“To do a real good job of it, we need at least $15 million.”

He briefed Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath about the details as he took her on a tour in a cold rain Friday, stopping both at the ineffective Grassy Lake water treatment plant which has inadequate filtration systems and also at a federal health centre, staffed by a doctor from Kenora two days a month and a nurse at other times.

Although water is also a federal responsibility on reserves, Horwath has pledged in her June 7 campaign platform to “act first” to help First Nations and not let jurisdictional disputes stand in the way.

“We will not sit by and let another generation go by and have this community continue to be in a situation where they don’t have clean drinking water, where the mercury poisoning … is not being addressed,” she told reporters after a shore lunch of walleye with reserve officials in a community hall that doubles as a church.

The building is just down a hill from the reserve water tower and overlooks Grassy Lake, part of the English Wabigoon river system contaminated with mercury sediment from 50 years ago. It has poisoned the fish and many of the people who eat them as a main source of protein.

Although Liberal Leader Kathleen Wynne’s government has set aside $85 million for a clean-up and will index to inflation the compensation payments to victims of mercury poisoning — they suffer from tremors, loss of muscle co-ordination, slurred speech and tunnel vision — Horwath said more needs to be done.

She has promised $3 million toward the construction of a new medical treatment centre, planned by the federal government, for mercury-poisoning victims, and an improved financial compensation system for them if she is elected premier.

“There’s a couple of problems that exist that we’re going to fix,” she said.