Mr. Speaker, my understanding is, and this is again from the national assessment of first nations report, that:
A risk assessment has been completed for each water and wastewater system according to the INAC Risk Level Evaluation Guidelines.
My understanding is that they used the INAC not the provincial guidelines.
With regard to infrastructure, what the risk assessment did identify was that there were still serious infrastructure deficits in the country. The bill before us, and as I pointed out the Senate could not tie money into the bill, has no commitment going forward for the water and waste water systems .
The National Assessment of First Nations Water and Wastewater Systems, in its summary of recommendations, clearly indicated that infrastructure investment was absolutely required. It included:
—works and measures associated with ensuring current systems meet the requirements of the various protocols, thereby reducing the risk associated with these systems; [and] the approach to addressing future servicing needs associated with the projected growth in First Nation communities.
We are not seeing that.
I indicated that over the next several years we are going to see an enormous growth in first nation communities and yet, we do not see a plan of action moving forward that would accommodate this growth in population. We already have systems that are overloaded and at risk and now we are going to add population growth.
It is essential that, if we are going to move forward with legislation, we actually commit to put the resources in place to ensure that first nations can meet those commitments.
One of the concerns with this piece of legislation is that there would be a downloading to chiefs and councils and to communities for the liability and for the cost of these systems. They may be held to a standard that they simply cannot achieve because they do not have the resources to do it.