Grassy Narrows First Nation Chief Rudy Turtle is refused entry to Queen’s Park in Toronto to serve a Statement of Claim to Premier Doug Ford regarding contamination of water in the community, on June 4.Arlyn McAdorey/The Canadian Press
A First Nation that has lived the past five decades on a river contaminated with mercury from a nearby pulp and paper mill is suing Ontario and Canada over what band members say is the governments’ failure to protect their right to live safely on their traditional territory.
The lawsuit demands Indigenous control over future projects in the traditional territory of the Grassy Narrows First Nation, including two gold mines and the nuclear-waste storage site at Ignace, Ont. This control would go far beyond the standard legal framework that requires governments to consult First Nations, said Adrienne Telford, lawyer for the First Nation.
“This is one of Canada’s worst environmental and rights catastrophes,” Ms. Telford said at a news conference outside Ontario Superior Court in Toronto on Tuesday morning.
The First Nation in Treaty 3, also called Asubpeeschoseewagong Anishinabek, is about 90 kilometres northeast of Kenora, Ont., with around 1,000 people living there. The community sits on the English River, downstream from the English-Wabigoon water system, where pollutants discharged from the Dryden pulp and paper mill have long been blamed for poisoning the people of Grassy Narrows.
The lawsuit says the failure by the Crown to stop the contamination and clean it up continues to violate the community’s Anishinaabe way of life, which includes laws, cultural practices and beliefs that protect the lands and waters in a sustainable way.
Ms. Telford told The Globe the issue has underlined the urgency of the band having greater control over future projects on its traditional territory than current legislation provides.
“We’re way past that [duty to consult], because of the long-standing failures and the particular vulnerability of this community. And so something more is needed,” she said.
“It’s been over five decades of gross neglect, denial and disregard for Grassy Narrows people that continue to have to fight the mercury and new contamination in their waters. They continue to have to fight clear-cut logging in their territory, and they face increasing threats from mining and even the possibility of a nuclear waste disposal site in their headwaters.”
A new study from Western University found the mill is discharging effluent that exacerbates the existing mercury contamination.
None of the allegations has been tested in court.
Chief Rudy Turtle of Grassy Narrows was at the news conference to launch the lawsuit in Toronto on Tuesday morning with a small group of supporters.
“We are doing this for our children, our grandchildren, there’s a new generation of young people being born everyday and they are being born to a contaminated river with contaminated fish. They have to live with that and it’s not fair,” Mr. Turtle said.
After the news conference, Mr. Turtle was denied entry into Queen’s Park, where he had hoped to witness the NDP bring up the issue in Question Period.
The Legislative Protective Service told Mr. Turtle that the Ontario legislature bars anyone who takes part in a political protest from entering for 24 hours, leaving him with several other supporters to sit outside the building.
The lawsuit claims that throughout the 1960s and 1970s, tonnes of mercury a year were being dumped in the water that flowed downstream into communities such as Grassy Narrows, poisoning their freshwater fish source and making people sick.
“By at least 1978, Ontario was aware that authorizing further industrial activities in, around, or upstream of Grassy Narrows’ Territory would or was likely to exacerbate the impacts of the contamination on Grassy Narrows’ Treaty Rights,” the lawsuit says.
Mercury contamination has plagued the English-Wabigoon River system in northwestern Ontario for half a century, since a paper mill in Dryden dumped 9,000 kilograms of the substance into the river systems in the 1960s.
Researchers have previously reported that more than 90 per cent of the people in Grassy Narrows and Wabaseemoong First Nation show signs of mercury poisoning.
The lawsuit notes a report in 1984 by federal and provincial scientists revealed that although mercury pollution levels were gradually decreasing in the river system, mercury levels in fish, in the absence of intervention, would remain “unacceptably high for many years.”
Greg Rickford, Ontario’s Minister of Northern Development and Minister of Indigenous Affairs, said the province enforces compliance of the highest environmental standards within its resource development sector.
Mr. Rickford, who represents the Kenora-area riding that includes Grassy Narrows and Wabaseemoong, said the province in 2018 increased payments from the mercury disability fund, nearly doubling payments for recipients.
He said people from Grassy Narrows and the neighbouring Wabaseemong First Nation, who are also living on the mercury-contaminated waters, will “get the benefits that they deserve for those historical damages.”
Patty Hajdu, the federal Minister for Indigenous Services, pointed to her government’s proposed legislation for drinking water standards in First Nations, saying the bill would prevent future poisoning of water systems.
The federal government has also committed to funding a $146-million treatment facility for Grassy Narrows and others suffering long-term ailments related to the mercury poisoning.
She called the original and continuing contamination an absolute failure to protect the health of Indigenous people.
“We have to work with the provinces and territories. They have jurisdiction over protecting this water,” she said Tuesday.
-With files from Jeff Gray in Toronto