By: Ryan McMahon and Robert Cribb
The federal government’s “discriminatory” underfunding of fire protection on First Nation reserves is responsible for Indigenous people perishing in blazes at dramatically higher rates than other Canadians, a lawsuit filed by two Ontario First Nations alleges.
Oneida Nation of the Thames, near London, and Sandy Lake First Nation, 600 km northwest of Thunder Bay, allege “unequal” and “grossly inadequate” fire protection exposes First Nations people living on reserve to a “substantially heightened risk to their lives, property and well-being.”
The claim, filed in federal court on Friday against the Attorney General of Canada, takes the rare step of asking the court to retain jurisdiction over the case “until such time as Canada has adopted funding policies for fire protection services on reserve in Ontario that are consistent with the Charter.”
“We think a supervisory order like this is necessary to make sure Canada develops a new funding regime that truly responds to the needs of First Nations and protects their people,” says Krista Nerland, a lawyer with Toronto law firm Olthuis Kleer Townshend LLP, which is representing the two communities.
“Canada cannot treat First Nations people living on reserve as if their lives and safety are worth less than the lives and safety of non-Indigenous Canadians.”
The allegations have not been proven in court. No statement of defence has yet been filed. Indigenous Services Canada (ISC), the federal ministry responsible for First Nations issues, has not yet responded to requests for comment on the claim.
‘A stain on the conscience of this nation’
A recent Statistics Canada analysis of 700 fire deaths across Canada between 2011 and 2020 found 20 per cent of the victims were First Nations, Metis or Inuit.
That proportion of deaths is four times higher than the percentage of Indigenous people in Canada.
A 2021 report from Ontario’s Chief Coroner’s table found children living on a reserve in Ontario are 86 times more likely to die in a fire than children living elsewhere.”
In a written statement this week responding to general questions from reporters prior to the lawsuit being filed, ISC called the numbers of First Nations fire deaths “deeply concerning” and said they highlight the “urgent need for better fire protection in First Nations communities. The Government of Canada takes these reports seriously and knows that there is more work to be done.”
That work includes a First Nations Fire Protection Strategy, developed with the Assembly of First Nations, which focuses on “long-term, community-based solutions.”
“Canada cannot treat First Nations people living on reserve as if their lives and safety are worth less than the lives and safety of non-Indigenous Canadians.”
The lawsuit alleges the Canadian government has been aware of the problem on First Nations for two decades and has done “nothing to address it.”
The government inaction has violated Indigenous people’s Charter right to life and security of person and amounts to “a stain on the conscience of this nation.”
In January 2022, Sandy Lake Chief Delores Kakagemic couldn’t believe her eyes when she stepped outside her front door.
Flames were shooting upward from a nearby home. The community’s fire hydrants were not working. So the one available pumper truck had to repeatedly leave the scene of the blaze to collect water, the claim states.
By the time help arrived, it was already too late.
“There was nothing we could do,” said Kakagemic. “I watched that house go up, it went up so fast. At the time I thought to myself, ‘I hope no one is in there.”
Hours later, she and her community learned there were three children inside, all consumed by the flames.
“The whole community was in mourning, you never get over something like this.”
Sandy Lake, a community of about 2,750, has a volunteer fire department that handles about 200 fires a year, the lawsuit alleges.
On the same day the lawsuit was filed, IJB reporters learned of another fire in the community that engulfed two new homes and damaged nearly a dozen others. There were no injuries.
A deadly fire brought systemic issues to light
In Oneida, there have been 30 structural fires since 2016 and the community has run out of patience, says fire chief Glenn Hill.
“We put our name on the lawsuit because the way we’re doing things isn’t working, it’s clear. We need change.”
In December 2016, a fire killed a father and four children. There were no working fire hydrants to fight the blaze. So firefighters had to use water from a tanker truck, which had to repeatedly leave the scene to collect water.
“It left a hole in our community, but also highlighted the issues we have been facing for far too long,” says Todd Cornelius, chief of Oneida “That fire brought to light some of the systemic issues that First Nations communities are facing across the country – both underfunded housing and inadequate fire services.”
Almost eight years later, Oneida still doesn’t have enough functioning hydrants on its reserve and those that exist are in need of repair, Cornelius says.
The First Nation has been requesting funding to install hydrants that would cover the entire community for the past 26 years without success, the claim reads.
The government’s flawed funding formulas make it impossible for many First Nations to qualify for necessary fire protection equipment, the claim alleges.
“Since Canada makes no effort to monitor, assess or compare on-reserve service levels and outcomes to communities off-reserve, it cannot hope to meet its stated objective of ensuring that First Nations have reasonably comparable fire protection services to those provided off reserve,” the claim reads.
Sandy Lake and Oneida are among dozens more First Nations across the country where fires have ripped through communities with cheap housing materials, aging infrastructure and lax building standards.
In 2016, Pikangikum First Nation in Northern Ontario lost nine people, including three children, to a blaze. There was no fire hydrant close to the home and the First Nation’s only firefighter struggled to get there over roads that were “nearly impossible” to navigate, the claim reads.
“We were there a week or so later to attend the funeral services and see nine caskets lined up in the church with beautiful babies… it was just heartbreaking,”says Alvin Fiddler, Grand Chief of Nishnawbe Aski Nation, representing 51 First Nation communities in Northern Ont.
“You would think that that would have been the wake up call that we all needed to finally take some significant concrete measures to prevent similar tragic events….But sadly, it was not the case.”
Last year, another fatal fire in the same community killed three people, including an eight-year-old child. The community did not have a storage building to keep its fire trucks warm and the winter cold caused mechanical problems, the claim reads.
While speaking this week with a reporter about the ongoing human toll of fires in his area of northern Ontario, Fiddler interrupted the conversation to respond to urgent messages on his phone about a family home in North Caribou Lake First Nation that was being razed by another fire.
So far this year alone, First Nations communities in Northern Ontario have lost a school (Eabametoong), a nursing station (Cat Lake ), a band office (North Spirit Lake), and a church (Kasabonika).
“Until we get new building codes and proper standards in First Nations housing, we’re fighting a losing battle,” says Arnold Lazare, a longtime fire service member in the Mohawk community of Kahnawake and the deputy operations chief of the Indigenous Fire Marshalls Program.
Canada’s Indigenous Services minister says ‘too many’ lives lost to fire
When the federal government launched the First Nations Fire Prevention Strategy, Minister of Indigenous Services, Patty Hadju, said in a statement that a lack of building and fire codes along with poor housing conditions and overcrowding means “there are far too many First Nation lives lost to fires.”
To date, the government has invested nearly $31 million for smoke alarms, fire extinguishers and carbon monoxide alarms for homes on reserves, performing fire safety assessments, firefighting training and conducting fire safety inspections, reads the ISC’s written statement.
The IJB interviewed a dozen First Nations fire chiefs, many of whom said they have seen little evidence of that investment in their communities and that they were not consulted on what they need.
“They never come and ask subject-matter experts on this stuff,” said Melvin McLeod, fire chief of Nipissing First Nation, near North Bay. “It’s all just policy people who have …never been at a fire or have seen a fire death.”
Oneida fire chief Hill says reaching fire protection equity with nearby municipal services remains a fiction.
He currently has 26 volunteer firefighters. About a quarter of them are not certified to meet the standards held by neighboring municipal services.
And when firefighters in Oneida become certified and trained, they often opt for jobs in municipal services because they can have a career with pay and benefits they could never have as volunteers, says Oneida’s Cornelius.
First Nations located close to a municipality with a fire department can strike agreements with them to provide fire protection. But under those agreements, federal fire protection funding that would come to the First Nation is given instead to the municipality, the claim reads.
And those agreements prioritize protecting municipal residents over protecting members of the First Nation, the lawsuit alleges, including terms that excuse municipalities from providing life-saving services if their equipment is already engaged or to recall equipment deployed to a First Nation if it is needed in the municipality.
“These terms expressly relegate First Nations people living on reserve to second-class status,” the claim alleges. “First Nations people are treated as less valuable than the adjacent non-Indigenous community.”
In its statement, ISC said First Nations band councils have the flexibility to establish their own services or contract with neighboring municipalities with funding support from the federal government.
“In a true nation-to-nation partnership with First Nations communities we will work to improve infrastructure resiliency, and increase fire awareness, prevention, and protection efforts on reserve.”
This story was originally published in the Toronto Star.
Read more from this series:
Rotting foundations. Rampant mould. Sewage backups. What an expert’s report reveals about the state of housing in ‘deliberately underfunded’ First Nations
The report was filed in court as part of a $10-billion class action lawsuit against the Canadian government.
They need new homes, roads and schools. But Indigenous communities across Canada ‘can’t catch up’ thanks to staggering $349B infrastructure gap
Ottawa has pledged to close the infrastructure gap by 2030. An official said decades of underfunding means Canada has bills “yet to be paid.”
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