WE SHOULD BE EMBARASSED

this ran on IFpress.com………… comments invited below

By Christina Blizzard, QMI Agency

The Red Cross moves in to help a beleaguered community where children are
living in squalor in tents, sheds and a trailer.
Where can this be? Haiti? Some Third World country in Africa? Not at all.
Welcome to Attawapiskat–an aboriginal community on James Bay, here on your doorstep. Welcome to Shameful, Ontario.
Shameful, because while children are peeing in buckets, while raw sewage is being dumped in ditches, two levels of government are bickering over who should deal with it.
Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence is frustrated. She declared a state of emergency in the community a month ago–and nothing happened. “It’s a crisis we’re facing in our community and it’s time for the government to accept and understand what’s going on and deal with it because no one is stepping in right now,” Spence told reporters.
The community needs new housing, but the feds haven’t given enough money to build it.
Ironically, the great hope for the community was the nearby De Beers diamond mine.
About 100 members of the reserve work there, but they can’t build homes because the Indian Act prevents them from getting mortgages, says Timmins-James Bay MPP Gilles Bisson.
The community’s school was pulled down several years ago because it was contaminated with gasoline from a dump. So 400 children go to school in portables on a massive brownfield site. They start to drop out in Grade 4.
According Bisson, five families live in tents; 20 more live in backyard sheds. About 90 people are shoehorned into a massive construction trailer. The Red Cross announced this week it would move in to provide temporary help to the community. According to a physician who works on the reserve, children suffer from frequent infectious diseases, as well as lice and scabies, because of the close quarters. The children suffer frequent burns from makeshift wood stoves.
The temporary homes have no electricity and aren’t hooked up to sewers, so families are using buckets for toilets–dumping waste in the ditch.
“I often have to remind myself that I’m in Ontario and why are there two sets of standards for on-reserve and off-reserve health care?” said Dr. Elizabeth Blackmore.
The trailer is a disaster waiting to happen, says Bisson. It comprises forty 3-metre by 3-metre rooms. One family lives in each room. The doors are chained at night for security reasons.
“These are people. They’re citizens of Ontario and Canada. And we can’t treat people this way,” he said. “The province is unwilling to take the lead because they’re afraid they may get stuck with the bill and the feds don’t want to do anything — so they’re staring each other down,” he said.
One of the options is evacuating people to Timmins, but Spence says she can’t do that alone. She’s asked for help from the military and from both levels of government.
Kathleen Wynne, the minister responsible for aboriginal issues, says there’s been “confusion” about who has responsibility to send in emergency services.
“It’s extremely important to me that all of us who are involved be doing everything we can. But we can’t operate without the federal government,” she said. “I’m willing to work with them, but the federal government has to step up to the plate.”
Enough’s enough. This is a disaster waiting to happen. Politicians must stop pointing fingers — and end this shameful situation — right now.

christina.blizzard@sunmedia.ca

http://www.lfpress.com/comment/columnists/christina_blizzard/2011/11/28/19028356.html