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Chief Greg Sarazin’s community is just 120 kilometres west of downtown Ottawa, yet he says the Algonquins of Pikwakanagan struggled for nearly 40 years to get a drinking water system in place.
“We’re only getting close now to turning on the taps with a community-wide, safe, filtered, water source,” Sarazin told CBC Indigenous in Ottawa on Monday morning.
Sarazin had just finished welcoming people to Algonquin territory for the Assembly of First Nations’ first water walk, where more than 100 people gathered for a ceremony outside the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Que.
It was how the national advocacy organization chose to begin this year’s annual general assembly, with hundreds of First Nations leaders gathering for three days of political meetings and policy debate beginning on Tuesday.
The proposed agenda contains dozens of resolutions, including on high-profile issues like fast-tracking major projects, new proposed legislation and legislative reforms, plus a promised meeting with the prime minister and premiers.
But water — protecting it, governing it, and legislating it — will likely be a recurring topic.
Crossing a bridge across the Ottawa River in the hot morning sun and arriving at the Rogers Convention Centre, Monday’s ceremonial walk was calm and thoughtful, a moment to give thanks, but the political undertones were obvious.
“We’re going to have to push back really hard. Be ready,” AFN National Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak told the walkers before they set out.
With Parliament Hill looming above her, she accused federal lawmakers of playing politics with First Nations’ rights by failing to pass long-awaited proposed drinking water legislation, Bill C-61, before Justin Trudeau resigned as prime minister last year.
“The NDP were no help. The Liberals were no help. The Conservatives were no help. The Bloc Québécois were no help,” Woodhouse Nepinak said.
“Nobody was helping us and they all blamed each other.”
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberals tabled a new water bill, C-37, this spring but in the process weakened certain sections and removed explicit recognition of First Nations’ human right to safe drinking water.
That prompted criticism and pushback, as lawyers observed the language allows Canada to continue to fight First Nations in court, and sets the stage for a draft AFN resolution scheduled for debate this week.
Tensions over major projects
Discussion about the new water bill is expected to dovetail this week with debate about the Carney government and provincial governments’ efforts to expedite big resource development projects, pipelines in particular.
Assembly of First Nations National Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak says while First Nations want to encourage economic growth in Canada, the federal government’s one-year consultation timeline for major projects will ‘give rise to questions about the legitimacy of approvals made without the Crown honouring its obligations to First Nations.’
AFN leaders outlined their concerns at a news conference Monday afternoon at the Rogers Centre.
Woodhouse Nepinak said the federal government’s suite of proposed reforms aimed at getting projects built “will fundamentally alter the way Canada protects or does not protect our planet.”
“These proposals raise significant concerns regarding Canada’s commitment to upholding its constitutional, statutory and international obligations to First Nations.”
Trudeau once said there was no relationship more important to him, and to Canada, than the relationship with Indigenous peoples. Whether that statement remains true under Carney is something the chiefs continue to grapple with.
“I want to know where we stand on the priority list of our prime minister,” said AFN’s Newfoundland Regional Chief Brendan Mitchell.
Suggesting provinces don’t truly own the land where development would happen, AFN’s Saskatchewan Regional Chief Bobby Cameron invited foreign leaders to reach out to First Nations.
“To the folks and the leaders from India and China, come and meet our First Nation leaders,” he told reporters.
“Come and invest in our First Nation communities. Come, and understand and learn what it’s like to be a First Nation person in this country.”
The annual general assembly also typically gives grassroots advocates and activists a chance to be heard.
After the water walk on Monday, Jocelyn Wabano-Iahtail, an elder from Attawapiskat in northern Ontario, was cooling off inside the Rogers Centre, and summed up her concerns. Her community has had to deal with water contamination and its impacts before, she said.
“The way they’re doing things is not good enough,” Wabano-Iahtail said.
“Instead of progress in terms of truth and reconciliation, it’s going backwards … and I’m really concerned about what the government under Mark Carney is doing.”
The assembly is scheduled to conclude on Thursday.
