Indian envoy warns of 'big red line,' days after charges laid in Nijjar case
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
The Canadian Armed Forces says its members have arrived in Nunavut's capital to assist with the city's ongoing water emergency.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted Friday that he had spoken with Nunavut Premier Joe Savikataaq and the military would be deployed to Iqaluit to co-ordinate and deliver clean drinking water.
Late Saturday, the military tweeted that there are over 20 Canadian Armed Forces members in Iqaluit setting up deployable equipment for reverse osmosis water purification.
Maj. Susan Magill, a public information officer for Joint Task Force North, said one purification unit arrived in Iqaluit in a military jet on Saturday and a second was on its way Sunday.
"It's as big as a sea can and it comes loaded and ready to go on a truck. So when the aircraft opens up, the truck rolls out," Magill said of the purification units during an interview Sunday in Iqaluit.
"We're still in the process of trying to find a good site to put these two units on."
Iqaluit's 8,000 residents haven't been able to consume tap water for nearly two weeks after fuel was found in samples.
Residents have been collecting water from the city's Sylvia Grinnell River and picking up free bottled water from distribution sites, and local officials say they're continuing efforts to identify the source of the contamination.
Magill said Canada's water purification units have been used in the past in warm climates like Haiti and the Philippines, so running them in Iqaluit in late October will be a new experience for the team.
"It's definitely going to be a challenge, but the team is up here for precisely that," Magill said, noting that three members of the group are already based in the city.
The plan, she said, is for purified water to be stored in large bladders, and then the city will collect it in trucks for distribution. She said that at 8 degrees Celsius, one of the units can purify 5,000 litres per hour if the water is passed through the system once, or half that much if it's put through the unit twice.
Testing will determine how much purification the water will need, and Magill said it could take a few days or a week before the units are ready to produce water for consumption.
She said the deployment is scheduled to last until Nov. 17, at which time it will be reassessed.
In a news release Sunday, the city said the investigation into the cause of the tainted water has pointed to potential hydrocarbon contamination in the soil or ground water outside the municipal treatment plant, which it said may have leached into a storage tank.
"The in-ground tank containing the high concentrations of contaminants in the Water Treatment Plant has been isolated, pumped out for remediation and has undergone cleaning," the release stated.
"The affected tank has been successfully bypassed and water continues to be treated and sent out to the City's distribution system."
That system has been flushed out, but the city said it will need to be done again and an order not to consume the water remains in place.
Amy Elgersma, the city's chief administrative officer, said last week that an assessment found "no obvious cracks" in the contaminated tank.
The territory's chief public health officer, Dr. Michael Patterson, told a news conference Friday that residents may still smell fuel in their water even though the city has bypassed the contaminated tank.
Patterson has said the health risks to residents who drank the city's tap water are very low.
Sunday's news release from the city noted that an environmental site assessment is underway where contractors will drill for soil and water samples around the treatment plant. It said the next steps are dependent on the test results.
"We will take direction from our experts on actions required to remediate the site," the release stated.
It also noted the city installed a "real time water monitoring station focusing detecting and trending hydrocarbons" on Sunday.
It said the monitoring station "will allow the city to obtain real-time information on hydrocarbon levels."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 24, 2021.
-- By Rob Drinkwater in Edmonton
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
With Donald Trump sitting just feet away, Stormy Daniels testified Tuesday at the former president's hush money trial about a sexual encounter the porn actor says they had in 2006 that resulted in her being paid to keep silent during the presidential race 10 years later.
The U.S. paused a shipment of bombs to Israel last week over concerns that Israel was approaching a decision on launching a full-scale assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah against the wishes of the U.S.
Footage from dozens of security cameras in the area of Drake’s Bridle Path mansion could be the key to identifying the suspect responsible for shooting and seriously injuring a security guard outside the rapper’s sprawling home early Tuesday morning, a former Toronto homicide detective says.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
Susan Buckner, best known for playing peppy Rydell High School cheerleader Patty Simcox in the 1978 classic movie musical 'Grease,' has died. She was 72.
Accused killer Jeremy Skibicki could have a challenging time convincing a judge that he is not criminally responsible for the deaths of four Indigenous women, a legal analyst says.
A Calgary bylaw requiring businesses to charge a minimum bag fee and only provide single-use items when requested has officially been tossed.
Two Nova Scotia men are dead after a boat they were travelling in sank in the Annapolis River in Granville Centre, N.S., on Monday.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.