Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources

Issue 15 - Evidence

The Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources, to which was referred Bill S-18, to amend the Food and Drugs Act (clean drinking water), met this day at 9:37 a.m. to give consideration to the bill.

Senator Tommy Banks (Acting Chairman) in the Chair.

[English]

The Acting Chairman: Good morning, honourable senators and guests.

Senator Grafstein's bill, Bill S-18, is before us today. The bill seeks to place water among those consumables that are regulated in the interests of the public. His view is that since bubble gum is regulated it seems sensible that water should be regulated.

Please proceed with your presentation.

Mr. Ovide Mercredi: Environmental Spokesperson, Assembly of First Nations: I wish to thank the committee for the opportunity to speak to you about water safety in First Nations communities. As you can appreciate, I cannot speak for either the Inuit people or the Métis nation. I can only make my comments in relation to First Nations in Canada. However, I am sure that some of the issues I will raise will be common to all Aboriginal people in this country.

We wish to thank Senator Grafstein for taking the initiative to propose this amendment to an existing statute. We think it is time for action. The senator has heard our call for attention to these issues and his initiative will go a long way to designating federal resources to this issue.

I should also like to mention the initiatives being undertaken by two members of Parliament, namely, Dennis Mills and John Herron.

In light of what happened in Walkerton and North Battleford, Canadians across this country recognize the need to address drinking water quality, safety and security.

First Nations have been impacted by unsafe drinking water for decades. The Assembly of First Nations is pleased to share this understanding with the rest of the country in hopes that this issue will become a priority with regard to our people as well.

Water quality has been an issue in our communities for at least 20 years. The problem is caused by the fact that source water issues have not been attended to adequately within Canada and that the water we relied on in its natural state has been contaminated over the years. As a boy, I drank water taken directly from the Saskatchewan River, and that is not too long ago.

The most dramatic incidents of fatalities of children from contaminated drinking water in Cree communities occurred in the 1980s.

Over the past summer, John Herron's round table and Dennis Mills' summit on water have made it possible for our people, from the national level to the grass roots level, to be heard on this issue.

Typically, First Nations drinking water problems revolve around untreatable source water, inadequate facilities, poor distribution systems and fuel contamination. At least two cases of fuel contamination have been festering over the years and those particular problems must be addressed. We hope that fuel contamination of drinking water will force Indian Affairs to act in the interests of First Nations.

Some of our communities have been forced to boil water for periods of five years. We hope this committee will impress upon the bureaucracy the importance of attending to these issues. Otherwise, we will we remain sceptical of any future action.

The Assembly of First Nations has strong reason to believe that these individual issues are not isolated incidents. In 1995, a joint study by Health Canada and Indian Affairs indicated that 20 per cent of our water systems did not meet the drinking water guidelines. The same study estimated that about 50 per cent of First Nations water treatment systems had no problems, which is a positive way of saying that half of them did.

In June of last year, the Assembly of First Nations received data detailing that 79 First Nations communities have drinking water problems that present a potential threat to health. We know that this list is incomplete and regionally focused. We have no way of verifying that information as we are not automatic recipients of data collected by the federal government. That information was shared with us only after some debate.

What is the effect of potentially unsafe drinking water? A study conducted in Manitoba found shigella incidents in First Nations to be 19 times higher than in the rest of the population. Hospitalization for shigella was found to be only 12 times higher in First Nations than in the rest of the population. Between 1992 and 1995, 83 per cent of hepatitis A cases in Manitoba occurred in the First Nations population. In Saskatchewan, hepatitis A incidents in First Nations was 484 per 100,000, compared to 8.7 per cent per 100,000 for Canadians in general. This represents a rate of incidence in First Nations approximately 500 times higher than the Canadian average.

These statistics should not shock the committee. It has been the position of the Assembly of First Nations for years that a grievous double standard exists in Canada with respect to health, drinking water and housing.

Rather than act on these problems, the typical reaction to such information has been to argue over the relative contributions of housing, medical services and drinking water quality. These debates raged within the Canadian bureaucracy for decades while the true nature of the problem remains unstudied and, in many cases, no action has been taken.

One of the primary recommendations from Health Canada and INAC in 1995 was to develop mechanisms in order to integrate Health Canada and INAC specialties in delivering safe drinking water. Today, Health Canada's environmental health officers, committed professionals with expertise in drinking water safety, are in a position only to recommend action. We believe that the proposed legislation would, if nothing else, remedy the situation. The result would be decision-making based on health outcomes rather than on bureaucratic considerations or fiscal matters.

It is for this reason that the Assembly of First Nations applauds the Senate for taking action on this issue. Classification of water as a food for the purpose of regulation represents an action that would ensure that First Nations are receiving water of approximately the same quality as other Canadians.

Our concerns are two-fold, and perhaps beyond the scope of today's discussions. The first deals with the implementation of the bill and the regulatory regime to enforce it. The second concern is related to the potential liabilities associated with the bill. Under the current regime, First Nations are expected to maintain and operate their water systems with up to a 20 per cent subsidy from INAC.

This agreement was struck between INAC and Health Canada and represented a significant devolution of responsibility. INAC has expressed on numerous occasions that revenue should be generated for First Nations by taxing water users.

Although the devolution of responsibility for First Nations is a good goal, we maintain that it is irresponsible to select a method without addressing such issues such as taxation, for example. It must be nice to be able to develop responsibility unilaterally. However, it is a reality of tyranny that First Nations is forced to deal with in Canada. Perhaps that is because we are never consulted on how government views its or our responsibilities, which makes it worse because we can never offer alternative views. Liability then becomes a frightening issue for us.

Moreover, we fear that First Nations will become increasingly reliant on bottled water that will be provided as emergency relief. This will allow federal government departments to justify almost unbelievable spending increases while providing no tangible results to the actual problem. The result will be inflated numbers that the Minister of Indian Affairs will use to placate Canadians that the Indian problem is being dealt with and that no double standard exists in Canada.

We measure our double standards in terms of health of our people, and our social conditions, not on the amount of money the minister receives every year. This bill, however, has the potential to contribute to narrowing these gaps. Ultimately, we are seeking better health outcomes for our present and future generations.

The recommendations that the two departments made in 1995 addressed the issues that needed to be dealt with. The problem is that we have no way of monitoring whether they are following their own recommendations. We have no way of determining if particular expenditures have been targeted for these recommendations I am about to share with you. These are the government's own recommendations on this issue. They go back as far as 1995.

First, the department and Health Canada decided that First Nations and DIAND must implement regional action plans to address potential health and safety problems in community systems as quickly as funding would permit. These are the magic words: if funding permits. If funding permits they will do it; if funding does not permit, then they will not.

Second, First Nations and Health Canada were supposed to work together to regularly monitor all First Nations drinking water systems. Health Canada and DIAND should consult on a more consistent and effective way to monitor effluent sewage prior to discharge. Again, we have no way of knowing how often the two departments meet and how they share their field officers in terms of information and actual conduct with respect to this recommendation that creates a responsibility for both departments.

Third, First Nations, Health Canada and Indian and Northern Affairs were to provide proper training to First Nations personnel. This was to be done on a high priority basis. The Health Canada water treatment plan operating training package was supposed to be used where similar training was not available. As I understand it right now, the training of First Nations personnel is seen as a responsibility of Indian Affairs. Formerly, it belonged to Health Canada. I am not aware of the details of when the decision to transfer responsibility to Indian Affairs was made. However, all this points to the fact that there are at least two departments which interface on this issue. We have no way of monitoring how well coordinated and how effective they are in terms of coordinating their activities with respect to this issue.

Fourth, it was recommended that First Nations must use professional assistants from either tribal councils or consultants when preparing plans for additions or changes to existing water and sewage treatment facilities. Technology appropriate to the community should be used. These are words that I sometimes call "weasel words." This implies a lower standard than would be appropriate to other communities. Usually what that means is that it depends on the population, the particular region, the appropriations of Parliament, and whether the resources are available for that particular initiative. The final decision is not made by our people but by bureaucrats in Ottawa. I do not know if they use consultants to make that determination, or people with advanced technological training. They insist that we use those specialists however, before we make application to them.

It would be interesting to see if the Senate would call upon some of the departments to account for how they work with our people.

Fifth, First Nations and DIAND must strengthen the accountability regime for the operation, maintenance and monitoring of community water sewer systems. This is a very good recommendation. It is tied to the idea of who will be responsible, if a mistake is made or if someone dies. The accountability regime for the operation and maintenance of monitoring the water system is one way of trying to ensure that public safety is maintained. This naturally requires adequate training, proper monitoring and proper management of the technology that exists. However, who is responsible for that monitoring? Who is responsible for the operations and the maintenance of community water and sewer systems?

The two departments have tried to transfer that responsibility to our communities. Our communities have been resisting that transfer because they do not have the adequate resources to be able to maintain the standard that is required to maintain these units at operational levels. We do not have an independent means for paying for the costs of maintaining the water systems. We are totally dependent on the government for maintaining these regimes at a high level.

It would be impossible for First Nations to assume full responsibility. At the same time, what I see here with this recommendation is two departments of government trying to wash their hands of any legal liability and transferring it to our communities.

The sixth recommendation was that there must be cooperation between First Nations and regional officers of Indian Affairs and Health Canada so that they can strengthen and work together to ensure the quality of water and sewer systems on reservations.

It is a very good recommendation, too. We often wonder why a recommendation needs to be made on something that should be done as a matter of course. Recommendations are made when people see a gap or something missing.

In 1995, obviously, the two departments saw some issues important enough to call for this recommendation that they begin working with their people in a more cooperative fashion to maintain the quality of water and sewer systems on the reservations.

I also want to address Environment Canada. This issue of quality of water is not just about what comes out of the tap, but the source water issue is important as well. As I said to you earlier, as a young boy I drank from the Saskatchewan River. That was the source of our drinking water, but it was also the source of water for many of our uses. I now know as a much older man that Environment Canada has the responsibility to protect the source water in this country. One often wonders what they have been doing, in the past 20 or 30 years, about protecting the Saskatchewan River to make it possible for our people to maintain their traditional way of life and their usual occupations of relying on natural water as I did as a child.

This raises broader issues about environmental protection in this country. I know now that a person dipping his cup into the Saskatchewan River does not cause the pollution. Pollution is a result of development and civilization. Pollution is also caused by effluent from farming and ranching. It is caused by effluent from forestry operations along the Saskatchewan River and all the cities that dump their treated or untreated sewage into the river. As it accumulates downstream, the water becomes undrinkable and even unsafe for swimming, as is the case even here in the City of Ottawa.

I wish to raise the issue of jurisdiction among departments. I understand from my research on this matter that Health Canada is responsible only for studying the water as it leaves the plant and not for what comes out of the tap.It is not clear who is responsible for the water that comes out of the tap. The Department of Indian Affairs claims that it is only responsible for the infrastructure, that is, the physical plant. They assist in setting it up and maintaining it. However, they are not responsible for the quality of water that comes out of it. There are three departments, all with some responsibility, but there is no clear understanding of who has the ultimate responsibility for safe water.

It is very important, in order that the Senate can understand the true nature of this issue, that the government issues a report on the issue of safe drinking water on First Nations reserves.

Through the summit initiated by Dennis Mills, I have learned that the government has been doing studies, but those studies have not yet been shared with us. Perhaps they have not yet been completed. However, the government has commissioned studies to learn about the current state of affairs of safe water in First Nations communities. The government should share that information with the Senate in order that you can have a good idea of the kind of water treatment systems we are talking about. We are not talking about state-of-the-art systems. In some cases, water is trucked in. In other cases, water is obtained from community wells.

When Indian Affairs talks about these regimes, they are not systems such as the ones that exist in the City of Ottawa. They are smaller treatment plants, where treatment plants exist, but there are not always treatment plants in communities. In some cases, there is only a community well, and in other cases individual wells, as is the case for many rural Canadians.

The government has known for some time that this issue must be addressed. At the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, the Assembly of First Nations specifically recommended the following:

The federal government must support and finance the establishment of a national First Nations water commission, which will examine and develop policies and carry out action-research in areas of water access, control, jurisdiction, and management issues and establish a research clearing house.

The federal government must review the current federal water policy in light of the Guerin and Sioui Decisions, to affect changes and ensure consistency in accordance with the federal fiduciary responsibilities to First Nations.

The Senate and the First Nations of this country share the same objectives. We want to ensure that our people have safe drinking water. We want to ensure, as you do, that no one dies or has poor health as a result of poor quality drinking water.

The Senate should be aware that sometimes we believe, and for very good reasons, that action is taken only in two circumstances. The first circumstance is when we get really nasty and political. When we put up blockades and such things, action is taken. The other circumstance in which there is action taken is when a crisis arises that the government cannot ignore. That is a very poor basis for creating federal policy when there is a fiduciary responsibility to attend to the rights and needs of our original people.

For some time we have been waiting for the government to get its fiscal house in order so that these issues can be addressed. The federal government now claims to be healthy in terms of fiscal capacity. Yet, we are still waiting for expenditures that will touch upon our communities.

We support the proposed amendments to the existing act because we know that once a law is in place it must be implemented. Implementation of that statute will result in federal expenditures that will trickle down to our communities. We hope that in addition to that trickling down, the issues will be truly addressed.

We look forward to the House of Commons receiving this bill favourably and not resisting the proposed amendment. We also look forward to announcements by the Government of Canada that would give our people comfort that there will be action with respect to the water issues in the communities. We look forward to a new sense of security.

Unsafe water affects children as well as adults. The issue of how poor water quality affects the learning capacity of children must be studied. There are NGOs in Canada that are dedicated to doing that kind of research, and they can be called upon by the Senate for evidence about the impact of poor water on the health of children and the impact of that on their learning abilities.

Senator Christensen: I am looking for a clarification. Mr. Mercredi, you have discussed a number of recommendations. I am wondering how many of those recommendations have actually been implemented. Is there any clear authority that is responsible?

In your presentation it appears that there is not clear authority in First Nation communities for who is responsible for ensuring that the water is safe. Certainly, I am very familiar with what you are describing. In many First Nation communities you have a common well and then someone goes to that well, collects the water in a tank, in the truck, and goes around and delivers it. You really have three areas that must be supervised: The well and the water coming out of it; the person who is delivering it in his truck; and then in the home, which is very often a rental unit from the community.

Is there any clear direction of who is responsible for ensuring that those areas are constantly monitored and looked after?

Mr. Mercredi: I will ask my colleague, Mr. David to respond, because he has more knowledge on the issue than I do.

Mr. William David, Environmental Scientist, Assembly of First Nations: I will give you my impression. I am the Contaminant Coordinator. I typically respond to issues of water quality and water emergencies within the in communities.

My current understanding is that various parties have implemented departmental recommendations. However, the implementations have not always complied with the written report. With respect to monitoring, and I will try to keep this as limited as possible to the bill, who monitors what is known, and the monitoring is conducted. The problem is that the relationship between the monitoring and the subsequent follow up that is necessary to correct the problem does not exist. Currently Health Canada can monitor but cannot enforce. They can only make recommendation to DIAND or First Nations. The bill would address that in the sense that it would give some teeth to those recommendations. That is something that would help out in many instances, to say the least.

Senator Christensen: Monitoring is great, but if you do not know the results of that monitoring, it does not do anyone any good.

Mr. David: Health Canada, in certain instances and in certain regions, actually has a reporting guideline back to the community. It varies from region to region. At the national level, we do not know how that changes from region to region or if it is consistent nationally. I do know that they are working on that.

Once again, the real problem is that once the community knows about it and has the results in hand, at that point there is still no way for them to ensure that their drinking water will be safe. There is no mechanism for them to take those results and force action in terms of improved water quality systems.

Senator Christensen: Are there people who are dealing with this in the communities? Do they have the proper training and are there programs available to them to have that training?

Mr. David: In the last year Indian Affairs has begun to develop and expand what they are calling the circuit rider training program. The goal is to provide training for operators. Our primary concern with that is that there is something called a level of certification for operators meaning a minimum level that operators must meet. The proposed training curricula do not meet those standards. That is our primary concern. Even if the people are trained, we do not know if they will be qualified.

The Acting Chairman: To confirm what you just said, there is a program that will train people, but the level to which they will be trained is not sufficient to the task. Is that correct?

Mr. David: It is my opinion that a certifying authority should certify a water treatment plant operator in order to be able to operate the plant. I consider that to be a qualification.

The Acting Chairman: Would you send the committee a one-page argument to that effect through the clerk, please?

Mr. David: Certainly.

Senator Cochrane: One of my questions has been answered in regard to the training and so on within the communities.

I have one more question. Since the Walkerton tragedy, the Ontario government has made a number of changes, including increasing the Ministry of Environment's budget to $215 million. I am wondering if you have knowledge as to whether any of these changes have had any impact whatsoever on the water situation in the province's First Nations communities?

Mr. David: The only information I have received at the Assembly of First Nations with respect to the processes that are going on in Ontario right now is that the Walkerton inquiry has entertained witnesses from First Nations communities. The amount of provincial resources that are expended on First Nations varies from province to province. I do not have the information for Ontario.

Ultimately, provinces can easily say that First Nations are a federal responsibility and allocate nothing. It is really up to the province, if they wish to expend that on First Nations. I do not see any reason why they would.

Senator Cochrane: There are First Nations communities within that area, are there not?

Mr. David: I am not a lawyer. I am an engineer. However, I have been told and it is my understanding that there is a legal and jurisdictional issue with respect to drinking water safety. Water safety falls under both provincial and federal jurisdiction. Most First Nations are monitored by Health Canada employees, and that is a fairly daunting task, because there are not many of them. I believe there are 80 to 85 environmental officers. That is a guess; it is less than 100, I am fairly sure. They are responsible for monitoring each community for water quality.

The only instances where provinces are explicitly monitoring First Nations water supplies are in those instances of shared systems. I have only heard of that in Saskatchewan.

Senator Adams: We heard from witnesses from the health department and one from Indian Affairs at our committee a week ago. We were told that they did not have much support for Bill S-18. According to the department, that witness said that he did not have enough information about what happened at Walkerton, with the seven people who died there and nothing has really happened yet.

Living in the community, my concern is for clean water in the community. Everyone in the community is concerned about what happened in Walkerton. I have worked with a construction company and I was an electrician before that. Usually it is the public works department that installs the water and sewage systems. They put in the pump systems and so on. We never know any of those people. They might be monitoring systems for the health department.

At public works all they care about is that the water moved, that people turn on the tap and the water comes out. That is all they are concerned with. The water goes down the drain and into the sewer system. There needs to be a system for the water.

I asked a health department employee if the department has any standard for the monitoring of the water. He did not have a response. Every time something happens in a big city, people start monitoring the water right away. In the community, we do not have any labs. In some cases, when we send water out for analysis, it can take a month for us to receive an answer from the labs.

Does the Department of Health and Indian Affairs have some place for monitoring water in the communities? Are they able to understand what is going on in the community? The witness from the Department of Health did not give us very much information here last week.

Mr. David: Are you asking who in the community would have information on water results?

Senator Adams: Yes.

Mr. David: As I said before, there are less than 100 people who are responsible for monitoring of the water. Those people are probably environmental engineers. However, because there are so few of them, in many cases they are travelling from community to community. That means that many of them are not based in the community. Health Canada does have community health representatives who have a wide range of issues that they are supposed to deal with. This should be one of them. Whether every community health representative knows specifically about drinking water issues, is something I am not aware of. In my community, they are.

In terms of public works, perhaps they know, perhaps they do not. It depends if they have engineers with them or not. In many cases, First Nations, are encouraged not to maintain engineers on their permanent staff. The engineers consult, because it saves money. That allows them to spend more on capital works projects. Housing and water quality come out of the same budget and there is a shortage of funds.

It is my understanding that those people should be in the community. How many and how well-versed they are in the intricacies of safe water is not known to me.

The Acting Chairman: Who determines the expenditure of that capital budget to which you have referred? Who decides exactly how and where it will be spent?

Mr. David: It is supposedly a negotiation between the First Nations and the regional branch of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada. Then First Nations do their own internal ranking of how important or how great their problems are and then allocate the money based on how much they have. That is my understanding of how it works. That is not necessarily how it works in practice. There are isolated incidents where some First Nations do not receive funding even though they have a high priority system.

Senator Adams: In my area, there are only two communities where they have a water and sewage system. In most of the rest of the communities, maybe another 20 to 50, they only have a pump well system. Some of those tanks are plastic; some are fibreglass. There is nobody checking them. I do not know how long it takes the water trucks. They may come in every second day or something like that. Those water tanks in the community, or in the houses, are never checked. They only go in there if they have to replace a broken pump or something like that. They are not concerned about the tanks themselves.

I know some places even have water coming out from the lake and from the pump system from the reservoir. Sometimes people are gone for a week or a couple of weeks and in some cases the water is not touched for a couple of months. Take for example, teachers, who go away for summer holidays and come back to water that has been sitting for two months. There should be more monitoring in these cases.

If we work on the bill, and if it passes in the Senate and House of Commons, will it be helpful for you? We do not get very much support from the health department. Will Bill S-18 be helpful, if it passes the Senate and the House of Commons?

Mr. Mercredi: Senator, you know the grass roots issues as well as anyone because you are one of us. You understand it probably better than most people do.

If you wish to look at the problem areas you must begin with the law. We supported this initiative because we know that law must be followed. Someone must comply with the law along the way. This bill cannot hurt; it will only help. The real issue is that there is not enough money allocated by the federal government for water safety in Aboriginal communities.

It is not right for a community to have just a water tank. I do not think that is Canadian at all. The technology exists to serve even small communities that have small populations of 50 to 100 people. There is new technology that can be made available to these communities that was not available before. The cost of providing adequate water treatment plants in the communities is manageable.

When it comes to expenditures that are controlled by Indian Affairs in terms of water treatment plants, that negotiation is not based on need. It is a negotiation based on the security of resources. The ability to negotiate and influence the department is critical on the outcome of negotiations. However, you are negotiating on the scarcity of existing resources. That is why the Senate needs to review the regimes that exist to get a sense of what type of treatment plants exist in the communities. After that information has been studied it should be compared to a similar community of a similar size that is non-Aboriginal. I am certain that information will compel members of parliament to act in a different way and to appropriate moneys for this initiative.

The other issue that I see is the one of responsibility. Should the person who delivers the water be held accountable for anyone who dies? Should Health Canada be held responsible for the source water that the person is relying on? These are important issues. Issues of liability cannot be taken lightly. That issue cannot be transferred to our people.

What is happening with the devolution initiatives with Health Canada is to devolve that responsibility to our communities and our people. Our people are being expected to take the liability of ill-equipped and ill-conceived systems. That is not where we want to be. That is why I say that the other issue the Senate needs to look at is the issue of legal liability for this issue.

I pointed out that there are three federal departments involved in this issue. There must be some rationale developed on how the fiduciary responsibility will be respected by any one department. Ultimately, the responsibility must rest with the federal government.

The Acting Chairman: If this bill becomes law, it will follow from it that determination will be made, perhaps, at some point, by a court.

Senator Finnerty: Information on the Web site of the Assembly of First Nations notes that the AFN is currently involved in gathering information on the state of the drinking water of First Nations. Have you any progress, or any evaluation of that progress?

Mr. David: AFN obtained a list of 79 communities. That list was partial and incomplete. However, the list contains the community water systems that we believe to be dangerous and unsafe.

We are engaged in calling those communities to see, first, if they know that their water is dangerous; and, second, the parameter or the actual problem. We are still in the middle of that process because of staffing constraints. We are actually considering broadening the scope of the effort to all communities. The issue here is that I am sure that information is being collected and collected regionally by Health Canada. I am sure it is being collated nationally at Indian Affairs. However, we do not have access to that information. We are looking to collect it ourselves.

The Acting Chairman: Senator Grafstein, you are intimately familiar obviously with the effect that this bill will have on First Nations water supplies. Mr. Mercredi and his associate have told us that there are great difficulties attending to the devolution of the responsibility to the First Nations. Who is responsible? Is there enough money to ensure that the water is safe? Who is to take the residual responsibility? These are the concerns of Mr. Mercredi. He says that there are not the resources in place to take care of the responsibility if this bill places the responsibility on whoever is responsible for the water coming out of the end of the tap. Would you, in four minutes, address that question?

Senator Grafstein: Mr. Mercredi, you and I have already had a lengthy exchange on this subject. At a wonderful summit, in the Mohawk territories this summer, we tried to pinpoint this problem. You were an active participant there and so was I. That gave me a deeper insight into this problem. I came away even me more concerned than I was before.

I touched the tip of the iceberg when Senator Watt, Senator Adams and Senator Christensen brought this issue to our attention some time ago. The situation is worse than I thought. Quite frankly, we did not get any solace when we heard from departmental officials that they have delegated "responsibility" for water safety to the Aboriginal communities. I do not think there has been a parallel allocation of training, resources or whatever. I am sensitive to what you say, Mr. Mercredi.

Having said that, the other big problem is lack of information. We cannot even correlate. There is no relation between illness, which is a health problem and the water problem.

As honourable senators will recall, I did ask the officials from the department to get that information and they pointed out the difficulty of obtaining that information. Since there is a clear and present danger, hopefully people will respond more sharply than they should.

Mr. Mercredi, having in mind the federal responsibility for drinking water, I take it you have no objection to this bill. What this bill really does is go through the 44 or 45 pieces of legislation, many of which cover Aboriginal responsibilities under the Constitution, and clearly identifies regulatory responsibility in the Food and Drugs Act. Do you, on behalf of First Nations, have any concern about the federal government clarifying its responsibility here?

Mr. Mercredi: No, we welcome that initiative that you feel addresses the situation.

Senator Grafstein: Mr. Chairman, you should understand that this in no way, shape or form, relieves the First Nations, the Department of Indian Affairs, the provinces or the territories from their responsibility. This is not taking responsibility from one jurisdiction and moving it up to another. What it does, is focus responsibility on making the system more accountable.

I have had informal conversations with both Mr. Mercredi and other Aboriginal leaders. All of them have said that they have no problem with that. I am delighted that, on the record, Mr. Mercredi is saying that as well for the purposes of this committee.

The Acting Chairman: Mr. Mercredi, do you have anything further that you wish to add in the next 30 seconds?

Mr. Mercredi: The Senate needs to review this issue of responsibility. The bill will make the law work, but it still does not resolve the issue of responsibility. From what I heard today, from what you have heard from the witnesses from the department, they are inferring that we are responsible. We now have the responsibility for maintaining quality water for our communities, but we do not have the resources or the capacity to do so. There has been no formal acceptance of that responsibility.

Clearly, our people would not take over the fiduciary responsibility of the federal government. We would want the federal government to maintain that responsibility. This issue needs to be examined in detail.

The Acting Chairman: Senator Grafstein has just said that this does not absolve anyone from responsibility. This bill makes clear, as I understand it, that the responsibility will be spread out in many different places. For example, in a city, the municipally-owned water system, the responsibility will be theirs to provide a clean system. This is provided that they are given source water that is treatable. That responsibility would fall to whoever is in charge of each stage of water delivery as it moves along from the source water, to the treatment plants, and then to the delivery systems. The proprietor of those three parts of the system that delivers water will be responsible. This bill will not absolve any responsibility. It will make clear where those responsibilities reside. As I said, that may happen in the courts after the fact.

Thank you for being here today Mr. Mercredi. We appreciate your testimony.

The committee adjourned.