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JOE BRYKSA / winnipeg free press archives Residents of St. Theresa Point First Nation have lived with no running water for years. They�re likely going to be waiting a lot longer.

OTTAWA -- More than half Canada's reserves still don't have reliably safe drinking water and it may be years before they do, former auditor general Sheila Fraser reported Thursday.

And Assembly of First Nations National Chief Shawn Atleo warned the water woes which force residents to deal with slop pails are even worse than what was flagged in the scathing report. According to Atleo, 75,000 First Nations citizens are exposed to unsafe drinking water daily.

"That's the size of a large town or small city in Canada," he said.

The latest indictment of water services on reserves came in a follow-up to an audit on water on reserves Fraser first completed in 2005 which found First Nations did not have the same benefit of safe and reliable drinking water that other Canadians did. The follow-up was released Thursday by the acting auditor general. Fraser's term as auditor general expired May 31.

The follow-up does not specifically mention the lack of running water on reserves in northern Manitoba. Last fall the Free Press identified that about half the 10,000 residents of Island Lake reserves in northern Manitoba lived in homes without access to running water.

It contributed to a number of health and social problems and often meant residents drew drinking water from lakes contaminated with wastewater run-off.

In her report, Fraser said Ottawa had not done a great job at implementing drinking water testing on reserves.

In 20 communities with drinking water quality advisories, Fraser found only 25 of 80 required annual inspections and 47 of 80 risk evaluations took place between 2006 and 2010. As well, only 40 per cent of the communities had bacteriological sampling performed as often as was recommended by the Guidelines for Canadian Drinking Water Quality.

Fraser noted the federal government has introduced legislation to set drinking water standards on reserves but that legislation failed to pass before the election.

Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Duncan said he will reintroduce legislation this fall. He said he has already reached out to First Nations on the issue and is open to further collaboration on the bill, which was getting a rocky ride in the Senate on its first go around.

"I can tell you as long as we were in a minority status, we'd never have gotten it through," said Duncan.

He is hoping with the majority the bill can move forward quickly.

But Fraser said even if the bill passes, it will be awhile before it brings real change to reserves. That's because INAC and Health Canada need to consult, negotiate and develop capacity on reserves before the new standards will be applied, all of which will also require money.

Duncan told the Free Press Thursday the government is still committed to a program that will see residents of Island Lake communities in Northern Manitoba trained to renovate homes to install modern plumbing -- everything from pipes to bathtubs, toilets and kitchen sinks.

There is no money in the federal budget for the program and it has not been made official yet.

-- with files from Postmedia News

mia.rabson@freepress.mb.ca