But that’s not the case for the nearly 2,200 indigenous people about 10 miles away on the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte First Nations reserve.
Six of its water systems are under long-term drinking-water advisories.
But the commitment, part of a raft of pledges designed to bring about reconciliation with Canada’s indigenous people, has not been easy to address, and chiefs and others worry that a combination of red tape, undertrained operators at water treatment plants and insufficient funding means that progress will be sporadic.
Despite the fact that Canada has the world’s third-largest supply of fresh water, water on indigenous reserves has for decades been contaminated with various chemicals or bacteria, tough to access or at risk because of broken-down water systems that can take years to fix.
In Neskantaga, a remote fly-in reserve also in northern Ontario, residents have been boiling water for 23 years after a water treatment plant that was built in 1993 broke down.
Since becoming prime minister, Trudeau has earmarked nearly $2 billion to make good on his promise, but addressing the crisis hasn’t been easy.
In 2016, after four years of negotiations with the federal government, his reserve got something that many don’t have: a $31 million state-of-the-art water treatment plant, which provides clean water to 68 homes and various community facilities.
A report from Human Rights Watch in 2016 found that of the dozens of drinking-water advisories in place on Ontario’s reserves, almost 60 were for systems less than 25 years old, and 12 were for systems less than 15 years old.
Making matters worse, reserves often struggle to retain water treatment plant operators, who are trained by Health Canada and responsible for testing the water.
A $41 million water treatment plant was built to serve part of the Six Nations reserve in 2014, she explained, but residents are afraid to drink from it because they don’t trust that the water is clean.