Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Maybe I'll start. Any kind of operation, be it water, waste water, or something else, needs some kind of standard against which to be measured. Certainly from the discussions I've had with Ontario first nation leadership, nobody has a concern about having regulations or having standards.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Rama sells its education to Orillia.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  There are some, what we call, municipal type agreements in Ontario around fire protection and water, and waste water in some cases. A number of them are very successful and are long term. To be frank, some of them are challenged in that the relationships between the municipality and the first nation are tested or challenged on maybe unrelated issues, and the water pipe is used as a threat.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Exactly, yes.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I don't think there's one single one. There are two realities: the human factor, in terms of skilled operators licensed to the level of the plant and their maintaining those skills; the other is the capital side, the plant. With the source water, you find a way of dealing with it, but it's really the resourcing issue in terms of operations maintenance and new capital, and then the human side of the equation.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  It's as complex as any staffing issue any company would face. You need to be able to pay people appropriately; certainly, that's part of it. There are big geographic challenges with getting people out for training, etc. If you're in a fly-in community, it's probably going to cost you $2,000 to get to Balmertown, Ontario, to take a week-long course.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and committee members, on behalf of the Ontario First Nations Technical Services Corporation. I want to thank you for asking us to provide our technical perspective on this issue and to highlight some of the challenges that Ontario first nations encounter when delivering safe drinking water.