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MPP says flood plagued First Nations should be moved

May 7, 2013, James Bay, Ont. – First Nations communities threatened by rising waters each spring should be moved off flood plains once and for all, a member of the Ontario legislature said Tuesday after flood fears triggered another wave of evacuations in the province.

"For years, we've been spending a lot of money moving people, flying them out every time there's a flood," said New Democrat Gilles Bisson, whose riding includes the flood-plagued James Bay region.

"It just seems to me that if we just keep on evacuating every spring, and every summer, we repair the damages from each flood, we're just spending literally millions of dollars every year and not really finding a longer-term solution as far as permanency goes for those communities," he said.

Instead, the provincial and federal governments should figure out a way to move residents to higher ground over time, like they did years ago in Timmins, Ont., Bisson said.

The suggestion came a day after hundreds more residents were flown out of the Kashechewan First Nation in northern Ontario, which is about 500 kilometres north of Timmins, the closest urban centre.

Roughly 900 people – nearly two thirds of the remote reserve's population of about 1,500 – have been evacuated as a precaution since the First Nation declared an emergency last week, Emergency
Management Ontario said.

Evacuees are being housed in Cornwall, Thunder Bay and other communities.

About 160 vulnerable residents in Moosonee have been taken to Sudbury, while officials continue to monitor water levels in the troubled First Nation of Attawapiskat, which is also under a state
of emergency.

Heavy snowfall followed by a rapid melt overwhelmed infrastructure in both Attawapiskat and Kashechewan last week, sending sewage into homes, schools and Attawapiskat's lone hospital.

Both the provincial and federal representatives for the area have said they expect the cleanup to be costly.

As concerns over rising waters grow in Ontario, officials in the Prairie provinces said flood risks there appeared to be waning.

The Manitoba government's latest dispatch said the threat was receding in many areas but there could be still be flooding to agricultural lands near parts of the Assiniboine River.

A flood warning was issued Monday for a stretch of the river from St-Lazare to Brandon, while the area from St-Lazare to Milwood was under a flood watch, meaning the water was approaching the banks but had yet to overflow.

And water watchers in Saskatchewan were keeping an eye on rising lake levels, but in some areas the worst of the flood threat has passed.

Emergency management officials said Monday there was some localized flooding as the last of the snow melts and the water moved across land to rivers and streams.

And more than a dozen communities in the province remained under states of emergency because of flooding.

Aboriginal Affairs Minister Bernard Valcourt said Tuesday he is sending a representative to Kapuskasing, Ont., which is hosting more than 200 Kashechewan evacuees.

He said parliamentary secretary Greg Rickford will meet with the displaced residents "to ensure that their immediate health and safety needs are being met."

Valcourt said he is keeping an eye on at-risk regions in all three provinces.

"Our government will continue to work with other levels of government and our First Nations partners to respond to these emergencies and, eventually, on the recovery effort once the immediate danger is over," he said in a statement.