Clicklaw Blog

Access to safe drinking water for First Nations communities has been a hot-button issue in Canada. Our newest contributor, the Environmental Law Centre Society, has made A Draft Submission: Canada’s Legal Obligation and Duty to Ensure On-Reserve Access to Clean Drinking Water publicly available.

The original draft submission was the work of Craig Crooks, a law student at the Centre, who prepared the document for a BC First Nation. It presents the argument that “Ottawa is legally obliged to do more to upgrade First Nations’ drinking water systems”. As the issue affects many aboriginal communities, this publication would be useful as a resource for other First Nations who intend to make similar submissions to the Federal Government.

BC Civil Liberties Association, together with Pivot Legal Society and West Coast LEAF, has recently released a new report entitled Blueprint for an Inquiry. The Missing Women’s Inquiry, led by former BC attorney-general Wally Oppal, was set up to examine the problems arising from investigations of the disappearance and murder of dozens of women in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Believing that the Inquiry was an absolute failure, the authors Darcie Bennett, David Eby, Kasari Govender, and Katrina Pacey sought to identify specific lessons for inquiries involving marginalized people in the future. The report includes 23 recommendations and focuses on “broad trends and procedural approaches that future commissioners of inquiry and their staff may usefully adapt to the particularities of their own jurisdiction”.