Access to clean drinking water in First Nations communities in Canada in infographics
By Joseph Sayegh
This post is part of a series of opinion pieces in diverse mediums focusing on the theme “What makes you mad about global health?” These submissions are by McGill students who were part of the course PPHS 511 Fundamentals of Global Health in Fall 2021.
Explanation:
Many First Nations communities in Canada do not have unlimited access to clean drinking water. A fairly large percentage of First Nations communities are still subject to long-term drinking water advisories. Many objectives were set to lift all advisories, but these objectives were never met. To this day, many people in these communities struggle to get access to drinking water even though water has been declared as a human right by the United Nations in 2010 (2). This is an important public health situation since the lack of clean drinking water can lead to many diseases. Moreover, the access to water is needed for the realization of other basic human rights. This situation really angers me because First Nations communities should be treated with the utmost respect considering we are currently living on their lands that we stole. Colonizers settled here many years ago, stole their lands, pushed them into communities, created a government by which they need to abide, but this same government still hasn’t acted to rectify the situation involving clean drinking water. This is outrageous. Everybody should have access to clean drinking water, and I can’t believe that the communities that have been here the longest are the ones with the biggest clean drinking water problem. This problem needs to be addressed and we should aim to lift all long-term drinking water advisories from all First Nations communities to allow them to live healthy lives and meet their basic human rights.
References:
Canada G of CI and NA. Ending long-term drinking water advisories [Internet]. 2017. Available from: https://www.sac-isc.gc.ca/eng/1506514143353/1533317130660
Safe Water for First Nations [Internet]. The Council of Canadians. Available from: https://canadians.org/fn-water
Tip of the iceberg: The true state of drinking water advisories in First Nations [Internet]. News. 2021. Available from: https://ucalgary.ca/news/tip-iceberg-true-state-drinking-water-advisories-first-nations
Acknowledgments:
We would like to thank Professor Madhukar Pai for setting and sharing this assignment results with us and the teaching assistants Alexandra Jaye Zimmer, Lavanya Huria and Angie Sassi for their support in coordinating the results.