Good morning. I'll try to be brief. Most of what I was going to speak of was mentioned by the other representatives today. I'm going to allow some time for Chief Rose to use up some of our time together.
First off, the Assembly of Treaty Chiefs of Treaties 6, 7, and 8 in Alberta has, from the very beginning, made significant efforts to work with the Harper government to fix the deplorable state of first nations' drinking water systems. Our efforts have been rewarded by the government with political spin, broken promises, and a meaningless piece of legislation that will do nothing to ensure safe drinking water for first nation people.
We also have the exact same concerns as the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne, although I do have a little bit of a different view. I do not believe that a self-government agreement will exempt you from this legislation. I believe there's a clause in there that says this is enforced, in effect, with those first nations who have self-government agreements. The bill does not respect our section 35 rights, and our nation, the Sawridge First Nation, has exercised our section 35 rights to self-government and self-determination. We have developed our own constitution, our own legislation, and we do hold 15 areas of jurisdiction to ourselves.
This legislation, in my view, is going to make a lot of lawyers rich, and that's all it's going to accomplish. We are going to have to take this to court, to either judicial reviews or actual cases. There are 25 first nations in Treaty 8 Alberta and our situations are all completely different.
As the Sawridge First Nation, we don't have a drinking water system of our own. We are a small nation. We've applied to the federal government for over 20 years to control our own water and sewer systems. We've been repeatedly denied by the government. Our water is provided by the Town of Slave Lake municipality. We have taken advantage of the program for monitoring safe drinking water. The water standards are higher at the federal level is what we have found. Some of the contaminants in the water are at a high level according to the federal standards; however, when I get the letter from Health Canada, it says our water is provided by a municipality and is within provincial standards.
I'm not sure if the people of the Sawridge First Nation would agree that we would fall under now lesser standards using the provincial government's standards.
This has been echoed. There have been several expert panels who have said they need resources prior to legislation regulation. There have been so many times that we've seen these types of things being pushed through.
On section 35, the expert panel on first nations drinking water did an independent legal analysis of section 35 rights and concluded that there's a sound legal basis for first nations' right of self-government over water in their communities. Canada has refused to consult with us about the implications of Bill S-8 in this regard.
We're in the 21st century. You would think that the draconian ways of dealing with first nations of this country have dissipated, but they seem to be alive and well.
To top all of this off, the only part of Bill S-8 that actually does anything is the liability protection provisions that excuse Canada from all responsibilities for the safety of first nations' drinking water. If the bill were truly named, it would be “Breach of fiduciary duty to first nations and protection of liability for the Government of Canada, and the abdication of its moral and legal responsibilities for safe drinking water for first nations act”. That's how we feel.
I will turn it over to Chief Rose; she has a few words to say.
Thank you.