Thousands of Canadians can't drink their water: report

More than 1,800 Canadian communities started the year under drinking water advisories, a new report says.

The investigation by the Council of Canadians found 1,838 advisories in place in January, 169 of them in First Nations communities.

“There are thousands of people across Canada that aren’t able to drink their water,” said Emma Lui, a water campaigner for the council and author of the report.

British Columbia accounted for almost 30 per cent of those advisories, with 544 advisories.

Saskatchewan had 16 per cent, with 294, and Newfoundland represented almost 13 per cent, with 233.

Ontario’s report includes only boil water advisories, while other provinces include “do not consume” warnings, water quality and other advisories.

“There’s a lot of gaps in water protection across the country and a big one is having national enforceable drinking water standards,” Lui told Yahoo Canada News.

“What there ends up being is a patchwork of different standards, depending on what a province has passed.”

Among First Nations communities, Ontario had the most advisories in place (79), followed by B.C. (35), Saskatchewan (24), Alberta (17), Atlantic provinces (7) and Quebec (2).

Most of those are boil water advisories but “do not consume” orders were in place in the Kitigan Zibi community in Quebec due to levels of naturally occurring uranium in the water, God’s Lake First Nation of Manitoba, Pinaymootang in Manitoba, Kahkewistahaw in Saskatchewan.

The water advisory for the Neskantaga First Nation, a remote fly-in community in northeastern Ontario, has been in place since 1995.

Shoal Lake 40 First Nation has been under a boil water advisory for 17 years, since an outbreak of cryptosporidium in the community.

A water treatment plant would solve the problem but the community has been on a man-made island since 1914, when the city of Winnipeg dug a canal across their peninsula in order to supply their community with water from the lake.

“The greatest irony is the city of Winnipeg’s water intake sits on their reserve,” said Cuyler Cotton, spokesman and policy advisor for the band.

Twice, Shoal Lake 40 First Nation has pursued construction of a treatment plant and twice Indian and Northern Affairs Canada cancelled the project because the costs were too high, Cotton said.

“It’s a logistical nightmare” to build on an island with only an ice road in winter, Cotton said. And “it’s hugely expensive.”

The report noted that all provinces and territories but Ontario, Prince Edward Island and Nunavut post information on drinking water advisories publicly on websites.

The advisories were put in place for problems ranging from source water contamination to turbidity, or cloudiness.

The council wants a National Water Policy that recognizes clean drinking water as a human right. Instead, the Conservative government has watered down the legislation that does exist, Lui said.

The Navigable Waters Act, Fisheries Act and Canadian Environmental Assessment Act were all revised under omnibus budget legislation in 2012.

Canada accounts for about seven per cent of the world’s renewable freshwater, but Lui said threats to that supply include hydraulic fracking for liquefied natural gas, oil and gas production, mining, climate change and massive hydroelectric projects like the Site C dam in B.C. and the Keeyask in Manitoba.

Lui said Canadians take clean water for granted.

“There’s the myth of abundance,” she said. “People do think we have a lot of water but when you look at how much these more water-intensive industries withdraw … I think that governments are approving these projects without really thinking through ensuring that we need drinking water for the future.”