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Mark Carney’s investment summit could pave the way to a corporate carve-up of Canada
(breachmedia.ca)
Bay Street has been on a full court press for the government to privatize Canada’s public infrastructure. The Prime Minister might be ready to do it
The post Mark Carney’s investment summit could pave the way to a corporate carve-up of Canada appeared first on The Breach.
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The head of the world’s largest far-right organization is coming to Canada—unless he’s stopped
(breachmedia.ca)
The leader of a major Hindu nationalist network is planning a North American public relations tour amid scrutiny of right-wing religious persecution in India
The post The head of the world’s largest far-right organization is coming to Canada—unless he’s stopped appeared first on The Breach.
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Summary
- Internal documents show LNG Canada’s original plans for the project included a commitment that operations would not include routine flaring.
- While LNG Canada and the BC Energy Regulator have promoted the site as an environmental leader, the facility burned about 350 million cubic metres of gas in its first year of operation.
- LNG Canada did not directly respond to questions about the removal of the commitments and said it is currently working to “reduce flaring and progress toward steady, long-term operations.”
This story is a collaboration between The Narwhal and Point Source, a U.K.-based investigative journalism organization.
LNG Canada, the country’s first major liquefied natural gas export facility on B.C.’s West Coast, has made international headlines over the past year — for burning off the gas it should have been exporting.
An issue with one of the facility’s flare stacks has caused the plant to burn off extra gas since starting up in late 2024. It wasn’t supposed to be this way.
Early versions of LNG Canada’s operational plans included detailed environmental commitments — and a promise the Kitimat, B.C., plant would operate “without routine flaring.”
In 2019, the consortium of five foreign-owned companies behind the multi-billion-dollar project told the BC Energy Regulator its massive gas liquefaction and export facility would have minimum disturbance to the local community, assuring the provincial government the plant would be built to specifications that would ensure flaring — the burning of unused gas — would only need to be done in extraordinary circumstances.
Originally, LNG Canada was not planning to regularly burn excess gas through flaring. But in its first year of operation, the company flared every single day.
These promises appeared in multiple versions of regulatory reports submitted to the B.C. government. Six versions of the reports — drafts of LNG Canada’s flaring management plans marked as “restricted” — were included in hundreds of pages of government documents obtained by The Narwhal and UK-based investigative journalism outlet Point Source.
In November 2023, the commitments vanished from the latest drafts — and remained absent from all subsequent drafts and the final version. The removal of commitments close to completion raises fresh questions about whether potential problems during construction may have led the company to downgrade its environmental targets.
A few months later, the mega-project started its commissioning process. Then came the flaring.
As The Narwhal and Point Source previously reported, LNG Canada burned approximately 350 million cubic metres of gas in 2025, making it one of the most polluting LNG facilities in the world. Some unplanned flaring events included multiple occurrences of flames reaching heights of 90 metres, roughly as tall as London’s Big Ben, along with plumes of black smoke settling over the community.
“The fact that LNG Canada showed the regulator multiple draft documents which all said that the facility would not flare on a routine basis was beyond misleading,” Tim Doty, a former state oil and gas inspector from Texas, said in an interview. “This was totally false information.”
During his tenure with the Texas government, Doty managed thousands of air quality monitoring projects as part of environmental assessments of industrial facilities. He’s now a consultant who works on behalf of companies and organizations to assess and monitor emissions at oil and gas facilities around the globe.
Unnecessary flaring of gas essentially wastes the resource — and creates carbon pollution.
Even after LNG Canada quietly dropped its planned commitment to operate without routine flaring, stakeholders continued to tout its environmental credentials. In June 2025, Shell CEO Wael Sawan said LNG Canada would be “one of the lowest-carbon [LNG] projects anywhere in the world,” speaking at the Energy Asia conference in Malaysia.
B.C. Premier David Eby echoed the claim in July that year, saying gas processed at the Kitimat terminal is the “lowest-carbon LNG in the world.”
Many experts now say these claims were fundamentally untrue.
In the small town of Kitimat, B.C., on the province’s North Coast, LNG Canada’s flare is visible day and night.
Christopher Doleman, an LNG and gas specialist at the U.S.-based Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, said the volume of flaring at the facility “undermines claims being made” about low-carbon LNG.
“Statements that have been made by officials saying that the LNG is the cleanest in the world now seem to be completely untrue,” he previously told The Narwhal.
The premier’s office did not reply to a request for an interview, referring questions to the Energy Ministry, which acknowledged it received the questions but ultimately did not respond.
LNG Canada did not directly respond to questions about the removal of the commitments and said it is currently working to “reduce flaring and progress toward steady, long-term operations.”
‘An extremely big polluter’: former oil and gas inspector
LNG Canada flared a minimum of 127,900 cubic metres of gas every day in 2025, with the daily average being much higher: almost one million cubic metres. Government data show 3,648 million cubic metres of gas were sent to the facility last year via the Coastal GasLink pipeline, meaning almost 10 per cent of all gas transported to the terminal was burned off without being used for power or exported.
The average household in Canada consumed around 2,216 cubic metresof natural gas in 2024, according to the Canadian Gas Association. That means LNG Canada burned off the equivalent amount of gas that could have provided energy to 157,942 homes.
Yet, LNG Canada’s documents submitted to the provincial government claim environmental excellence.
“LNG Canada’s ‘commitment and policy on health, safety, security, environment and social performance’ focuses on ways to avoid and minimize negative environmental and social impacts resulting from our operations and enhance the positive impacts in a systematic manner,” the early documents noted.
Previous reporting by The Narwhal found the LNG facility has been dealing with an “integrity issue,” leading to higher levels of flaring.
Doty said regulatory plans for LNG facilities are often subject to multiple revisions by the government regulator.
“It is normal for there to be a bit of back and forth between the operator and the regulator when documents are being prepared that are associated with operating permits which allow the company to release pollution,” he explained. “However, it does seem strange that these documents contained these environmental pledges that were later scrapped entirely.”
The BC Energy Regulator told The Narwhal and Point Source the early versions of the reports “included commitments and commentary that were outside of the intended scope of the report and not consistent with the design of their facility.”
“Routine flaring is authorized for specific purposes, including pilot systems, continuous purge systems, passing valves, manual sampling systems and online process analyzers,” a regulator spokesperson explained in a detailed response to questions.
Doty questioned whether the designs were ever intended for a facility that would operate without routine flaring or if something happened while building the plant.
“You can see from the way that this facility was designed that there was always supposed to be some kind of combustion going on — and with that comes emissions,” he said, adding additional problems may have occurred early in the commissioning process.
The regulator spokesperson disagreed with the theory that the plant was designed for high rates of flaring.
“The [BC Energy Regulator’s] reviews of the facility and LNG Canada’s submissions during design and construction … did not identify factors that would have contributed to increased flaring rates during operation,” the spokesperson noted.
LNG Canada’s Kitimat, B.C., facility burned 350 million cubic metres of gas in 2025. That’s more than any other LNG export facility on record in 2024, and around 10 per cent of all gas sent to the terminal.
James Smith, a Kitimat community member whose name has been changed to protect his family from potential repercussions, worked on the project during construction. He said he witnessed numerous problems on the job site, ultimately leading him to quit.
“They cut corners: it was about timelines and money,” he said. “They knew even before the flare arrived, before they started building it, that it wasn’t going to work. That was the word on the ground.”
The Narwhal could not independently verify Smith’s claims, and LNG Canada did not respond to questions about alleged problems during construction.
In January, The Narwhal revealed an “integrity issue” with the facility’s flaring equipment resulted in LNG Canada burning significantly more gas than expected — and discovered it could take three to five years to fix.
The issue was identified shortly after the LNG plant started testing its equipment in late 2024, if not before, but the government regulator did not learn about the problem until April 2025.
“I’ve been assessing and monitoring facilities in the oil and gas sector for more than 30 years, and I can tell you that LNG Canada is an extremely big polluter,” Doty said. “In my opinion, it should not be allowed to operate with such excessive emission levels.”
The facility is currently operating with a cracked flare tip as well as several leaking valves, according to previous reporting from The Narwhal and technical reports since the issue was identified. A flare tip, which sits at the top of the flare stack, helps ensure the safe combustion of the gas.
The technical problems have increased the risk of flames from flares retreating back into the system’s pipes and causing an explosion. To stop this from happening, LNG Canada has substantially increased the gas flows to all of the facility’s flares.
“A replacement flare tip is currently being installed,” a spokesperson for the consortium wrote in an emailed statement. “While the replacement is expected to improve flare tip integrity, a longer-term redesigned tip is being developed.”
LNG Canada wants the B.C. government to let it increase flaring tenfold
Earlier this year, LNG Canada revealed it was planning to ask the B.C. regulator to increase its flaring limit tenfold for the next three years. The company’s deputy chief operating officer, Teresa Waddington, disclosed the plans during a Kitimat council meeting in March and at a recent presentation to Kitimat residents.
If approved, the new limit would allow the company to continually flare up to 300 tonnes of gas per day, an increase from its current limit of 28 tonnes per day. The company said the new, more permissive flaring limit would help accommodate operational problems which have led to higher-than-anticipated flaring volumes.
LNG Canada told The Narwhal and Point Source the proposed amendment is “not expected to materially increase emissions in the local air shed.”
LNG Canada’s sprawling export terminal sits in the Kitimat River estuary, just below the town centre and within sight of nearby homes. Residents living nearby say the facility’s persistent noise, smoke and flaring have transformed life in the community.
“The original … authorization was based on long-term, stable operating conditions and did not reflect the higher flaring volumes typically seen during start-up and early operations at an LNG facility,” the spokesperson wrote. “LNG Canada is requesting a temporary, three-year provision that reflects overall flaring during the early operations period.”
However, flare tips are large and complex pieces of equipment and can take more than a year to procure, according to Waddington. As a result, she said LNG Canada wants to keep purging extra gas to prevent the flames from spreading downward into the pipes, likely until 2028.
“LNG Canada has said that it’s going to take three years to replace the flare [tip], but I can tell you that it doesn’t take three years to replace a flare [tip] like this,” Doty said. “The plant should be shut down. It should be properly repaired and engineered and then started back up again.”
Tracey Saxby, a marine scientist and executive director of non-profit environmental organization My Sea to Sky, worries LNG Canada is setting a precedent that other liquefaction and export facilities will follow.
“Woodfibre LNG in Squamish has estimated that flaring during startup will last for one month, with intermittent flare events of three to four days,” she said in an interview. “After that, during regular operations, they are saying they will only flare three per cent of the time, which is 11 days a year. But after what we have seen at LNG Canada and other facilities worldwide, this seems unrealistic.”
She said the excessive flaring at LNG Canada held against its previously stated commitments demonstrates there is “nothing anyone can do if the operator of one of these facilities breaks its promises about pollution.”
The regulator said it is “actively overseeing LNG Canada’s progress on short-term and long-term corrective actions and measures to reduce flaring from all facility flare systems.”
“[BC Energy Regulator] technical experts review flaring and air contaminant discharge information submitted by LNG Canada, conduct inspections and take compliance actions where required,” the spokesperson noted, adding an “investigation into potential non-compliances is ongoing.”
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Photo: Ethan Cairns / The Canadian Press
What a week. Amidst the blur of World Cup shenanigans and Canada Day festivities, politicians dropped not one, not two, but three massive pipeline announcements.
First, there was the multibillion-dollar federal commitment for infrastructure projects in B.C. What does this have to do with pipelines, you ask? Well, the agreement also included a promise to maintain the federal oil tanker ban off B.C.’s North Coast and $10 billion to upgrade the Roberts Bank export terminal (that’s the huge shipping terminal you can see from BC Ferries as you approach Tsawwassen, FYI).
That brings us to the second announcement, which came just a few hours later when Prime Minister Mark Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith announced a plan for a southern route for a new oil pipeline to the West Coast that would largely follow the right-of-way for the Trans Mountain pipeline, except — surprise, surprise! — it would end at Roberts Bank. This theoretical pipeline would be planned and built by the federally owned Trans Mountain Corp., with Pembina Pipeline Corp. taking a 10 per cent stake in construction. Oh, and it would cost between $35 billion and $44 billion (mostly in taxpayer money).
As if that wasn’t enough to process, on Monday Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Smith proposed another pipeline called Northern Shield, which would take oilsands bitumen to refineries in Sarnia, Ont. There’s also no private backer for this pipeline and, notably, no formal federal support. The chief of Aamjiwnaang First Nation, meanwhile, says the nation hasn’t been consulted on the proposal thus far and notes it’s still in the midst of a benzene crisis and dealing with the fallout of a March 2026 pipeline spill.
The headlines have been coming so fast and furious, it’s been tough to keep up. I spent the week scouring the internet, trying to get my head around it all. Some of the most insightful commentary I came across was from Amy Janzwood, an assistant professor in political science and environment at McGill University — so I called her up to pick her brain on, well, all of it.
This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
What have you noticed about the pipeline discussion in the media over the last week?
All the media coverage I saw has been stenography, basically. Just regurgitating all of the talking points of [Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Tim] Hodgson, Carney and Smith. It’s been extremely uncritical coverage. The kind of making of a pipeline out of literally nothing other than taxpayer dollars has been quite dizzying and shocking to see.
The questions I was asked a year ago about pipeline politics are very different than the questions I get now. Before I’d get asked: “What’s the prospect of another major oil pipeline? Is this a political fantasy?” But now there’s a slippage into engaging on the terms of the Smith government. The lack of context I’ve seen in the reporting on this is in part because of the firehose of announcements, and media outlets are just not able to keep up.
Amy Janzwood is an assistant professor in political science and environment at McGill University. She says Canadian governments are overstating the economic benefits of building more pipelines. Photo: Supplied by Amy Janzwood
You have noted before that legacy media often uncritically repeat the narratives of the oil industry. It sounds like you’re still seeing that? Are any particular examples coming to mind?
Hodgson has basically become the voice of the industry and I see that repeated verbatim, without any kind of interrogation. One very clear example I see over and over again is the profitability narrative around the Trans Mountain pipeline when we know this is actually not a profitable pipeline. You could argue there are good reasons to have it and we can have that debate, but [federal politicians] like to say that this is a profitable pipeline, which is straight up not true, so that’s one example of things that I see kind of repeated very uncritically.
Given that it’s not a profitable pipeline, what are the real reasons you think we’re seeing such broad political support for it in this moment?
There has been incredibly powerful messaging from the Carney government that we can have it all. We’ve seen this misconstrual of economic anxiety, sort of pinned on the hopes of another pipeline, which couldn’t be further from the reality.
Pipelines have become kind of a stand-in for the future of oil and gas. It’s become a stand-in for a lot of really difficult conversations.
Canadians are still broadly supportive of climate action and renewable energy, but they’re also more supportive of pipelines now than they have been for at least the last decade. What do you make of that contradiction?
As political scientists, we’ve long known that public opinion can largely be shaped by our political elites. I’m not surprised when I hear things from our prime minister and minister of natural resources around the need to build more pipelines, that there is this slippage or confusion that this is going to reduce our reliance in any way on the U.S. If you’re not following this closely, then that sounds great, if you’re being told this is what we need to keep Canada prosperous and strong.
But as someone who has studied pipelines for over 10 years, those are promises new pipelines will not be able to deliver on. I think the public has largely forgotten the cost and divisiveness about Energy East, about Northern Gateway, about Trans Mountain. Unless you’re directly affected and witnessing and experiencing the impacts of these projects, those costs to you, those environmental risks are not salient. It has long been difficult for folks to make that connection when we’re told this is necessary for our economy, and when the economic benefits are as overstated as they often are.
Canadians are repeatedly told that pipelines are what’s needed to keep Canada prosperous and strong. What are political leaders misrepresenting when they say that?
Fundamentally when we’re talking about major new pipelines, you’re going to need significant greenfield oilsands expansion to fill it. [A greenfield project is a new project built on undeveloped land.] We’ve seen the economics of the oilsands have not been trending towards that for the last several years to decades. Investors in the oilsands were really pressuring companies to deliver on their dividends. There was not an appetite for massive new expansions; it was not economic and it still is not. It would actually harm the industry if they can’t fill the pipeline.
If we’re now talking about a hypothetical West Coast pipeline, the volatility and the reliance on global oil prices and very uncertain demand … there is not a long-term case to be made for increasing oil expansion to the degree that would be required for a major new pipeline.
This is not economic for the industry, so this will be taxpayer-funded.
Amy Janzwood
This is not economic for the industry, so this will be taxpayer-funded. And there’s no certainty about demand for this hypothetical oil that the industry does not seem willing to produce, although Smith has alluded to doing whatever she can to stimulate further oilsands production with additional provincial support.
It’s quite misleading to suggest we would need a new pipeline to diversify away from the U.S. I do think we do need to have important conversations about how to become more resilient in light of having the Trump administration. But spending billions of dollars for a pipeline that we don’t think the industry can fill is not the way to do it.
Politicians also increasingly claim that Canada can indefinitely expand oil and gas production while meeting our climate commitments. Is that actually possible?
The short answer is no. This myth was alive and well under the Trudeau government. The Trudeau government really pioneered this narrative that we can have Trans Mountain and the oil expansion that comes with it and meet our climate targets and use the money from Trans Mountain to pay for the clean energy transition.
The latest iteration of this argument is this promise of carbon capture and storage. My take is that this is something the industry has never really been serious about doing.
Since Pathways Alliance [now called Oil Sands Alliance] announced its carbon capture and storage project in 2022, we’ve seen absolutely no significant investment of any kind in this project. And we know that they’ve just quietly stepped back from the amount of emissions reductions they’re promising.
It’s been quite troubling to see the Carney government so unquestioningly provide this narrative that we can have decarbonized oil — which is, of course, a contradiction.
You have described expanding fossil fuel exports as like saving for retirement by doubling down at the casino. Can you explain why that is?
Let’s not forget that oil and gas is a relatively small part of Canada’s GDP … but looking at the media coverage, you would not know that.
The conversation we’re having right now is a federal government that has continuously found new and ever-creative ways to subsidize fossil fuel expansions, whether that’s LNG [liquefied natural gas], oilsands or carbon capture and storage, and telling the public that this is necessary.
Let’s set aside LNG for now (the economics of LNG are a bit different), but about oil specifically, this is an industry that’s had record profits that’s been unwilling to pay for its own pollution — it is a cost the industry has very successfully avoided, whether that’s orphan wells and cleanup or carbon.
We’re told we need to double down and it’s necessary for economic prosperity. But what we’re seeing is the bill that’s racking up that taxpayers are on the hook for — when there’s an industry that can very well pay for it, and is unwilling to because they know they have a government that will backstop it. They now have a government that will buy a pipeline and that now has a state-owned pipeline company that is promising to be a backer for another new pipeline, which honestly, if you had told me that even 12 months ago, I would not believe you. It is absolutely mind-boggling.
The Narwhal is going to be following all of these issues closely. If you have thoughts or a story tip email editor@thenarwhal.ca
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Canada’s new water bill backtracks on recognizing human right to water for First Nations
(thenarwhal.ca)
Photo: Christopher Katsarov Luna / The Canadian Press
Federal Minister of Indigenous Services Mandy Gull-Masty has unveiled a new and long-awaited bill to provide safe drinking water to First Nations, which she says was written to ensure “we have provincial partners at the table.” Ontario chiefs say they were shut out and their right to clean water was not recognized.
Gull-Masty denied her government caved to provincial pressure in Bill C-37, or An Act respecting water, source water, drinking water, wastewater and related infrastructure on First Nation land, that sets out principles to provide safe drinking water and disposal of wastewater for First Nations.
“My conversations with leadership and the chiefs that have spoken to me understand that we are trying to pass a bill that is going to be protected and stand the test of time,” the minister said at a press conference on Parliament Hill on June 16.
“I’m not trying to put a bill forward that is going to be challenged,” she said. “I’m trying to put a bill forward that partners, provinces and territories feel can advance, that they can work with us.”
Minister of Indigenous Services Mandy Gull-Masty has denied the federal government caved to pressures from the Ontario government in creating Bill C-37, saying the bill was generated after consultation with First Nations leaders. Photo: Spencer Colby / The Canadian Press
The Chiefs of Ontario, however, say First Nations were not consulted in the process. The group is “cautiously optimistic” but remains concerned about the approach to this issue by the government of Prime Minister Mark Carney.“Unlike previous legislative efforts, which were developed through meaningful dialogue and partnerships with First Nations Knowledge Keepers [and] technicians, Bill C-37 was introduced without broad or meaningful input from First Nations,” Linda Debassige, Anishnabek Nation Grand Council Chief, and a member of the Chiefs of Ontario leadership council, said in a Tuesday press conferencein Rama, Ont.
“Our letters of advocacy have been met with a deafening silence, to be honest. We do not have access to parliamentary privileged dialogue or cabinet discussions in relation to this.”
It’s been over a year since the Liberal Party promised in their election platform to “immediately introduce and pass legislation affirming that First Nations have a human right to clean drinking water.” In the last six months, two First Nations in northern Ontario have declared severely worsening water crises due to failed infrastructure; one of the communities, Kashechewan, remains entirely evacuated.
The bill released this week states that the quality of water on First Nations lands must at minimum meet either federal guidelines for Canadian drinking water quality and for wastewater, or the standards in place in the province or territory where the lands are located.
The minister will also have to come out with regulations for a “protection zone,” which the bill leaves undefined. The use of these zones would hand First Nations jurisdiction over water sources adjacent to their lands — that is, if the nation and the federal and provincial governments have all agreed on the rules in force.
“We have to acknowledge that [water] is not stagnant, it moves around,” Gull-Masty said. “For water that is adjacent or flowing in and out, I think that the important part of the work that we’re undertaking is that partners and territories understand that they also have a role to play.”
In addition to defining “protection zones,” the bill empowers the minister to come out with regulations on a dozen different aspects of water services, including source water protections, training and certification, occupational health and safety, monitoring and inspections, emergency planning, permitting and more. The government can even design regulations to govern the disclosure of information.
But the bill doesn’t commit to the same kind of rights language that the Liberals promised in their platform. Instead, it declares that the government’s policy is to “further the progressive realization, for individuals on First Nation lands, of the human right to safe drinking water as protected by the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.” That covenant is a multilateral treaty adopted by the United Nations that came into force in the 1970s.
Grand Chief Linda Debassige of Anishinabek Nation said the new water bill was developed without meaningful dialogue or input from First Nations. ”Our letters of advocacy have been met with a deafening silence.” Photo: Spencer Colby / The Canadian Press
“To me, [this] is insane,” Debassige told reporters. “It’s been a progressive realization for many of our nations for decades.”
Debassige has been working on First Nations water issues for more than a decade and has been involved in negotiations over previous federal bills on the matter.She said that by excluding language like “in collaboration with First Nations” in Gull-Masty’s new legislation, the Carney government is “hiding from their obligations.”
“We must remember that most of the drafters of Bill C-37 have never spent time in our community,” she said, citing the speedy passage of the federal Bill C-5 and the provincial Bill 5, both of which aim to “fast-track” infrastructure and mining approvals and construction. “And we’ve seen the pushback on the previous iteration of this bill. And now we see the results of that weakening of our inherent rights to pave way for economic development.”
“I think it’s a deflection of responsibility, a fear of provinces, a fear of nation-building projects not coming through because our nations want to protect water.”
The bill comes as tensions grow over these issues between the federal government, provincial governments and First Nations.
Some chiefs, particularly in Treaty 8 territory, which spans northern B.C., Alberta and parts of Saskatchewan and the Northwest Territories, asked the federal government to rethink its approach. Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation’s chief said the bill didn’t meaningfully incorporate inherent and Treaty Rights to water while Mikisew Cree First Nation’s chief said that bill didn’t do enough to deal with the potential release of oilsands wastewater into rivers.
Last July, the environment ministers from Ontario and Alberta asked the federal government to “refrain” from introducing a new First Nations water bill, claiming it would “undermine competitiveness, delay project development and disproportionately harm specific provinces and territories without any quantifiable benefits to the natural environment.”
Areas like northern Ontario’s Ring of Fire region, which are facing a push for fast-tracked resource development, represent crucial sources of water for local First Nations. Photo: Christopher Katsarov Luna / The Canadian Press
Ontario’s Environment Minister Todd McCarthy apologized for any “confusion” the request may have caused First Nations. But First Nations have not been convinced by the apology. The Ontario government has skirted meaningful consultation with First Nations in its push to open the Ring of Fire region in northern Ontario, with significant implications for water use and sources, and broadly speed up mining approvals and development. It has also signalled its own plans to make broad changes to provincial clean water rules.
As Canada and Ontario rush to expedite major projects, including in the mining sector, First Nations have long been asking for the same expediency to pass laws to protect drinking water before shovels hit the ground. With a few days left before MPs are scheduled to rise for the summer, this bill is unlikely to become law before the fall.
“I wish one of Canada’s major projects were to provide us clean drinking water,” Knowledge Keeper Sally Gaikezheyongai said, as she offered a prayer to begin the Tuesday press conference by the Chiefs of Ontario. “I ask the Creator to make sure that happens hopefully within my lifetime.”
Why does Canada need a law to protect access to clean drinking water on First Nations?
Indigenous Services Canada reports that there are 36 Indigenous communities that have been under orders for more than a year to boil their drinking water for one minute. Most of these communities are in Ontario. The longest-standing boil water advisory is for Neskantaga First Nation in northern Ontario, just south of the Ring of Fire region. It hasn’t had clean drinking water since 1995. (The federal count is not comprehensive, as some jurisdictions, such as B.C., track their own boil-water advisories in Indigenous communities.)
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised to end all these boil-water advisories by March 31, 2021, but did not succeed. Post-colonization, and as stated in the Indian Act, the federal government has a fiduciary obligation to ensure safe, potable drinking water for First Nations. Instead, there is a regulatory black hole for and chronic underinvestment in on-reserve water and wastewater services.
A month before Trudeau’s deadline, a government audit found that Indigenous Services Canada “did not provide the support necessary to ensure that First Nations communities have ongoing access to safe drinking water,” thus prolonging boil water advisories.
The impacts of these failures are severe, including preventable illnesses, costly reliance on bottled water and long-term evacuations.
Kashechewan First Nation, a community of 2,000 residents, has been entirely evacuated since January due to a catastrophic sewage pump failure. There is still no access to safe drinking water on their reserve.
In May, Pikangikum First Nation declared a second state of emergency, a year after the original declaration, due to collapsing water and wastewater systems. The community’s only water treatment plant is operating beyond capacity, even as more than 300 homes remain without direct water service. The community’s reservoir is also at critically low levels and is losing water at a rate roughly four times greater than it can be filled.As a result, the nearly 4,000 on-reserve residents are dealing with daily water rationing and forced evening shutdowns. As wildfire season looms, Pikangikum is now suing the federal government.
“It’s so important that we take action as a country, as First Nations leadership, to ensure that there are no more Kashechewans, that there are no more Pikangikums,” Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler of Nishnawbe Aski Nation, told reporters.
“It’s unacceptable that this is a reality that many of our communities are being put in: to try to negotiate on big, major nation-building projects while they’re trying to make sure that their children and their youth can have access to water to drink.”
Why is the federal law to protect clean drinking water on First Nations so delayed?
There have been different iterations of this legislation, Kathleen Padulo, director of environment for the Chiefs of Ontario, told The Narwhal in a conversation before Bill C-37 was released, but none have proved durable.
Since the 1970s, the federal government has been promising to provide Indigenous communities with water and wastewater systems equal to those enjoyed by most Canadians, but no matter which party is in power, it has continuously fallen short of that goal.
In 2013, the Stephen Harper government passed the Safe Drinking Water for First Nations Act. This law created a regulatory regime to govern water infrastructure on First Nations lands, but without any financial backing or centring Indigenous decision-making or rights. It also didn’t protect the sources of water flowing onto First Nation lands.
“It had no teeth, and it was really watered down,” Paduro said. “It was a piece of paper just floating around for years.”
Federal governments have been making promises to offer adequate water infrastructure to First Nations for decades, but have continued to fall short on this commitment. Photo: Vanessa Tignanelli / The Narwhal
As a result, this law was met with widespread disapproval from First Nations. Several, including Neskantaga, launched a class action lawsuit in 2019, claiming “Canada has been negligent, breached its fiduciary duties, breached the honour of the Crown and breached various rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”
Ottawa settled that lawsuit in 2021, agreeing to provide $1.8 billion in compensation and spend $6 billion on water infrastructure over nine years. The federal government also promised to repeal and replace the Conservative law.
That didn’t happen until 2023 when the Trudeau government introduced Bill C-61, or the First Nations Clean Drinking Water Act. The landmark bill involved First Nations in its creation, doing so over a two-year-long consultation and co-development process. This bill established clean drinking water as a human right, set minimum standards for drinking water and wastewater on reserves and pledged funding for water-related infrastructure. This bill also created an Indigenous-led First Nations Water Commission to help implement the law and monitor its impact.
After weeks of consultation with First Nations, the bill did not pass before Parliament was prorogued in January 2025. Then-Indigenous services minister Patty Hajdu said the delay was the fault of opposition parties.
Paduro said they’ve been waiting for this bill to reemerge and be passed “with the speed of light like Bill C-5” and then put it in place in communities right away.
“What is happening here is colonization at the end of the day, that’s what it is,” Paduro said. “And Canadians not understanding that not everybody has basic human rights.”
What happens next?
Anishnabek Nation Grand Council Chief Debassige is asking the government to ensure “sufficient engagement” with First Nations as this bill goes through the parliamentary process, urging the government to move quickly from legislation to action.
“We’re cautiously optimistic,” she said, but with the Liberals holding a majority government, “It’s going to be a difficult process.”
“Water is a human right. Full stop,” Debassige said. “We are looking to Canada to help us champion a shift from the outdated and colonial perspectives of First Nations being viewed as second-class citizens to ensuring our people can enjoy the same clean and safe drinking water guaranteed to non-First Nations across this country.”
Gull-Masty said the government supports consultations with First Nations governing bodies to develop the many regulations that the bill authorizes.
Ontario Regional Chief Abram Benedict told reporters that the government needs to focus on accountability to ensure First Nations communities have “confidence in the drinking water.”
“We are calling on the federal government to move swiftly from legislation to action. The goal must not only be to eliminate advisories, but to prevent new ones from coming on,” he continued. “Legislation is only the beginning of ending these challenges.”
“Our communities have waited long enough.”
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