Ignatieff pledges running water : Says he’ll work with chiefs to find solution

OTTAWA — Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff said Sunday a Liberal government would bring running water to northern Manitoba reserves that now lack it.

Ignatieff was asked a question about improving the lives of aboriginal Canadians as he launched the Liberal election platform at a downtown Ottawa hotel Sunday morning.

Ignatieff said he met with chiefs from northern Manitoba while he was in Winnipeg March 30 and is appalled by the fact thousands of Canadians live in deplorable conditions without running water.

“We can’t go on like this,” he said. “It has to be a priority that gets fixed.”

The Winnipeg Free Press highlighted the issue in a series last fall, which showed there are more than 1,500 households in northern Manitoba reserves where people have less clean drinking water available each day than is provided to refugees in war-torn areas by international aid groups.

Most reserves have water-treatment plants that provide potable water for residents to use, but in several Manitoba reserves, particularly in the Island Lake area, residents have to fill buckets and pails at the plant and carry them home. Others have holding tanks beneath their houses that are filled by water trucks. Last fall, the tanks on one reserve were contaminated with bacteria because they are difficult to clean and few in the communities have the training and equipment necessary to do so.

The lack of running water causes numerous public health problems, mainly due to poor hygiene and sanitation. During the H1N1 outbreak in 2009, Island Lake reserves were among the hardest hit because residents with no running water find it difficult to regularly wash their hands.

Ignatieff said the chiefs have to bring him a plan and then find a way to fulfil it. “We gotta get a plan, we gotta get a competitive bid and we gotta get it done,” he said.

It is estimated it will cost between $30,000 and $50,000 per home to provide the necessary upgrades to bring indoor plumbing to the nearly 1,000 homes in northern Manitoba without it. These homes were built without bathrooms, kitchen sinks, or plumbing pipes. It is likely storage tanks rather than water piped in underground would be the solution.

Additional dollars are needed to expand water-treatment plants, many of which are not big enough to produce the amount of clean drinking water needed in fast-growing communities. The recent federal budget was silent on the issue of clean water for reserves.

mia.rabson@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition April 4, 2011 A4