Tag Archives: First Nations

Legoislature

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Province House, the home of our provincial legislative assembly, has been closed and under renovation since 2015. It officially reopens tomorrow. I hadn’t been by the building in over a year, so was surprised, as I dashed by yesterday, to see the Lego-blockiness of the new look, the different shades of stone used for repairs, which I expect will all eventually mellow into sameness. I like this current look, though, very Minecrafty.

Still wish we had built an energy-efficient legislative building and government complex in the middle of the province, built into a hillside (I’m looking at you, Springton!), covered in solar panels and with desks in the round. Province House would have made a great provincial museum, as it is part museum anyway.

While on the subject of institutional change, I think Canada needs to stop using the British monarch as our head of state and instead have our Governor General and Lieutenant Governor (or whatever we might choose to call them) positions chosen by and from the First Nations, Inuit and Métis people. The First People as the Top People, as it should have always been.

Symbols are powerful things.

A large stone building with many windows and four columns, with a driveway and grass in the foreground.
Province House, Charlottetown, October 22, 2026

Long-term drinking water advisories

28 advisories as of July 6, 2023

The federal government of Canada has been promising for decades to restore clean drinking water to First Nations communities. It is a basic human right Canadians expect and deserve, and it is a top priority for all municipal governments. This same concern is not extended to the First Peoples of our country.

According to the Indigenous Services Canada website, four communities had that promise fulfilled over the past year – one in Saskatchewan and three in Ontario – and 28 remain on the list.

Political leaders refer to these situations as “challenging” and “complex”, and I’m sure they are, but surely things could move faster if there was the real will to make it happen. I remember when the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami occurred and Canada rightly sent the DART (Disaster Assistance Response Team) unit to Sri Lanka to assist their citizens. The DART were said at the time to be water restoration experts and produced 3.5 million litres of drinking water a day during that relief mission.

Perhaps the government could declare an emergency here and speed things up a bit? I’m sure if the water in downtown Ottawa was suddenly declared undrinkable, or if bathing babies in it gave them sores and rashes, something would be done pretty quickly. We can and must do better.