The Star obtained documents through Access to Information legislation regarding the housing shortage in the northern Ontario reserve, including an exchange of emails between two public servants in the Thunder Bay office of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada on Nov. 30.
Earlier that day, Duncan had appeared before the Commons aboriginal affairs committee studying the supplementary estimates for department spending, where opposition MPs took the opportunity to grill him about Attawapiskat.
“Did you also see the minister at the (supplementary estimates) committee (?) He did not seem too aware of what had happened in (Attawapiskat) over the past month. Makes you wonder where all our info went to in HQ,” Joseph Young, then director of funding services for the north, wrote to a colleague late on Nov. 30.
“Yes. He didn’t look like he was aware of the situation,” replied Susan Bertrand, a communications manager in the Thunder Bay office.
Bertrand declined to comment and Young, who retired last month, could not be reached.
At the committee, Liberal MP Carolyn Bennett had asked Duncan when he was first notified of the state of emergency declared in the Cree community, where were living in unheated tents and other makeshift housing without plumbing as winter approached.
Duncan told Bennett he had been notified around Nov. 24.
“When a first nation wants to declare a state of emergency, it does so in a format that reaches us. That did not happen. There was no official state of emergency delivered. And in actual fact, when we did receive what we received, it had no specifics attached to it,” said Duncan.
The Mushkegowuk Tribal Council had declared a housing state of emergency for three of its member First Nations on Oct. 28, mentioning five families in Attawapiskat living in tents as well as three families in Kashechewan and two families in Fort Albany living in sheds.
When Bennett asked Duncan about the state of emergency in the other two communities, he said: “It’s news to me.”
The documents show the department committed about $500,000 in response to the housing crisis on Nov. 4 and that Attawapiskat First Nation Chief Theresa Spence did not declare a separate state of emergency for her own community until Nov. 12. For reasons that remain unknown, it did not reach the Aboriginal Affairs department until Nov. 24, which is the day Duncan said he found out about it.
A spokesman for Duncan would not comment on the emails.
“We will not comment on an email exchange between two departmental staff,” Jan O’Driscoll wrote in an emailed statement on Monday, before outlining the other work the federal government had done to respond to the housing crisis.
That included over $3 million for emergency shelter since last November, including the initial $500,000 for housing repairs and 22 modular homes, plus appointing a third-party manager to take control of band council spending.
The community kicked the third-party manager out of Attawapiskat and then fought his appointment all the way to federal court before losing the case. The manager left the community in April.
Source: the star
Author: Joanna Smith
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