Canada has no legal obligation to provide First Nations with clean water, lawyers say
Canada has no legal obligation to provide First Nations with clean water, lawyers say
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"a matter of good governance rather than legal duty."
You know what? Good Governance should be a legal duty. What the heck is this argument? Do folks who live in Toronto have to worry about not getting clean water because Canada has no legal obligation to provide it to them either?
In the case of Toronto presumably water is a municipal responsibility... Reserves are a federal responsibility though so you'd think they would be responsible here. The government has actually been putting in a ton of money on this issue and as the article says the number of boil water advisories is down by like 2/3 since the Liberals came to power. So also kinda weird argument by the justice department here.
I honestly wonder why the federal government is pursuing this. Getting First Nations communities on water has been an ongoing project of theirs. Either the left hand isn't talking to the right or this is "I'll do it but not because I have to".
From the article it feels like a worse variation of "I’ll do it but not because I have to”.
More like, "I'll do some of it, at my own pace, because doing all of it now is too expensive." Of course that wouldn't trump the fundamental human rights that are at issue here - but if you win on the claim that there aren't any such rights applicable, then the above is much easier to win ...
Of course I might just be being a tad too cynical here.
They really need to raise taxes. It would be unpopular, but everyone's tired of them already, so now's the moment.
Sorta like lame ducks who can do the right thing by their conscience as they are no longer burdened by popular mandates or seeing re-election.