Thanks very much.
I understood that one of the three categories for addition to reserve was community relocations. I'd been told that you could add land because of natural occurrences like flooding and there would be “site-specific considerations” related, it says, “to comparing the cost-benefit of the relocation against a variety of other options”. I understand the policy, which still says that:
INAC will continue to provide the necessary assistance (including the provision of reserve land by adding to or creating a new reserve or by relocating a reserve community within an existing reserve) where a natural disaster (e.g., flooding) threatens the immediate safety of a community's residents, or where such a disaster has already occurred. When relocation is the most viable long-term option according to the criteria set out below, INAC will assist the First Nation in relocating the community on an urgent basis.
I guess I want to know, if that's the case--and sometimes examples are the most educative things for us as members of Parliament--why are the thousands of people from Lake St. Martin and Little Saskatchewan First Nations still in hotels in Manitoba six months later, and why has there been no negotiation on setting up a new reserve on an urgent basis when even more severe flooding is expected this fall?
It's quite clear that this land is too low and that it will always be flooded. I understand there's crown land, higher land, adjacent to that reserve. Why aren't we getting on and doing it if it says in the policy that this is normally done “on an urgent basis” and when it's quite clear that the land they have right now is completely unsuitable for an ongoing community?