Canada must stop ignoring its debt of justice to Grassy Narrows
Opinion – The interventions of two human rights experts are a powerful reminder that the people of Grassy Narrows have suffered profound and unacceptable harms and that they deserve to be treated with dignity and respect.
International human rights standards shine a light on some of the most important, urgent, and fundamental responsibilities of governments. That’s why it’s so significant that last week, in two separate statements, the United Nation’s top expert advisers on the right to health and on the human rights impacts of toxic contamination both called out Canada’s failure to ensure justice for the people of Grassy Narrows.
For the last half century, Grassy Narrows First Nation in northwestern Ontario has had to contend with the devastating impacts of mercury poisoning due to dumping by an upstream mill in the 1960s. Numerous studies have shown that the fish in their waters contain dangerously high levels of mercury, and that this has led to a severe health and social crisis for a people who have always been sustained by the river.
Shockingly, while the federal and provincial governments have long known of the harm inflicted on Grassy Narrows, their response to the First Nation’s demands for justice has routinely been one of denial and delay. Even on those rare occasions when government officials have acknowledged a need for action, they have almost always inevitably reverted to the default position of trying to negotiate their way out of accepting responsibility.
Consider, for example, the Trudeau government’s response to the health crisis.
Despite a spokesperson for the prime minister promising in January 2017 that the federal government would deal with the mercury issue “once and for all,” the federal government’s key commitment to Grassy Narrows—the operation of a specialized community care centre for mercury survivors—remains stalled. Calls from the community for the promised funds to be put in trust, and thus protected from a future government changing its mind, have gone unanswered.
Last month, federal Indigenous Services Minister Seamus O’Regan visited Grassy Narrows but conceded only that his department would consider the request to establish a trust.
The UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights implications of toxic wastes, U.S. lawyer Baskut Tuncak, also visited Grassy Narrows last month. Last week, in his preliminary observations from his official mission to Canada, the independent expert was blunt about the treatment of Grassy Narrows.
He said mercury contamination has decimated the economy of Grassy Narrows and subjected “generation after generation to cruel mental and physical impacts.” Furthermore, Canada has “failed to answer” why it has allowed this situation to persist.
The special rapporteur, who also visited and met with members of other communities across Canada, stated more broadly that there is a pattern in Canada “where marginalized groups, Indigenous peoples in particular, find themselves on the wrong side of a toxic divide, subject to conditions that would not be acceptable elsewhere in Canada.” He concluded that equality and non-discrimination require “urgent attention” in Canada.
The UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health, Dainius Pūras, a medical doctor and public health specialist from Lithuania, also carried out an official visit to Canada this year. His final report was released last week and like the preliminary observations of the special rapporteur on toxics, the special rapporteur on the right to health also drew attention to the impacts of mercury contamination at Grassy Narrows, including loss of the traditional basis of “sustenance, economy, and culture” and “neurological and developmental health impacts on individuals.” The special rapporteur on health called for compensation for community members for the impact on their health and livelihoods and support for community-led initiatives to restore their economy.
The federal and provincial governments should not take these findings lightly. The interventions of these two human rights experts are a powerful reminder that the people of Grassy Narrows have suffered profound and unacceptable harms, that they deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, and that the need for action and justice is urgent and immediate. The findings of the special rapporteurs on health and toxics are also a reminder to the Canadian public that we must expect and demand more of our governments when it comes to upholding their fundamental human rights obligations.
Craig Benjamin is Amnesty International Canada’s Indigenous rights campaigner.