Federal Liberals still failing people of Grassy Narrows
The Trudeau government promised that it would deal with the crisis of mercury poisoning in the Grassy Narrows First Nation “once and for all.” However, a leaked document reveals a government that remains entrenched in the same patterns of delay and deceit that have long denied the people of Grassy Narrows their basic human rights.
In early June, federal Indigenous Services Minister Seamus O’Regan told the CBC that a federal commitment to build and maintain a mercury care facility at Grassy Narrows was legally “binding” and “for keeps.” The minister said that once the agreement was signed, future governments would not be able to “just walk away” from this obligation.
However, as reported by the Toronto Star last week, the actual agreement proposed by the federal government fails to provide any such guarantees. In fact, the draft agreement would require the funding for mercury care to be renewed annually and allow the federal government to alter funding levels at any time or even withdraw funding entirely.
Federal officials have said that these are simply standard terms. But that’s not at all what the minister described. And it’s not what this unique and tragic situation requires.
In the 1960s, an upstream pulp mill dumped an estimated 10 tonnes of mercury into the English and Wabigoon rivers. The toxic accumulation of mercury in the food chain has had deadly consequences for the people of Grassy Narrows, for whom fishing is integral to cultural identity and irreplaceable as a staple of daily nutrition.
Yet despite ample evidence of the debilitating and sometimes lethal health impacts of mercury poisoning on generations of community members, federal officials have long refused to even acknowledge the mercury crisis, much less provide the specialized care that is so urgently needed.
The Trudeau government promised to change that. At this point, however, the specialized mercury care home appears no closer to a reality than when it was first promised in November 2017.
The people of Grassy Narrows have said that any agreement over the care home must include measures — including putting funds in trust — to ensure that health care for mercury survivors will not be taken away by future governments. This is a reasonable demand that is fully in keeping with the debt of justice owed to the people of Grassy Narrows.
A half-century of government inaction shows that the lives of the people of Grassy Narrows rarely matter to politicians and bureaucrats in Ottawa. It’s utterly unreasonable to now ask the people of Grassy Narrows to simply trust that this long-entrenched pattern of discrimination and indifference has changed.
Access to quality, culturally appropriate health care is a basic human right. Canada’s 50-year-long failure to fulfil this human rights obligation for the people of Grassy Narrows, and the tragic harms that have ensued, requires concrete assurances that things will finally change.
It’s unacceptable for O’Regan to propose anything less.