations drinking water standards need to at least go along with that. The province doesn't really have much to do with first nations in terms of their drinking water right now as it is.
I remember in Oneida that we tried to have the Ontario Clean Water Agency come to do an assessment of our treatment facility. They declined, saying that we were a federal responsibility. We kept pressing them on the issue, and they agreed to do it and to just issue a report to us to let us know where the plant was in relation to the provincial standards. Again, the report came in that the plant did not meet the standards, basically due to redundancy, in terms of having any type of backup system, and because the filtration system was getting quite old as well.
There are a lot of infrastructure needs that first nations have with regard to water, and this bill doesn't seem to do a whole lot in terms of being able to enforce anything. I do think human capacity is an issue, but for first nations, it's more about the infrastructure monies that are available, and about making sure that the standards within a first nation drinking water act match what's happening nationally and provincially.