There are two quotes bookending reporter Geralyn Wichers’ front-page story in the March 28 issue of the Co-operator on the bogged-down Lake St. Martin and Lake Manitoba outlet channels.
Outside of the fact there’s seven years between them and one comes from the Progressive Conservatives and the other from the NDP, there’s not a big difference.
Both comments are from opposition party leaders in the spring of an election year. Neither interviewee is shy about pointing fingers at the other party.
Read Also
Farming still has digital walls to scale
Canadian farms still face the same obstacles to adopting digital agriculture technology, despite the years industry and policy makers have had to break them down.
The project hasn’t moved despite being promised years ago. ‘We’re different from the governing party. If elected, we can get it done,’ they claim.
It’s the fault of Greg Selinger’s NDP; they watched millions of acres of farmland go under water in 2011, promised the project and have been dragging their heels ever since.
It’s the fault of Pallister and Stefanson’s PCs; they made the completed channels an election promise, haven’t done their due diligence and have been dragging their heels ever since.
In between, there are First Nations, frustrated with their treatment by the province. There are farmers and residents on the north end of Lake Manitoba, who have been frustrated by how the province has treated them.
And elsewhere along the shores of the lake, there are farmers and residents counting down their borrowed time until the next bad flood year.
The memes almost create themselves.
A basic Google search of news articles reveals information that makes it difficult to point the finger at one person or political party. When Brian Pallister stood outside of Saint Laurent and promised to get the channels complete in his first term, previous flood victims were legitimately frustrated.
Permanent outlet channels of some kind had been recommended several times, including by the task force responsible for analyzing the causes of the 2011 flood. It suggested measures to prevent such a disaster from happening again.
Residents were perhaps more than ready to think badly of the Selinger government. Memories of the 2011 flood left a bad taste in a lot of mouths and many thought the province had put their properties at greater risk by opening the Portage Diversion and pushing flood waters north in an effort to save Winnipeg.
Yet another flood in 2014 saw the Assiniboine River flood, the Portage Diversion opened and residents around Lake Manitoba filling sandbags.
As Wichers reports, the Selinger government set the tentative construction date for the channels in 2016, the same year as the election. While engineering and environmental clearance work started in that year, there was no indication that digging was about to get underway.
The Selinger government countered Pallister’s election promise by saying it wanted to do things properly. It accused the PCs of wanting to push the project too quickly with inadequate consultation.
And the project did run into trouble under the PCs. It was criticized by First Nations, who have seen multiple flood evacuations, and who argue that it won’t protect their communities. In 2022, a judge ruled that the province did not properly consult First Nations before handing out permits for right of way on Crown land, where groundwater monitoring, tree clearing and other work was being done.
Farmers in the way of the channel, who had land expropriated, felt they were being steamrolled.
In 2019, the last year with significant movement on the project, the environmental assessment failed to meet the requirements of federal regulators. Work on the channels has largely stalled since.
If the next government does see the channels completed, regardless of who wins the election in October, no doubt whoever is at the reins will make their party out as the hero. They who cut the ribbon get the credit, after all.
But that would ignore the fact that there has been more than a decade of hard work and fumbles on the part of both parties, while a multitude of government employees laboured in the background.
It is clear this project was more involved, complicated and problematic than either party anticipated when they promised it.
The NDP could win the next election and get the channels dug under its watch, or the PCs could pull off a re-election and get the project done under theirs. Or the project could run into more delays and problems, no matter who wins at the polls.
This millennial brain conjures up an image of ventriloquist Sheri Lewis and her sidekick Lamb Chop and their classic The Song that Doesn’t End:
“This is the electoral promise that doesn’t end,
Yes, it goes on and on my friends.
Some people started planning it, not knowing what it was,
And now they will be planning it forever just because….”
