First Nations find out how to bring down the law on bad water

Lawyers andpolicy experts are gathering todaywith First Nations people at the University of Manitoba'sCentre for Human Rights Research for a workshop that tackles ways to bring the power of the law to the persistent issues of bad water on reserves.

The Centre's directorKaren Busby, and Mtis lawyer AimeCraft,received a public grant fouryears ago to look at finding solutions to best address the problems.

"We had promised in the grant that our work would be really practical, you know, real things that communities could do," said Busby.

"At least half of the people coming to the workshop are Indigenous Peoples so we [will] really try to make sure that we draw on indigenous expertise."

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ACBC News investigationlast month revealed 20 reserves across the country have had a drinkingwater advisorylonger than 10 years.The numbers show that400 out of 618 First Nations in the country had some kind of water problembetween 2004 and 2014.

The group will examine the different water issues withinFirst Nations communitiesand see which approach would work best.

One of the lawyers in attendance today isRosanne Kyle,who helped four Alberta First Nations file a court action asking Federal Court to force Ottawato upgrade their water systems, provide continuing support to keep themoperating safely and to refund money the bands say the governmenthas saved over the years by not doing so.

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In other cases,a community's needs is better met by participating in a universal review process in international law.

"It's called universal periodic review, where Canada is asked to appear before a United Nations body to answer a bunch of questions on its human rights records," Busby said.

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"First Nations have appeared before those bodies to complain about water in those communities. And we will talk about whether or not that was an effective strategy."

Busby says there are other routes a First Nation could take: make a claim in court for a constitutional law or international law violation or filing a complaint to the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

"So what we really hope comes out of this is we can say, a community that has these qualities would be the best one to file a claim against the federal government for these reasons. And this is the resources we need to do it."