The Poplar River First Nation is starting to buckle after one of its major economical lifelines was destroyed.
Since the barge exploded on May 6, the transportation of goods and resources to and from the community has suffered major setbacks.
After officially declaring a state of emergency on May 30, Poplar government liaison Dave MacKay says it’s been “a perfect storm of unfortunate issues.”
According to MacKay, residents are starting to ration food and fuel in anticipation of sharp price increases. Meanwhile commercial fishing in the area is taking a significant hit.
“Some of our fishers are trying to go out on the lake, but that would mean they would have to go literally hundreds of kilometers north or south to try to get fishing, and you can imagine with the cost of fuel what that would mean in terms of expenses,” MacKay says.
MacKay says the livelihood of approximately 50-100 families depends on commercial fishing.
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“It’s a lot of people, and they’re not gonna have their income, that also undermines their employment insurance situation later, so it actually has a cascading negative effect throughout the year.”
As of now, the community is looking at alternate methods to transport goods, namely pulling in the Namao research ship to help move cargo.
“We’re hoping to get it to do a run,” says MacKay. “But it would need a substantial amount of reverse engineering.”
MacKay anticipates some logistical issues with the plan, due to the Namao’s inability to pass through the shallow points of water.
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“It’s challenging navigation, you can wreck a boat very quickly on a reef, we don’t want to ruin any of these boats so we’re really concerned about how we’re going to do that,” he says.
“We may have to anchor outside of the harbour and do a runner system, if you can believe it, literally try to bring a number of boats to grab the product off the boat and bring it into the community, it’s really challenging. Plus we lost our dock this year.”
In terms of other supports, MacKay is waiting for a reply from the federal government.
“I still have not heard from Indigenous Services Canada at a federal level, so I’m not sure what the response is going to be. ”
MacKay says he’s hoping to ask the federal government for emergency funding to help the community.
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