‘We have been met with a hard heart’: Frustrated at lack of progress, Grassy Narrows sues governments for failing to clean up mercury pollution
The lawsuit accuses Canada and Ontario of violating their treaty obligations by failing to ensure the community could safely fish.
Grassy Narrows First Nation is suing the federal and provincial governments, alleging Canadian and Ontarian officials have consistently put the profits of industry ahead of an Indigenous community poisoned by dumped mercury waste.
The lawsuit accuses the governments of allowing the Wabigoon River to be polluted, then neglecting to remediate it, while simultaneously authorizing industrial production and prospecting. In doing so, Canada and Ontario violated their treaty obligations by failing to ensure the Indigenous community could safely practice its right to fish, the lawsuit alleges.
“Time and again the government has chosen to prioritize corporate profits at our expense. Our mercury nightmare should have ended long ago, but it has been longer and worse because of the government’s failure to live up to its obligations,” said Grassy Narrows Chief Rudy Turtle.
Despite officials’ repeated promises to clean up the mercury-polluted river, the neurotoxin remains in the food chain. Recent research suggests levels are worse than previously believed.
The river was first polluted in the 1960s, when the paper mill upstream from the First Nation dumped mercury into the river. In 2017, Ontario — faced with evidence that mercury remained in soil, fish and river sediment — promised to address the “gross neglect.” Though officials committed $85 million to the effort, the project is still in the research phase. Frustrated at what they say is the lack of progress and compensation for ongoing harm, Grassy Narrows leaders say they have been left with no choice but to sue.
“We have had hundreds of meetings, dozens of different studies, negotiated, demonstrated, walked, prayed, and done everything in our power to cry out for justice, but we have been met with a hard heart. I pray that with this action and the perseverance of our people we will find justice at long last,” Turtle said.
In a statement, the federal ministers of Indigenous services and the environment said they could not comment on the lawsuit as it was currently before the courts, but added that it is “extremely important to the Government of Canada to do its part in responding to this crisis.”
“Everyone deserves to live in a healthy and safe environment, including Indigenous Peoples whose communities are too often located downwind, downstream, and next to polluting industrial facilities,” reads the statement, noting that the government has committed $146 million for the construction and operation of a Mercury Care home.
The Ontario government did not respond to questions from the Star. During question period Tuesday at Queen’s Park, Northern Development and Indigenous Affairs Minister Greg Rickford said the Ford government indexed mercury poisoning disability benefits to inflation upon taking office in 2018.
“As a result, most beneficiaries saw their monthly payments nearly double,” Rickford said, noting the fund will get another actuarial assessment this month.
Dryden mill’s emissions worsening mercury problem: study
Grassy Narrows wants Canada and Ontario to admit to infringing on its rights, prohibit further industrial activities that could adversely affect the First Nation and deliver on promises to remediate the river system.
A dollar amount quantifying damages will be assigned at a later stage of litigation, said lawyer Adrienne Telford of Cavalluzzo LLP, who represents Grassy Narrows in the litigation, along with Lisa Glowacki of Ratcliff LLP.
“Each day the government allows the mill to pollute and cause harm downstream, more liability accrues,” she said in a message to the Star.
The suit comes on the heels of a scientific report commissioned by the First Nation and funded in part by Ontario that revealed current sulphate emissions from the Dryden pulp and paper mill are at least doubling the methylmercury levels in the Wabigoon River.
The findings help explain why mercury contamination levels remain higher than scientists have thought they should be after the old Dryden mill, operated then by Reed Paper, dumped 10 tonnes of mercury into the Wabigoon-English River system between 1962 and 1970. The dumping took place upstream from Grassy Narrows and nearby Wabaseemoong (Whitedog) Independent Nations.
Mercury-contaminated soil found in 2017
Though scientists have long suspected that old mercury still contaminates the land on or near the mill property — a 2017 Star investigation found mercury-contaminated soil in the ground behind the mill — the new study focused on sulphate’s impact on mercury already in the river system.
Grassy Narrows has approximately 1,700 members, of which approximately 1,000 live on the river, about 90 kilometres northeast of Kenora, Ont.
A spokesperson from the provincial Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks said in a statement last month that the Ontario government is reviewing the study’s findings.
Grassy Narrows “should not have to be dealing with contaminated water in the first place,” a spokesperson from Environment and Climate Change Canada said last month in response to the study’s findings. The spokesperson also noted the government’s work to introduce Bill C-61, First Nations Clean Drinking Water Act, aimed at preventing future water contamination and ensuring First Nations have “more tools necessary to protect source water and maintain drinking water and wastewater infrastructure in a self-determined way.”
The operator of the mill, Dryden Fibre Canada, declined to comment on the lawsuit and said, “We operate in compliance with extensive environmental regulatory requirements.”
On Tuesday morning, after outlining the lawsuit at a news conference, Turtle and several supporters marched a few blocks north to Queen’s Park in hopes of presenting it to Premier Doug Ford. Opposition parties were concerned the chief was not allowed in because of legislative security rules barring demonstrators from entering the building on the day they protest.
“The chief should be and deserves to be treated with the deepest of respect and should have been treated that way today,” said New Democrat Leader Marit Stiles, who pressed the government to fix the mercury pollution.
“The lawsuit … doesn’t prevent anyone on the other side, the premier or his cabinet, from taking decisive action to stop the ongoing contamination of the river today,” she said.
“I would just say to the premier … if it was my water that was being poisoned or your water there was being poisoned, do you not think the government would have done something by now?”
In question period, Minister Rickford avoided commenting on the lawsuit, but lauded the work of industry, saying, “Our world-class resource development sector is matched only by their compliance to the highest environmental protection standards out there, and we enforce it.”
Critics later scoffed at that remark.
“People should not be poisoned,” Green Leader Mike Schreiner told reporters.
“This is not just … a public health issue, it is a fundamental issue related to truth and reconciliation,” said Liberal MPP Adil Shamji (Don Valley East), an emergency room physician.
“If we’re serious about respecting Indigenous people and their inherent rights, then this is not something to be dragging your feet on.”
Telford, the lawyer representing Grassy Narrows, said the First Nation has “suffered extreme injustice, and intense suffering due to a terrible and long record of government neglect and mistreatment.”
“This case cries out for justice and this litigation aims to ensure that Ontario and Canada finally uphold their legal and constitutional obligations to Grassy Narrows. The government must be held to account and it must learn the rights and lives of Indigenous people cannot be trampled on.”