Federal Indigenous Services Minister to visit Grassy Narrows First Nation Wednesday
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/grassy-narrows-seamus-oregan-visit-1.5153031
Community wants $88.7M to be set in trust for building, operating costs of mercury healthcare facility
Canada’s Indigenous Services Minister is scheduled to visit Grassy Narrows First Nation in northwestern Ontario Wednesday to sign a memorandum of understanding with the chief of the community that continues to live with the effects of mercury contamination brought on by industrial dumping upstream about 50 years ago.
Federal officials said in a statement that the agreement will “[outline] a path forward” to deal with the “long-term health needs of the community, which has been impacted by exposure to mercury.”
Advocates say the First Nation, located about 100 kilometres northeast of Kenora, is one of Canada’s worst environmental disasters. Studies have linked the prevalence of a host of health problems among member of the community to eating fish from the nearby English-Wabigoon River System.
Former owners of the mill in Dryden dumped 9,000 kilograms of mercury into the water in the 1960s and early 1970s.
The federal announcement was light on details but it did say that Indigenous Services Minister Seamus O’Regan would publicly sign the memorandum alongside Chief Rudy Turtle at 12:15 p.m., CT at the community’s Sakatcheway Anishinabe School. Officials said that the minister is expected to arrive in Grassy Narrows at 11:30 a.m.
The First Nation along with advocates for the community have been pushing Ottawa to follow through on a promise by former Indigenous Services Minister Jane Philpott in 2017, when she committed to building a specialized healthcare facility on-reserve to treat those suffering from the effects of prolonged mercury exposure.
Grassy Narrows Chief Rudy Turtle has said he and the community are frustrated by how long it’s taking to break ground on the treatment facility, noting that they had hoped to have shovels in the ground this spring.
A letter from the First Nation dated March 29 to federal officials, including O’Regan, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett raised the concern that “with the federal elections looming, the entire project is at risk.”
The letter called for $88.7 million to be locked in a trust for the capital, operating and maintenance costs for the treatment facility over a 30-year span, similar to the former provincial government setting $85 million aside to be used for the remediation of the contaminated river.