The federal government will help the people of Grassy Narrows First Nation build a new care home for those suffering from mercury poisoning.

For nearly four years, Grassy Narrows leaders have been asking for help for survivors of the industrial pollution that has sickened the community for decades.

Many ill residents have had to leave the community to get the care they need in Kenora, Ont., or other towns and cities further from home.

In an interview with the Star Wednesday, Jane Philpott, the federal Minister of Indigenous Services, acknowledged that the people of Grassy Narrows and nearby Whitedog First Nations were “suffering from symptoms and syndromes that are associated with mercury exposure.”

“They have been asking for a very long time for a treatment centre to address these particular health needs and I made the commitment to them today that we would support them in the development, planning, design and construction of the treatment centre in Grassy Narrows.”

Philpott made the promise at a closed-door meeting earlier in the day that was attended by provincial and federal government officials as well as leadership from Grassy Narrows and nearby Whitedog, which is also affected by mercury. Those in attendance said Simon Fobister, the Chief of Grassy Narrows, repeatedly pressed the minister to commit to building the home. When she did, it was met with applause.

“It means a lot to our people . . . it means people with disabilities can stay in this residence, can stay with their families,” Fobister told the Star after the meeting.

“The government of Canada is stepping up to build this building for our people.”

Judy DaSilva, a grandmother and health advocate in Grassy Narrows, said it was “surreal” to hear the promise.

“But at the same time I couldn’t help but think of the people that have passed on and suffered and the people that are struggling right now. It felt bitter sweet.”

Earlier this week, Peter Luce, an engineer and project manager working with Grassy Narrows, unveiled a proposed $4.5-million care home that would be built near the shoreline and could include rooms for eight residents, an exam room and customized showers and tubs — all essential things that a current community clinic does not offer.

Such a facility could also be a home for needed palliative care, physiotherapy, counselling and traditional healing.

Next, “we’d like to (get a) detailed design so we can go to construction in the summer,” Luce said Wednesday after the meeting.

Philpott told the Star there is currently no set timeline for the construction of the home, but added she has asked officials in her department to work with the community on the design they have put forward to determine whether it adequately meets their needs.

“There’s work to be done, I think, in the area of defining exactly what they need, whether it’s both an inpatient and outpatient facility and exactly what will be offered,” she said.

In the meantime, she said she is committed to offering help in other ways, including services for mental health, programs for at-risk youth and for children who are dealing with learning disabilities in schools.

In addition to the promise to build the home, Philpott said she has also committed to conducting a community health assessment survey in Whitedog that would help assess the impacts of mercury poisoning on the community there and determine “what their needs are.”

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A community health assessment survey is currently being conducted in Grassy Narrows in collaboration with Dr. Donna Mergler, a researcher in environmental health and a mercury expert from the Université du Québec à Montréal. Results of that survey are expected to be released to the community soon. Mergler and others are also in the process of compiling all of the information on mercury exposure in Grassy Narrows that has been collected by governments and researchers since 1970 — including hair, blood and cord blood tests — to examine the consequences the neurotoxin has had on the lives of the people who have lived and continue to live there. It is the first such epidemiological study.

The legacy of mercury poisoning in Grassy Narrows and nearby Whitedog began in the 1960s, when a pulp and paper mill upstream dumped 10 tonnes of the neurotoxin into the river English-Wabigoon River. The mercury contaminated the fish and poisoned the people who live downstream.

An ongoing Star investigation has revealed that in 1984, the then-environment minister recommended that the river be cleaned up, but the government of the day ignored his recommendation and chose instead to let the river clean itself naturally. For decades, politicians repeated that this strategy was working, until recently. Test results from soil, fish and river sediment reveal there are still dangerously high levels of mercury which suggest there is an ongoing source from the site of the paper mill.

In a historic announcement this past summer, Ontario pledged $85 million to clean up the river system.

But earlier this month Premier Kathleen Wynne was scrambling to determine why she was in the dark about an explosive report detailing mercury-contaminated soil and groundwater on mill property upstream from Grassy Narrows.

As the Star revealed, the report, which was commissioned by the current owners of the mill, Domtar, and in the government’s possession for more than a year, said the environment ministry was told in 1990 that mercury was visible in soil under a building on the mill site. Further, the document said, companies that previously owned the mill tested groundwater wells on the property throughout the 1990s and until 2006. Those tests showed elevated levels of mercury. Just last year, Domtar had several of these wells tested and one result showed an elevated mercury level.

There is no suggestion that Domtar, a pulp manufacturer several owners removed from Reed Paper, is responsible for any source of mercury.

Since the mercury was dumped in the river more than 40 years ago, the neurotoxin has sickened generations who consider walleye from the river a dietary staple. It has also had tremendous social impacts. The pollution decimated a robust fishing industry and many of the people in Grassy Narrows, who worked as guides, lost their jobs.

Physical symptoms of mercury poisoning include loss of muscle co-ordination and tunnel vision. Fetuses are particularly vulnerable to cognitive damage. Recent research by Japanese experts shows residents — including the younger generation — continue to have symptoms of mercury poisoning.

Philpott was appointed to her new role as Indigenous Services minister in August, having previously served as the minister of Health. The newly created department will focus on improving what she has called the “deplorable gaps in health outcomes” faced by First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples in Canada.

Philpott acknowledged that the people of Grassy Narrows have heard promises from government officials before that have not been realized. (For example, in 2014 provincial Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation Minister David Zimmer said he was going to seek federal help and that the provincial government was considering a treatment centre in the community.)

“I expressed empathy for the fact that that they have not had their needs appropriately addressed,” said Philpott. “But I’ve said this is a new day. We have a new relationship with Indigenous peoples where we recognize their rights. . . and it’s understandable that it will take some time to trust us. But I gave them my firm commitment that we will respect those rights and we will support them through the troubles that they are facing.”

With files from Robert Benzie