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View Marc Miller Profile
Lib. (QC)
Yes, absolutely. Thank you for that.
You'll note that with the lifting of the Wet'suwet'en long-term water advisory, that leaves only one left in B.C. We're cautiously optimistic about that in the next little while. It'll be something to really celebrate and lift up.
Clearly, there are a number of elements in the Auditor General's report that are very compelling. When I was named minister about 15 months ago, I sat down with my team and said that there may be elements that perhaps don't fall strictly speaking into the context of lifting the long-term water advisories and that we need to address through additional funding, through a number of other elements. This was before COVID hit. I asked my team to sit down and come up with what that might look like.
What came back with a lot of the engagement was obviously the O&M, the operations and maintenance, of what is a critical water asset. Communities were telling us that it was important to get to the deadline of lifting all the water advisories—I think that is something that is important for all first nations, whether they're on long-term advisories or not—but a lot of questions came with that. What are you going to do after March 2021? Where are you going to be? Are you going to disappear like you did before?
These all turned around the very important points that you raise, which are around the deficiency in the funding model. For the benefit of everyone, I note that it was an eighty-twenty model. The government would give 80% and the community would be asked to contribute 20% . With a state-of-the-art asset like a plant, particularly some of the new ones that are being built, the people in there need to get equal pay for equal work, as you've said. Those people are the pride of their communities. You can't blame someone if they want to go somewhere else, or if they get pulled into another community, which is often non-indigenous and is paying them more. It just isn't fair.
There were a lot of discussions around the funding model and making sure that there was more of a perpetual funding model that would allow us to fix the O&M gap, because it contributes precisely to that point, as you said, which is the insecurity, the risk model and profile that the Auditor General looked at.
When I saw the medium-to-high risk category, that risk is with respect to the integrity of the asset, because it is threatened through people that aren't paid properly and perhaps through cutting corners to get people to work there. That puts the integrity of a critical asset at risk. There are some issues with the sensitivity of what that is measuring, because it's not as if you're looking at crumbling infrastructure. You're looking at all the investment and maintenance in and around a critical asset system for a community.
Those are aspects that perhaps fall outside of what would be taken to lift the long-term water advisory—i.e., producing safe and clean water—but they are so critical to the lifespan and the asset span of a plant, for example, and they weren't necessarily addressed in prior funding models. The announcement in late November of $1.5 billion was, yes, designed to address some of the challenges and the costing around dealing with the global pandemic and increased costs, and what we might do to support communities that want to build through a pandemic, but also that O&M that you raise, which is so critical.
It is part of a greater approach to water safety and integrity that was addressed a few months later in the Auditor General's report. It's something that I'm glad we're moving forward on. There's still more work to do, but at least in terms of financial support and telling communities that the Government of Canada is there for them, that funding is there and it just has to be rolled out over the coming months.
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