Good morning.
I am Chief Kelsey Jacko of Cold Lake First Nations. Thank you for taking the time to listen today.
Thank you to Chief Cindy Woodhouse for helping to make this happen.
You have our written technical statements, but today I want to speak from the heart. I want to acknowledge that we meet today on the lands of the Algonquin people who have been, and still are, caring stewards of the land.
In my culture, as with all peoples who are connected to the land, water is life. Before we're even born, we are in water inside our mother's womb. Lue Chok Tue and Ha Tue have been the womb my relations have centred their lives around from time immemorial. The people moved within the seasons—to Ha Tue for trapping and winter camp and to Lue Chok Tue for the summer months. Our treaty practices depend on these waters. In treaty, the phrase “as long as the river flows” is about my people's ability to continue living and bringing forward new generations. It's also life for our fish, animals, birds and bugs.
We understand your objective with the water legislation and we agree that source water protection is key. The issue is that the legislation provides no real tools. It is more of a suggestion than legislation.
My nation is fortunate to have much lower industry and agricultural allocations than the volumes impacting most nations. Still, as the indigenous population grows, we will be last in line for water, even though we've been here long before Europeans could even find this continent. Unless something changes, our concerns will always be last in line when it comes to water.
The historical unwillingness of Canada to fund on-reserve water infrastructure has put most nations in the position of being last in line under Alberta's First-in-Time, First-in-Right legislation. Other provinces have similar legislation, and until our inherent rights are recognized within the legislation frameworks, our communities are at risk.
In Alberta, we have a lot of problems with water, as our growing population demands more and the lands get drier. Will the North Saskatchewan one day be like the Colorado and not reach the sea? Will our industries and cities collapse with our environment? The Bennett dam destroyed the livelihood of our Dene cousins in Fort Chipewyan.
In Treaty 7 territories, only 7% of the resources are allocated to fish, wildlife and general habitat management. In-stream requirements, the ones that sustain the critical habitats, are not well understood. To be clear, we do not know if the amount of water currently being left is enough for fish. We certainly don't know the appropriate amounts for wetlands and the aquifers that support them—and by “we”, I mean humanity.
Today we have provinces, regulators and industry working to release oil sands water into the river or releasing it by accident—and they're lying about it, as with Kearl. We know that Canada is working with industry on slow release, but this isn't the way. They said that they could clean it, and they should. Instead, they hold it hostage.
In my area, we see water lines being built to suck large volumes of water out of our lake for industrial and domestic use. This year, the lake was so low that the water withdrawals had to be suspended, and the place where our kids learned to kayak and canoe had 50 metres more beach. This means that industry just switches to groundwater. However, these aquifers have fallen as much as 30 metres because of oil sands' use.
The AER, the Alberta Energy Regulator, lets companies pollute shallow groundwater so long as they stay on lease. These companies can just leave, but my people will be here forever, bringing forward new generations.
The watersheds we depend on flow right through the Cold Lake air weapons range, draining from Alberta and Saskatchewan. We will have to deal with three governments. I will say that the DND and Saskatchewan have both been supportive of efforts to expand protection of the land base, and Parks Canada is working with us on creating an ecological corridor that will protect the largest river flowing into our lake, but generally, we know that climate change is going to bring more low-water years. No one seems interested in the kind of monitoring and management required for sustainability.
We acknowledge that the legislation is a sincere attempt to move forward on a complicated issue. We need to see it provide more actionable solutions, tools that we can use. At the regulatory level, the majority of the considerations around the water are for use. Consideration for the environmental impacts of lowered water tables and in-stream availability come dead last. This is not a way to uphold treaty.
CLFN belongs to a regional utility board that is a partnership between my nation and our immediate neighbours. Many of these neighbours draw their water from Cold Lake. We are doing our best to work together to manage local resources.
However, Alberta won't even share the key performance indicators it uses to ensure that water allocations are sustainable. The Alberta government has demonstrated that it is unwilling to enforce water rationing on industry, even in times of crisis. What makes Canada think they will work with us on prevention?
Industry oversight is mostly reliant on self-reported statistics. As we have seen recently with methane release, these numbers are unfortunately rarely reliable. Because of the importance of the land and our treaty rights to all treaty peoples, putting source water protection into the hands of the nations will help to address the principal/agent problem that most governments face.
My understanding of the intent of this bill is that its purpose is to give nations clear tools with which to uphold their inherent rights to water. However, the current version of the bill contains no material recognition of these rights. Instead, it reads like a joint venture option.
You have to understand that nations never gave up their right to care for the water. This is what we mean by inherent rights. The concept of owning water at the time of treaty was like saying you owned the stars: It is an outrageous impossibility. Canadian law already recognizes this concept. You sell the right to access, move, use and pollute, but not the water itself.
If you are serious about protecting source water and acknowledging the inherent rights and responsibility of first nations as protectors, I ask that you consider what the bill offers on the ground for our technicians, particularly for those nations that are being asked to partner with unwilling provincial governments or that will be forced into a four-way partnership, as CLFN would.
If your goal is to be good treaty partners rather than asking the province to co-operate, you need to recognize the interjurisdictional nature of this resource and employ the jurisdiction space available to you in this bill.
Mahsi cho. Thank you for your time.