Canada refuses Cree evacuation plea

By Kate Harries, Today correspondent

Story Published: Apr 22, 2009

TORONTO – Residents of a remote Cree community are living in fear as an outbreak of sickness appears linked to what an opposition Member of Parliament calls “an open toxic wound” at a demolition site.

But the Indian Affairs Department is denying there’s any health emergency and has refused a request from Attawapiskat First Nation for a partial evacuation.

There have been no classes for three weeks because of health concerns and parents and educators worry whether students will be able to complete this school year, jeopardizing post-secondary opportunities for some.

It’s a situation that’s unimaginable in the populated area of the province, said Ontario child advocate Irwin Elman.

“If this happened anywhere close to southern Ontario, the outcry and the action would be immediate.”

The issue is muddied by the fact that education on reserves is a federal responsibility, but Elman said he believes – especially now that health issues are involved – that Jordan’s principle should apply: The closest level of government should respond and worry about jurisdiction and who pays later.

 

Health Canada gave the all-clear for children to return to school March 16 as the old J. R. Nakogee Elementary School was being demolished.

The timing of the demolition was set for the week of March 8 when the schools were closed for a break. But the work was left unfinished, the site uncapped and exposed to the elements.

As an overpowering stench of diesel fumes rose from the exposed area of a fuel oil spill under the school, teachers and children in the adjacent portable classrooms started to get sick. They complained of headaches and nausea, said John Nakogee, head of the education authority, and some pupils fell asleep at their desks.

Alarmed Attawapiskat education authorities closed the elementary school, as well as the nearby high school. But as a late winter storm whipped dust from the site across the snow, turning it a rusty brown, illness spread through the community of 1,400 on the James Bay Coast in
Northern Ontario.

“We were getting dizzy,” Rose Koostachin, mother of four, said in an interview recorded April 6 by MP Charlie Angus. “We could see the blowing dust right in our yard here, and we started throwing up and getting diarrhea; even the baby had diarrhea.”

“They have rashes all over their body, my nine year old. … it’s all spread, he has dots that look like chicken pox, but they’re not,” another mother told Angus. “My daughter, under her armpits, had a rash, both of them, and they started to smell like rotten meat.”

On March 23, Attawapiskat leaders declared a state of emergency. Chief Theresa Hall called on the Canadian government to assist in a partial evacuation of the people who live in about 60 homes in the vicinity of the contaminated site.

“We need to take them out of the community,” Hall told a Timmins newspaper. “We have nowhere else to put them here.”

Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl, who became the target of an Attawapiskat campaign when he cancelled plans for construction of a new school in September 2007, said he was mystified by the emergency declaration.

“Why they’re pulling their kids out of school at this moment is unclear, given there’s no indications that there’s a health problem,” he told Sun Media.

Indian Affairs spokesperson Susan Bertrand said there would be no evacuation because reports from Health Canada showed no threat. In a March 13 letter to Hall regarding air particulate sampling at the site, environmental health officer Gilles St. Pierre said classes could resume March 16.

“From the results of the air sampling survey, our office would like to advise all involved that there was no immediate health or safety concerns.”

Angus and Member of Provincial Parliament Gilles Bisson flew into the community in early April, accompanied by Bob McCloskey, health and safety representative with the Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association.

In a press conference in Ottawa April 7, the two new Democratic Party politicians called on the Ontario provincial government to evacuate affected residents and investigate health and environmental problems, given the failure of the federal government to discharge its responsibilities.

“This situation is very, very dangerous,” Angus said. “The community right now is sitting with an open toxic wound right in the centre of the community.”

He noted that the spill took place in 1979, when Indian Affairs operated the school (it came from a rupture in an underground pipeline.) The school was closed in 2000 after many years of community concern about children and school employees getting sick; classes were held in what were thought to be “temporary” portables.

Angus said Indian Affairs has known since 1984 – when a study called for immediate steps that were never taken – that this is a high risk site. The affect of the demolition has been to uncap the site and expose people to dust and fumes that caused a range of symptoms consistent with exposure to benzene.

“Yesterday the temperature was freezing and it was a heavy wind blowing and yet standing right beside the high school the smell of diesel contamination was actually overpowering.”

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