OTTAWA - It may be more than three months late, but Christmas is coming to the troubled Pikangikum reserve.
The northern Ontario First Nation where residents were told not to hang Yuletide lights last year due to power shortages is to receive just over $40 million in new federal funds.
Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice will confirm the cash injection Tuesday, said a government official who asked not to be identified. It's to be announced as Prentice makes his first, day-long visit to the remote reserve about 300 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg.
The money is to help connect houses to the regional electricity grid, improve water and sewage services, build a new school and up to 40 new homes.
Pikangikum has made global headlines for one of the world's highest suicide rates. Its rotting sprawl of run-down, graffiti-covered houses is a stark reminder that Third World poverty is a reality in Canada's most neglected native enclaves.
Many Pikangikum residents have no running water and rely on outhouses that freeze and overflow in winter. They draw electricity from an overworked diesel generator. About 700 children in the community of 2,200 are overcrowded into a school designed for 350. Organized recreation for a growing population of restless teenagers is badly needed.
They live in conditions that most Canadians can only imagine.
One of the most recent reports to leave the federal government red-faced was delivered last fall by a regional medical officer of health based in Kenora, Ont.
Dr. Pete Sarsfield raised alarms about water-related illness, skin diseases, ear infections and lice. He said the slow pace of federal action would never be accepted elsewhere.
"The conditions in Pikangikum would not be tolerated in our suburbs or rural areas," he told The Canadian Press last December. "It simply would not be allowed."
Angus Toulouse, Ontario vice-chief for the national Assembly of First Nations, said any new spending in the community is "tremendously needed" and long overdue.
Work to connect homes to the water treatment plant has been stalled since 2001, he noted. That's when the former Liberal government took over the band's finances - even though the books were in order - citing the band's failure to tackle an array of social problems, including domestic violence and a suicide rate that eclipsed the Canadian average.
"Just coming into the community, you can see the despair," he said in an interview.
"It's disgusting that in this day and age, that's the standard living condition in many of our impoverished communities - especially in the remote North. Out of sight, out of mind.
"I can only continue to express a real need for the government to take a global look at the needs that are there, and not individually zero in on one community."
Toulouse is cautiously optimistic that the $40 million may help take the edge off some of Pikangikum's most pressing infrastructure needs. But he said it won't be enough to keep pace with long neglected repairs, maintenance and the burgeoning demands of a growing population.
