'This is Canada': Northern Ontario community forced to pay nearly $40 for 24-pack of bottled water

Journalist Brandi Morin shared "insane" posts about the reality of the Neskantaga First Nation in Northern Ontario and its nearly 30-year boil-water advisory, the longest-ever in Canada. One photo, posted to Instagram, shows a supermarket register with the price for a 24=pack of bottled water ringing up at $37.99.

“Community members get water flown in by the federal government but it’s rationed,” Morin writes in the caption. “So if they run out, the local Northern Store is the only place to get clean drinking water. Insane.”

Morin was in Neskantaga First Nation for an assignment with Canadian Geographic.

Longest boil-water advisory in Canadian history

The boil-water advisory on the remote community of about 300 people is believed to be the longest in Canadian history.

In the early 1990s, the First Nation community was relocated from its original reserve at Lansdowne House because the swampy grounds were deemed unsuitable for expansion.

Ottawa covered the cost for the construction of its water treatment plant, which almost instantly was plagued with problems. A boil-water advisory was issued on Feb. 1, 1995 and has remained in place since.

In 2015, the federal Liberals committed to ending drinking water advisories on reserve communities by March 2021. There are still 31 long-term drinking water advisories, as of July 21, 2024, according to the government's tracker.

Accessible by air or ice road in the winter, Neskantaga First Nation faced a number of forced evacuations in recent years, as a result of contamination of the reserve’s reservoir.

"[E]very time we fix something… something else breaks," then-advisor and current Chief Chris Moonias told CBC in 2022.

In another social media post, Morin shared a video of community member and water co-ordinator Derek Moonias as he picked up a bi-weekly shipment of water delivered by the federal government. In the video, Moonias shows the scars he and his three-year-old grandson have developed from bathing in the contaminated water.

A 2016 report by Human Rights Watch outlined some of the additional challenges faced by people on the reserve when it came to obtaining drinking water. Unless they had access to a vehicle, some would have to walk to community water points for treated water, and carry it back. This proved to be a challenge for at-risk individuals, and was especially difficult in the winter.

The federal government says a plan is in place and work is underway to address any outstanding issues to a water treatment centre, which was commissioned in December 2020.

Food insecurity in Northern Ontario communities

Along with a boil-water advisory, Neskantaga First Nation also faces steep food pricing as a result of its remote location.

In 2023, people on the reserve were paying between $40 and $70 for a 10-kilogram bag of flour and more than $30 for sugar, according to Wayne Moonias, who was chief at that time. The federal government committed $4.5 million towards Matawa First Nations Management Harvesters Support Program to help remote communities in Northwestern Ontario combat food insecurity. Neskantaga was one of the five communities included in the program.

According to a 2018 survey by First Nations Information Governance Centre, more than one third of First Nations households were considered moderately food insecure (37.7 per cent), while 13.1 per cent were severely food insecure.