Industrial pollution plagues more than half of all First Nation communities – Insurance Business Mag
First Nation communities across Canada are in danger of succumbing to pollution from industrial businesses operating within their lands, a damning special report has revealed.
According to a federal-run database – part of a 15-year effort under the Federal Contaminated Sites Action Plan – there have been 335 cases where industry has polluted the water and soil on First Nations reserve lands, which is more than half of all reserve lands in the country.
VICE News Canada, in a special feature on the indigenous water crisis, believes that the real number for such cases is likely higher, as the federal report does not cover cases such as N’dilo’s arsenic poisoning and Grassy Narrows’s mercury problem – the sources of the contamination of these pollution cases were located outside reserve lands and therefore outside federal jurisdiction.
