Prime Minister Paul Martin promised swift action Thursday to help hundreds of residents of a northern Ontario reserve who have been sickened due to tainted water.
He told reporters that Ottawa will begin to take action "today," when asked whether the Liberals were embarrassed by the situation, in which more than half of Kashechewan's residents have been made ill by drinking water laced with E. coli bacteria.
Note that Martin made no effort to explain the complete lack of action to date, but merely suggested that his government will meet with community and provincial leaders and present some proposals. Even when PMPM is embarrassed into action, it's amazing not only how quickly the scope of action gets reduced, but also that the reduced action is supposed to erase all memory of the original embarrassment.
Meanwhile, Jack Layton and Phil Fontaine rightly took the opportunity to demand action on the nation-wide problem of which Kashechewan is only a symptom:
NDP Leader Jack Layton and Assembly of First Nations Chief Phil Fontaine called on the Liberal government Thursday to address severe housing shortages on Canadian reserves by immediately releasing funds from an NDP-Liberal budget agreement for housing.
After the two discussed a coming first ministers meeting on aboriginal issues in Ottawa, Mr. Fontaine said the native housing situation has been highlighted even more this week because of water problems on the Kashechewan community in northern Ontario...
Mr. Layton and Mr. Fontaine said they will ask for a commitment to address a backlog of about 80,000 housing units.
Needless to say, there shouldn't be much doubt which federal party actually wants to take meaningful action to deal with the housing shortage. It's a shame that it took Kashechewan to bring the issue to the forefront...but now that it's there, the Liberals have an awful lot of neglect to answer for, and PMPM's attempt to minimize the problem shouldn't be able to fool many.
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