Je croirais que je suis encore endormi ce matin parce que c’est à mon tour de parler puis je suis encore assis. Ceci dit, ça me fait plaisir de parler du projet de loi Bill 46.

This province is facing issues at the moment, and this bill does not address any of them. We are not seeing any red tape being eliminated in order to move forward and immediately fix the crisis of workers in health care or multiple issues First Nations communities are facing, such as boil-water advisories, contamination of soil and others.

I’ll give you an example. When we talk about First Nations issues, last week I had the opportunity to go to Attawapiskat. In Attawapiskat, there are a lot of issues happening. One of the biggest ones is the ATR expansion, which is the expanded reserve. They have nowhere to grow. In other words, they have nowhere to build houses or bring houses in to be able to accommodate the community. It’s pretty sad when they show me around and the chief is bringing me around the community. He says, “Here, Guy, these are facilities for COVID, but we had to put homeless people in these units.” We go again, and then he shows me a facility that burned down that was accommodating homelessness, so they had to move people into the youth centre. So they have no more youth centre. They had to accommodate homelessness in their community, because there is no home.

You think we have a crisis up north, or even down south? Well, you know what? I say this often in the House; je le dis souvent en Chambre : You can multiply it by 10 when you go even on James Bay coast.

Through times, I’ve had opportunities to visit homes. When you walk in a living room and you’ve got a stack of mattresses so that they can sleep—sometimes they take turns sleeping—it’s pretty sad. Or you see prospector tents behind the house because there’s no more room in the house to have that. There are three or four generations living in this dwelling that was built for six. How is that acceptable in Ontario?

It’s always so easy to say—c’est tellement facile de dire : « Ah! Ça, c’est le fédéral. » On passe la puck. Ce sont de bons joueurs de hockey, de l’autre bord, en passant, d’excellents joueurs de hockey.

Mais la réalité est que ces communautés-là ont des situations qu’on ne croirait pas. C’est pour ça que j’invite souvent le gouvernement à venir faire un tour et voir la réalité qui existe dans le Nord. Parce que quand tu rentres dans une maison puis qu’il y a ça d’épais de matelas pour être capable d’accommoder le monde pour dormir, c’est inacceptable. Puis on voit, à moins 40 degrés—il ne faut pas oublier que leur hiver est beaucoup plus dur que les vôtres auxquels vous êtes habitués dans le Sud. Et c’est encore pire quand on parle du Grand Nord, où le moins 40 degrés, c’est normal. Ils vivent dans des tentes de prospecteurs—puis c’est comme acceptable? Je ne mentionne pas l’eau potable encore—je vais en parler. Mais ça, c’est des réalités qu’on a.

On parle de « reducing red tape ». Je veux revenir à Attawapiskat, parce que quand j’étais là, la chef me montrait les places où ils sont obligés de faire—elle m’a amené à une place où il y avait deux igloos en plastique. Ils sont isolés, puis c’était une des solutions du gouvernement, d’envoyer des igloos pour être capable d’accommoder du monde. On s’entend qu’un igloo, ce n’est pas gros. Puis c’est en plastique. C’était comme rire des Premières Nations de prendre ça quand on sait qu’il y a des « portables », des maisons préfabriquées qui pourraient—mais ce qui est encore pire, elle a dit, « On ne peut même pas prendre ces maisons préfabriquées parce qu’on n’a pas de place où les mettre. On a besoin de faire une expansion de la communauté. » Elle m’a montré une mappe, puis il y a juste deux manières de le faire : soit on déménage l’aéroport, qui est juste à côté de la communauté, ou on va sur l’autre côté, qui appartient—c’est du territoire qui est avec les ressources naturelles—that the MNR administers, but it’s on their traditional territory.

There’s a road that goes to the port, yet there’s a bump-up because the mine put a bump-up, so now the government is siding on the mine’s side and now the community cannot expand in that direction. They’re stuck; they’re landlocked. When you think that their traditional territories are huge—they’re on their traditional lands and they’re landlocked. How does that make sense? It’s not the place that needs it. There are two ways they can expand. The only two ways are towards the airport or towards the other way that would make sense.

That road that the bump-up is on—they call it the bump-up, but they put a protest on the road because they’re afraid of the First Nations putting blockades. But the First Nations are not against that. They just want to expand and they want to make sure that what’s happening on their traditional territories, that they’re made aware and transparency, and they want to ensure that they approve everything that happens.

To hold a community hostage, what’s happening now, that they can’t even expand—think about this: Some of the community members got out of the community. They want to come back. They said, “I’d love to come back and contribute to my community, but there’s no home. There is no house to accommodate my family.” They’re losing one of their—moi, je dis tout le temps que la plus grande richesse, c’est la jeunesse. Puis ce qu’ils font—ils n’ont pas de place et ils sont obligés de dire : « Bien, écoute, on n’a pas de maisons; on ne peut pas vous accommoder. » Comment est-ce qu’on peut justifier ça?

Encore, écoute, c’est pour ça que j’en parle. Je suis revenu plus choqué que jamais, puis je me contrôle pour ne pas m’énerver et commencer à dire certaines choses que je ne devrais pas dire, puis que je vais être obligé de retirer mes paroles.

But when you hear that they signed an agreement with the federal and the provincial—Mr. Rickford signed a deal; Marc Miller signed a deal. I’m trying to find the agreement that was signed. It was signed with Attawapiskat. It reads, “Renewed Relationship Commitment: Mino-Wha-Ko-Me-Ti-Win.” It was signed by former Chief Ignace Gull, by Honourable Seamus O’Regan, minister of Indigenous affairs, federal, and Honourable Greg Rickford, Minister of Indigenous Affairs. What it was all about: I’ll read the part that says, “In recognition of parties’ urgency of water issues in Attawapiskat First Nation, Indigenous Services Canada will take immediate action on replacing the two reverse-osmosis units that provide community drinking water”—still a problem.

Think about this: In Attawapiskat, if you take a shower, they tell you, you can’t take one for more than a couple of minutes. Make sure there’s a window open. Make sure you leave a door open, because there’s too much chemicals in the water and they can’t drink it. They say it’s potable, but nobody drinks it. They have to go get their water in different places to be bottled water, so they carry a bottle of water. But think about this: If they stay too long in the shower, they get a rash on their skin. That’s a reality.

We talk about this over and over and over in the House. My colleague from Kiiwetinoong has got a community with a 28-year boil-water advisory. You talk about urgency. You talk about good removal of red tape. Hello? Government, listen, because that’s the reality they live day to day. For 28 years, a community boil-water advisory in Ontario? We signed deals with the federal—because don’t forget Treaty 9. The province signed this, so you can’t pass the buck, because you’re part of it. Why are we still having this discussion? Why are we still talking about a boil-water advisory? Why are we still talking about communities that are taking showers and getting rashes? Is that acceptable? I don’t think so, and I’m convinced you don’t think so. But do something about it.

This agreement was signed in 2019, and nothing has changed. We sign deals, agreements, documents with these First Nations, and then we do nothing. Sound familiar? Governments have been doing it to First Nations for 400 years, and we continue doing this. This is colonialism at its best, and we should be ashamed of it. That’s good red tape—remove it. Fix it, because you signed the agreements with them. You signed them, but we don’t respect it, so our word doesn’t mean—and then you wonder why First Nations are putting moratoriums on their traditional territories, because they cannot trust you because of agreements like this.

That’s one example. I can talk about Kashechewan, which gets evacuated almost every spring. And yet, when this government got elected, they signed another agreement. They turned a red document into a blue document and signed a thing saying they will move the community from Kashechewan to a higher location. Five years later, the road is not even built. But it’s funny, we talk about the Ring of Fire. How fast is that road going to get built? How many millions are invested to build that? But for a community that every year has to be evacuated, de-rooted from their communities, their traditional territories, we turn a blind eye.

En français, je le dis souvent en Chambre : « loin des yeux, loin du coeur ». On ne devrait pas se péter les bretelles là-dessus. On ne devrait pas être fier de ça. Parce qu’on signe des ententes puis on ne les respecte pas. Après ça on se demande pourquoi les Premières Nations disent qu’elles mettent des moratoires, que c’est fini. J’ai deux communautés, moi—Fort Albany, puis il y a aussi Kashechewan—qui ont mis un moratoire totalement sur leurs territoires ancestraux. Pourquoi? C’est simple. Elles disent qu’elles essaient d’adresser les problèmes. On sait que le projet qui procède, comme celui-là avec le Cercle de feu—on veut en discuter avec le gouvernement, parce qu’on prend des études environnementales trop étroites. On doit prendre ça beaucoup plus élargi. Il ne faut pas oublier que ces communautés-là sont en aval d’où le développement peut se faire.

Water flows north, so everything that could happen, guess what’s going to happen? They’re going to pay the price. These communities are going to pay the price. That’s why they put a moratorium and said, “No. You cannot ignore us.” Just because you talk to a few communities doesn’t mean you have consent from First Nations. You need to talk to all First Nations. If you think you can ignore them and you’re going to get the thing done, man, you’ve got a surprise coming. You’ve got a huge surprise coming.

To get back to Attawapiskat, because it’s easy to get carried away and talk about these issues—because when you go there and you see the amount of issues they have and yet all we’re doing is playing political Ping-Pong, it’s shameful. Again, replace the two osmosis units and provide communities with drinking water. Like I said, Attawapiskat is still carrying water. Complete immediate sampling of raw water sources, because what’s happening is the lake is dying. They’re getting their water from a lake that is dying, so they have to put the chemicals. When the system was built, it was built for the hospital and the nurses; it was not built for the community. What they did, they connected the community to the system. When the river was right passing there, when they could have had a constant flow of fresh water, they didn’t do that. The sad part about this—you just say, “It can’t be”—the lake is beside the dump. The lake is beside the dump. Guess what happens in the springtime? Last year, the river almost overflowed, and it’s overflowed in the past. Guess where the water is going?

You need to go in these communities and see for yourself, because once you come back from these communities, you can’t say you didn’t know or you can’t pretend you didn’t know. You won’t be able to say “loin des yeux, loin du coeur,” because now you will have seen.

To have your water beside a dump—that’s what the chief was telling me. She showed me; she drove me there. She said, “Guy, the lake is right across”—there was a piece of bush. You could see where the lake was because you can tell through the trees. She says, “Guy, that’s what’s happening.” The spring thaw contaminates are going through that water. That’s reality. That would be great red tape: to move the source of the water. Fix it. Fix it like this. Because when we want to build a Volkswagen facility, how fast do we fly through the thing? How fast do we get it done? In a week. But for First Nations, where their potable water comes right beside a dump, nothing is being done. A 28-year boil-water advisory in Kiiwetinoong: Shouldn’t that be done? Come on. Be realistic and do the right thing here. It’s not because you don’t know, because we speak enough in the House here. We speak on it constantly.

To get back to Attawapiskat: ATR, the expansion, do you know how long they have been fighting for that? Take a guess. Thirty years, asking to expand their communities to be able to build houses to accommodate their community members. Thirty years, nothing has been done. Oh, we signed agreements; we signed beautiful documents that talk all about this, and yet nothing happens. That’s not unique to Attawapiskat, by the way. There are stories throughout First Nations communities on the James Bay coast and up north, the Far North, that we keep bringing here, yet nothing is being done.

Support Attawapiskat to complete existing immediate water treatment plant repair project, 12 hydrants; refurbish the filtration system and provide additional support to the water treatment plant operators. Indigenous Services Canada will work with Attawapiskat to identify and implement other measures to address medium- and long-term water quality improvements, including work with Attawapiskat First Nation—and Ontario—to complete the addition to reserve. It’s not always federal; it’s provincial.

We’re supposed to work and meet with the community to try to look at expanding the community. For 30 years we have been working on this—30 years. Yet we signed a document in July 2019—they never met once; they met maybe once, and that’s it. Meetings are supposed to happen in Attawapiskat; nothing is happening. Nothing is happening because we’re not talking about expanding the reserve.

Support a comprehensive community development plan, and plan for a new raw water intake and water treatment plant on the lands that are subject to the addition to reserve. Because if we’re going to build that, we need to put the infrastructure together. But yet, nothing has been done. Nothing has been done.

Kash: Like I said, they signed an agreement four years ago to move the community. Of course, it hasn’t been built. How long do they think it’s going to take to move this community? Because you need to do the sewers, do everything, move the school, move the hospital, move everything—but nothing, nothing. Yet, they did a big thing, remember? I know my colleague was with me when they signed this. You made a great, great thing about this new signing agreement to move Kash.