First Nation leaders said on January 14, 2026, that only 668 of about 2,200 Kashechewan residents had been evacuated in the 10 days since the community declared a state of emergency over a water and sewage failure, and they demanded faster evacuations and permanent infrastructure fixes.
Evacuations move slower than leaders say is safe
Kashechewan First Nation, a fly-in Cree community on the western shore of James Bay in northern Ontario, declared a state of emergency on January 4 after damage to its water and sewage systems created what local officials described as an urgent public health and safety risk. Sewage was entering homes and contaminating fresh water systems, according to The Canadian Press report published January 14.
Leaders from the Mushkegowuk Council, which represents Kashechewan and other First Nations in the region, said 668 people had been evacuated in the 10 days that followed. Indigenous Services Canada had said the week before that it was prioritizing the evacuation of 500 vulnerable people and that repairs were under way. The gap between those figures and the community’s total population of about 2,200 is the central concern leaders raised: most residents were still in the community while its basic systems were failing.
Mushkegowuk Council Grand Chief Leo Friday said the council had asked for expedited evacuation efforts and bigger airplanes, but governments were not acting fast enough. In a remote fly-in community, aircraft size and availability directly limit how many people can leave each day, especially in winter conditions. Leaders framed the request for larger planes not as a preference but as the practical bottleneck in the response.
A health facility flooded and a full evacuation ordered
A joint statement issued through Nishnawbe Aski Nation gives a fuller picture of conditions inside the community. It says Chief Hosea Wesley and council declared the state of emergency on January 4 and ordered a full-scale evacuation two days later. The failure of the water system flooded the community’s only health-care facility with raw sewage and crippled vital infrastructure, posing an immediate and serious risk to public health and safety, the statement says.
That detail matters: a community cannot safely operate without a functioning clinic. The statement says the response from both governments has been slow and inadequate, and that federal and provincial ministers, along with the local MP, were invited to visit and see conditions first-hand, and none prioritized the visit.
“There will be no more Band-Aid solutions in my community,” Chief Wesley said in the statement. “I am calling on Canada and Ontario to fast-track the relocation of the community.”
Why leaders are asking for relocation, not only repairs
Friday made a similar argument in the Canadian Press report. He said the crisis shows an urgent need for long-term solutions from Ottawa and the Ontario government, including a functional clinic and a working water treatment plant in the community. Those are immediate infrastructure needs, but leaders placed them inside a longer history.
Kashechewan is also forced to evacuate each year because of spring flooding, the Nishnawbe Aski Nation statement notes. In 2019, Kashechewan signed the Together We Work for Hope framework agreement with Ontario and Canada for the safety, health and ongoing sustainability of the First Nation, which includes relocating the community to higher ground. “The commitments have been made, and the community cannot wait any longer,” the statement says.
Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler called on Premier Doug Ford and Prime Minister Mark Carney to prioritize the relocation, so the community can look ahead to the future with hope.
That history is the original context that explains why a single plant failure drew such a forceful response. For leaders, January was not an isolated breakdown. It was the latest failure in a place where the long-term fix — moving to higher ground — had already been agreed in principle in 2019, yet residents were still living with the same fragile systems seven years later.
What happens next
As of January 14, evacuations were continuing, repairs were under way, and leaders were pressing both governments to move faster in the short term while finally acting on the longer commitment. The immediate test is practical: how quickly the remaining residents who need to leave can be flown out, and whether the water and sewage systems can be made safe for a return. The longer test is whether this emergency changes the timeline for a new clinic, a reliable treatment plant and the relocation process itself, rather than ending, as previous emergencies have, with a repair and a return to the same ground.
