🚰FREEZE WATER & SEWER CHARGES & REBATE

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Umar Hayat Announces Water and Sewer Rebate Proposal to Help Low income Winnipeg Families

Winnipeg mayoral candidate Umar Hayat today announced a proposal to provide a $20 per month water and sewer rebate, returning $240 annually to eligible Winnipeg households as part of his affordability platform.

“Over the past several years, many Winnipeg families have felt the pressure of rising living costs,” said Hayat. “People are paying more for groceries, housing, utilities, and other essentials. My proposal is designed to put money back into residents’ pockets and provide practical relief.”

Under the proposal:

• $20 monthly water and sewer rebate
• $240 annual savings for eligible households
• Support for working families, seniors, and residents on fixed incomes
• Part of a broader affordability plan focused on reducing the cost of living

Hayat said affordability would be one of his top priorities if elected mayor.

“City Hall should be looking for ways to make life more affordable, not more expensive,” Hayat said. “Every dollar matter, and this rebate is one step toward helping Winnipeg families manage rising household costs.”

Hayat added that details regarding eligibility, implementation, and funding would be released as part of his full municipal affordability platform.

• are a Canadian citizen, or a permanent resident of Canada. 
• pay rent or room and board for unsubsidized housing
• have a net annual income of less than $29,120 for a single person, or $33,920 for a single person 55 years of age or older, or a person who qualifies for the Disability Tax Credit or receive Canada Pension Plan Disability benefits, $38,720 for two people, $50,240 for three or four people and $60,768 for five or more people
• have dependent children in your home and have a net annual income of less than $50,240 for two to four people, or $60,768 for five or more people

WATER

 When sewage flows from Winnipeg homes, schools, and businesses into Winnipeg rivers, Lake Winnipeg experiences the consequences in the form of toxic algae blooms that endanger the health of the lake and lake-dependent communities. Ten of those communities, all First Nations, have taken legal action against the municipal, provincial, and federal governments. While the First Nations seek financial compensation for losses due to pollution, they are primarily engaging the legal system in an attempt to protect Lake Winnipeg, or Weenipagamiksaguygun in Anishinaabemowin.

 Understanding Weenipagamiksaguygun as a living being with a spirit, and water as sacred, the First Nations consider it their duty to speak for the lake, and are undertaking their action on behalf of the lake as well as of themselves.1 For far too long, municipal budgets have failed to account for the true cost of water and waste services, ignoring the high price paid by Indigenous communities forced to deal with the environmental consequences of the City’s decisions. In the water chapter of the AMB, we focus on the need for Winnipeg to heed the call of First Nations to make clean water for all a top priority. We argue that this can and must be done in ways that ensure that the costs of clean water are borne by those who can best afford to do so.

 Historical context Since the completion of the Winnipeg Aqueduct in 1919, water has travelled 150km west from Shoal Lake, at the Manitoba-Ontario border, to the City of Winnipeg, supplying Winnipeg homes and businesses with a steady source of soft, clean water. Prior to accessing water from Shoal Lake, people living in Winnipeg procured water from private and public wells, from the Red and Assiniboine Rivers and by collecting rainwater. Building the aqueduct cost the city an enormous amount: skeptics called the plan “implausibly expensive,” yet taxpayers repeatedly voted overwhelmingly in favour of the project, agreeing for the city to take on a debt of $13.5 million to get the work done. But as costly as it was for Winnipeg to build the aqueduct, the benefits for city dwellers have been enormous and ongoing. Access to Shoal Lake water meant an end to worries about how a growing city would meet demands for domestic and industrial water use, as well as the decline of typhoid, an infectious bacterial fever often spread when feces from people carrying the disease enter the water supply. While Winnipeg did not begin to treat sewage until the 1937 opening of the North End Sewage  

 Treatment Plant, and sewage flowed into the city’s rivers, disease levels went down as the use of river water declined.5 Building the aqueduct for the benefit of Winnipeg came at the direct expense of Anishinaabe whose territory included Shoal Lake. Various levels of settler government agreed to the appropriation of almost 4000 acres of Shoal Lake 40 First Nation’s reserve without permission from the First Nation.6 Winnipeg’s mayor Thomas Deacon described the Shoal Lake 40 reserve as “a remote place,” but Shoal Lake 40 First Nation Chief Pete  Redsky understood the seized area as “the best part of our Reserve,” and  “very good farming, good timber, good hay land.”7 The construction of the aqueduct resulted not only in loss of land for the Shoal Lake 40 community, but also in the First Nation being cut off from the mainland and forced to live on an artificial island.8 Clearly, the benefits of the aqueduct did not extend to those living at Winnipeg’s water source. The activism of Shoal Lake 40 First Nation successfully forced municipal, provincial, and federal governments to end the community’s forced isolation and chronic water crisis in 2019 with the construction of the Freedom Road. 

 Present-day conditions

 In cities, tap water and wastewater, including sewage, are closely connected. In Winnipeg, tap water continues to flow from Shoal Lake, where city dwellers use it for numerous purposes, including the essentials of drinking, cooking, and cleaning. Most of the water that enters Winnipeg  homes and businesses from Shoal Lake leaves again through the sewer  system, where, after treatment, it winds up in the Assiniboine and Red  Rivers before flowing into Lake Winnipeg, some 55km north of the city. In spite of the fact that most wastewater is treated before exiting the  city by way of the Red River, Winnipeg’s sewage treatment system leaves  much to be desired. The North End Wastewater Treatment Plant has not  met the provincial government’s 2005 requirement that total phosphorus  concentration not exceed 1 milligram per liter, or the two additional  deadlines to meet these goals.9 Capacity for biosolids is projected to run  out in four to six years.10 Billions of litres of untreated sewage enter the  rivers each year and the current treatment process is not doing enough  to remove harmful bacteria and chemicals that damage ecosystems and  threaten human health.11 The 10 First Nations suing the City and other  levels of government find it unacceptable for Winnipeg’s waste to be  harming Lake Winnipeg and the people who depend on it. The City has    been able to drag its heels on major investments in water conservation  and wastewater treatment only because tap water comes all the way from  Shoal Lake. Unlike Indigenous communities north of the city, Winnipeg  doesn’t depend for survival on waters fed by the Red River. At both water  source and waste outlet, Winnipeg has solved its own problems by  creating problems for others. This must stop. A meaningful commitment to advancing government-to-government  relationships between Indigenous and municipal governments means  respecting the Indigenous laws that have been in place much longer  than Winnipeg has existed. In Treaty #3 territory, where Shoal Lake is  located, First Nations have articulated Anishinaabe Nibi Inaakonigewin,  or water law principles, in the form of the Nibi (Water) Declaration.  These principles include the recognition that nibi is alive, has a spirit and connects everything, and that Anishinaabe have been responsible for the care of nibi and aki (land) since time immemorial. The duty to respect and care for nibi extends to the protection of nibi for future generations.12 The Nibi Declaration expresses similar ideas to the First Nations of Lake Winnipeg in their recognition of the lake as a living being with a spirit. Protecting nibi is a moral obligation to future generations, and it is also necessary for maintaining the health of people and the ecosystems upon which we all depend for survival. We call on the City of Winnipeg to recognize Indigenous laws as fundamental to municipal decisions about water.