end all long-term boil-water advisories

GOLDSTEIN: Trudeau drops deadline for clean water on all reserves

GOLDSTEIN: Trudeau drops deadline for clean water on all reserves

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau no longer gives a specific date for fulfilling his broken 2015 election promise to end all long-term boil-water advisories on Indigenous reserves and it’s not hard to see why. He broke that promise when he failed to achieve the March 31, 2021 deadline he set for himself. On Monday, Trudeau said his government has eliminated 109 long-term boil advisories since coming to power in 2015 and will finish the job … eventually. Actually, they’ve eliminated 108 long-term advisories, and now have 51 (not 50) outstanding ones. That’s because the feds, as of Monday, hadn’t updated their own website to report the boil-water advisory for Okanese First Nation in Saskatchewan has changed from short-term to long-term.

First Nations workers in Sask. sacrifice wages, vacation to run underfunded water systems

First Nations workers in Sask. sacrifice wages, vacation to run underfunded water systems

Rebecca Zagozewski is the executive director of the Saskatchewan First Nations Water Association, a non-profit organization that works to build First Nations’ capacity to take care and control of their own water services. She says recruitment and retention of water treatment plant operators is a “real problem” on Saskatchewan First Nations, largely because they often can’t pay operators competitive wages.