Business
Ongoing water crisis is a national embarrassment
From the MacDonald Laurier Institute
By Matthew Cameron and Ken Coates
Cameron and Coates call for an increased sense of urgency from government and offer several policy initiatives to improve water access for First Nations communities.
Access to clean drinking water is a necessity, yet delivering it to all 40 million Canadians, particularly Indigenous communities, has proven to be elusive. Successive federal governments have both acknowledged the problem, yet have failed to fully eradicate drinking water advisories, which remain in place in at least 27 Indigenous communities.
In a new paper, The water conundrum and Indigenous communities in Canada, Matthew Cameron and Indigenous Program Director Ken Coates shed light on the water insecurity crisis on Canada’s reservations and recommend a number of multijurisdictional policy initiatives, urging policymakers adopt an increased sense of urgency in systematically address the problem – not just throwing money at it.
The authors identify several key barriers to resolving the water insecurity crisis:
- Community location: some communities are located too far away from freshwater reserves; many of these places were settled in the 1950s and 1960s, without scientific study of the suitability of their locations for water purposes;
- Long-term maintenance: trained personnel often work in stressful conditions with little or no local backup, making it difficult to find and retain these workers;
- Little margin for error: nationally determined Canadian water quality standards are, appropriately, difficult to meet, setting a high bar for small, isolated communities;,
- Poor national understanding of the challenges: Canadians who live off reservation are largely unaware of the urgency of the crisis in Indigenous communities.
Cameron and Coates recommend the following policy initiatives to address the crisis:
- Continuous transparency; authorities should make information about water delivery systems and water treatment facility down-times available to the public;
- Region-wide water management systems: these would provide for a sharing of personnel, professional backup, and collective learning about water systems maintenance and treatment facilities, thereby creating a maintenance economy;
- Option of relocation: in extreme cases, where water supplies are unacceptable and alternatives too expensive, communities could be given the option of voluntary relocation and rebuilding in a location with better access to potable water;
- More attention to remote solutions: giving agency to local Indigenous governments and/or companies to resolve the crisis;
- Increasing urgency: Indigenous Canadians wonder if the country cares or even knows about their lack of access to clean water– greater awareness among Canadians can push politicians to seek policy alternatives.
“Understanding the challenges in full, handling emergencies expeditiously, developing and implementing long-term solutions, and committing publicly to providing First Nations with adequate and appropriate water supplies is not an act of generosity or an optional exercise. Maintaining safe drinking water is a foundational responsibility of government,” conclude Cameron and Coates.
“Further delays should not be acceptable.”
To learn more, read the full paper here:
***
Matthew Cameron is a Yukon-based researcher and academic. He is an Instructor at Yukon University, where he has taught in the Liberal Arts, Indigenous Governance and Multimedia and Communications programs since 2016.
Ken Coates is a Distinguished Fellow and Director of Indigenous Affairs at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and a Professor of Indigenous Governance at Yukon University.
From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation
By Ryan Thorpe
Like all areas of Ottawa’s ballooning bureaucracy, the cost and size of the Prime Minister’s Office has increased under the Trudeau government.
The inflation-adjusted cost of staffing the PMO has risen by 16 per cent under the watch of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, according to access-to-information records obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
Salary costs for the 103 staffers in the PMO came to $10.5 million in 2022-23. That figure does not represent overall compensation for PMO staff (including benefits), but rather base salary, according to the records.
Taxpayers are now on the hook for an additional $3.2 million in annual PMO salary costs over 2014-15, the last full year former prime minister Stephen Harper was in office.
“The cost of running the PMO has increased under Trudeau, but it’s a good bet most Canadians don’t think they’re getting any better performance from the prime minister,” said Franco Terrazzano, CTF Federal Director. “If Trudeau can’t find savings right under his nose, how can taxpayers trust him to cut the fat across government?”
The growth in PMO staff comes at a time when the Trudeau government has been ballooning the federal bureaucracy across the board.
Both the number and cost of the federal bureaucracy has exploded under Trudeau’s watch, according to other government records obtained by the CTF.
The number of federal bureaucrats increased by 42 per cent under Trudeau, with more than 108,000 new bureaucrats added to the government payroll.
Spending on federal bureaucrats hit a record high $67.4 billion in 2022-23, representing a 68 per cent increase since 2016.
The size of the federal c-suite has also expanded, with the number of executives increasing by 42 per cent under Trudeau.
The Trudeau government has handed out more than $1 billion in bonuses since 2015 and more than one million pay raises in the last four years.
Meanwhile, spending on consultants also reached a record high, with planned expenditures for 2023-24 sitting at $21.6 billion.
“Everywhere you look – the PMO, the federal c-suite, the bureaucracy – the cost and size of government is out of control,” Terrazzano said. “Trudeau must take air out of Ottawa’s ballooning bureaucracy and the place to start is his own office.”
PMO staff costs, government records obtained by the CTF
|
Fiscal year |
Number of PMO staff |
PMO salary costs |
|
2014-15 |
94 |
$7,258,436 |
|
2015-16 |
74 |
$6,353,188 |
|
2016-17 |
84 |
$7,462,686 |
|
2017-18 |
99 |
$8,155,068 |
|
2018-19 |
100 |
$8,479,353 |
|
2019-20 |
90 |
$8,536,672 |
|
2020-21 |
99 |
$9,840,834 |
|
2021-22 |
94 |
$9,383,328 |
|
2022-23 |
103 |
$10,536,649 |
|
Total |
|
$76,006,214 |
From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation
By Carson Binda
Taxpayers are glad to see Parks Canada backing away from a $12-million deer cull on Sidney Island.
“Parks Canada’s plan to blow $12-million on a deer cull was ridiculous from day one,” said Carson Binda, B.C. Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. “Parks Canada is right to cancel the project, but it’s worrying that it took them this much wasted money to figure it out.”
Parks Canada used so-called sharpshooters in helicopters, firing down on invasive fallow deer from above, during phase one of the cull which occurred last December. The so-called sharpshooters killed 84 deer, but only 63 were the correct species. The cost for phase one came in at $834,000, roughly $10,000 per deer.
Subsequently, Parks Canada erected fencing made of fish nets around the 12-square-kilometer Island to trap the deer, in anticipation for a second round of culls which were scheduled for Nov. 15.
Several animals became entangled in the netting, painfully thrashing themselves to death.
“Seeing deer thrashing to death because of bureaucratic incompetence is heartbreaking,” Binda said. “Parks Canada needs to explain how this happened and how much taxpayer cash was wasted on this project before the cancellation.”
Residents of Sidney Island and local hunters have been culling deer on the island for years, for free. Last fall 54 deer were culled by local hunters at no cost to the taxpayer.
“Local hunters filling their freezers at no cost to the taxpayer is obviously better than Parks Canada blowing millions of dollars to shoot the wrong deer from helicopters and leaving others to suffer in a net,” Binda said. “Hopefully the bureaucrats learn from their mistakes with this boondoggle.”
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