Thank you.
First and foremost, I'd like to thank the Creator for blessing us all with a beautiful day and this time together.
I would like to thank our national chief, Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak, for helping us get this time together with all you folks.
I'd like to thank the elder for blessing us with a prayer this morning. It's always good to start out with a prayer in our culture, so hay hay to Elder Betsy.
For those of you who don't know me, my name is Chief Trevor John. I'm from Kehewin Cree Nation, Treaty No. 6, Alberta region.
Tansi, boozhoo and hello.
Kehewin Cree Nation, like many of our neighbouring Cree tribes, sits near a water source. This is no mistake. Our ancestors, at treaty time and along with the dominion of Canada officials, marked out spaces that the Indian Act calls reserves, where our people would have access to the basic human right of safe drinking water. The treaties themselves are referred to as lasting in perpetuity for as long as the sun shines, the grass grows and, yes, the waters flow.
Canada has a lasting obligation under this relationship created by treaty to ensure that treaty first nations are supported as far as water and related infrastructure are concerned. This bill intends to abandon all of this in favour of section 35 rights of self-determination. This is wrong, shameful and unethical, yet here we are in 2024 with exactly that.
It must be said that the preamble of Bill C-61 has good-sounding words and all the right language about reconciliation and recognition. It sounds good on the surface for sure, but it doesn't bind Canada or Alberta to ensuring that the legislation does what the intent of the preamble is—that is, to ensure safe and viable water and water infrastructure beyond best efforts.
If this bill goes forward, we feel it will not be linked to treaty-based implementation, planning objectives or milestones. Bill C-61 looks like lip service to a nice future but does not meet the reality we have with the Province of Alberta. This bill does not guarantee or bind Alberta, and based on our extensive experience with Alberta, there is no current recognition or relationship that enables us to be sure that our peoples will have sustainable infrastructure.
The title of Bill C-61 is “An act respecting water, source water, drinking water, wastewater and related infrastructure on First Nation lands”.
Inside the bill it says, “on, in and under the First Nation lands”, and jurisdiction under treaty means the whole of the treaty territory. For many of our nations, that goes well beyond provincial lines whereby our reserves are designated. This is what needs reconciliation if the bill is to mean anything.
Canada, under its declaration action plan, states a commitment to “honourably implement historic and modern treaties” consistent with article 37 of the United Nations declaration. Bill C-61, in Canada's processes to discuss it, needs to work on it through this.
As a chief of my nation, this is not honourable with regard to the UN declaration commitment, and this bill, like those that came before it, will fail us.
Bill C-61 provides treaty first nations with no assurance for improving water health and meeting current or growing water infrastructure needs. It contains significant loopholes for Canada to delay implementation and decisions on commitments to providing funding for addressing long-standing needs. It does not contemplate binding obligations to ensure adequate or consistent resourcing for needs or how those real needs could change over time, considering climate change and other related impacts.
The bill says Canada will use “best efforts to ensure...access to clean and safe drinking water” on reserves, but this is not binding. With no clear implementation plan that considers actual and full costs according to those needs, we are setting the stage for new challenges for the next generations. This is not acceptable.
Canada often talks about a whole-of-government approach in relation to reconciliation. On water, the potential of this is something that could be supported with a treaty bilateral approach, but instead, Canada, this summer, through an order in council, gave permission to the Alberta, the Saskatchewan and the Manitoba provincial governments to reapportion water for their purposes, without a single interaction with our governments. This is not a good start for us to feel any assurance that “best efforts” language will help us and that our needs for water and related infrastructure will be prioritized.
Since 2019, Canada has indicated that it would be gradually transferring all programs and services to willing first nations. It is using comparability standards that are provincial standards in the implementation of the transfer of responsibility and calling that “self-determination”. It seems to us, as treaty leaders, that Canada, through ISC, is trying to leave its legal obligation because it knows what we know, because we have told them: The infrastructure gap in our nations is much larger than what AFN has told them.
Today, I'm asking on behalf of my peoples for Canada to get real and work with us to address the actual needs it's responsible for under treaty. As we have told the ministers, “treaty” means good faith dealing to adjust to the actual water and infrastructure needs of the nations and to ensure Bill C-61 is amended to address those needs as promised under the treaty relationship.
Hay hay.