Reserves: Issues with native reserves
Kunwar Mahrok
5 May 2019
$$ Publication
A reserve is a piece of land, that belongs to the queen but, is set aside and used for the betterment of a band. Reserves were established after the “Indian Act” in 1876. About 1.6 million Aboriginals reside in Canada as of 2016. A study conducted in 2011 showed that about 49.3% (314,366) of aboriginal people lived on reserves. There are many issues with the reserves that no one is talking about, for example, dirty water and overcrowding.
The number of indigenous people is swiftly increasing but, there is not enough housing to help them live a healthy and comfortable lifestyle. There are multiple people living in a small roofless house causing them to sleep in rotations. Sleeping in rotation affects the children’s education, causing them to struggle in school and have bad marks. Struggling in school causes the children to suffer from unemployment later in their life. They might turn to drugs because, of the depression caused by unemployment. Having more people builds moisture in the houses, causing them to be weak. Many of these houses are unable to obtain house insurance as insurance companies do not want to take the risk of insuring a weak house. Some of the houses on remote reserves depend on wood to create heat for survival. The high rate of use for wood increases the danger for house fires. A lot of reserves do not even have emergency response units available to them, making it incredibly difficult to deal with emergencies such as, house fires. Along with overpopulation, there is also a huge problem with the water quality on reserves. According to Health Canada, there were a total of 147 water advisories with the reserves. 100 of the 147 advisories were long term and the other 47 were short term. A woman in Lytton First Nation said that she has been boiling water for about 20 years. She also said that if the water was not boiled, it would cause the same symptoms as the flu. The water would also cause diarrhea and vomiting. Some people may argue that the Aboriginals do not deserve government help because, they do not pay taxes, but that is just a myth. Just like the average Canadian, Indigenous people must pay taxes. There are a few places where they are exempted from paying tax, such as, PST on car insurances but, other than that, they are required to pay taxes. The life on reserves is of low quality but, there are attempts by the government to increase the quality of life.
The government has already implemented a plan to improve the water on the reserves. Starting in 2016, the budget of the government indicated that they were going to invest 1.8 billion over the five years to improve the safety, health, maintenance and the water quality on reserves. In 2017, the budget proposed an extra of 4 billion dollars over the next ten years to build and improve infrastructures in the Indigenous communities. In the last year’s budget, it was declared that about 172.6 million dollars was to be used over the next three years to speed up the construction and rebuilding of current water systems to improve access to drinkable water.
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