Future success flows from water planning

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/10/2023 (1058 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Wab Kinew wouldn’t be the first Manitoba premier who came into office vowing to represent all Manitobans, or to preach the politics of unity.

However, his may be a more daunting task than for those who came before him. He’s facing a quagmire of intersecting crises including, but not exclusive to, the escalating impacts of climate change and an increasingly volatile economy. Plus, he comes into office when post-pandemic discord has left our society deeply polarized.

Let’s be honest. Kinew wasn’t elected because he is Indigenous; he was elected despite his ethnic heritage. Manitobans voted for the NDP because they were fed up with the other party’s governing style and its disgraceful electioneering tactics.

But because he is Indigenous, Kinew has a rare opportunity to build a cohesive vision for this province that leverages the strengths of its people — all its people — and its natural resources, to tap into the emerging green economy.

There’s a long list of competing priorities for this fledgling government to tackle, but now is as good time as any to put one more on the table.

Water should form the foundation for Kinew’s vision for Manitoba — literally, because of its importance to our well-being and prosperity, and figuratively, because of its fluid nature and connecting flow.

How well we manage water will be at the root of our future disharmony and at the core of our economic and social successes.

It won’t be easy. Manitoba has lots of water — and if history is any indication, that gives us lots of reasons to fight over it.

For much of our past, water “management” has been code for drainage and dams. Much of our investment in water management infrastructure has been dedicated to either keeping water at bay or getting rid of it as quickly as possible.

It’s been divisive in both policy and practice. Dikes, dams and ditches benefit people on one side at the expense of those on the other. I’ll never forget the image of Winnipeg celebrating the end of the 1997 Flood of the Century with a parade through downtown, while much of southern Manitoba remained under water, thanks in part to the hastily built Z-dike protecting the city.

Does Lake Manitoba need an outlet, or do we need to stop dumping water that happens to be here at an inconvenient time?

Northern “development” made this province a hydroelectric powerhouse by flooding traditional lands and disrupting northern communities to benefit the south.

The future, however, could look much different. It must.

As we acknowledge the reality that the world’s freshwater reserves are under siege at the very time our demands are growing, Manitoba’s need for a water strategy has never been greater.

The previous government had begun working on one, the first in more than 20 years. In 2021, it commissioned EMILI (Enterprise Machine Intelligence and Learning Initiative), a non-profit organization focused on advancing digital agriculture, to oversee the research needed to support the exercise.

The report it produced is both disturbing and energizing. For starters, it acknowledges the importance of including Indigenous perspectives in developing the provincial strategy, so important that the province committed to its own separate engagement process. That process “was still in development” when the completed report was due. Missing voices must still be heard.

Secondly, Manitoba’s water policies, stewardship initiatives and regulations are spread across multiple portfolios, creating jurisdictional confusion and leaving lots of room for key questions to fall through the cracks. Our municipal water services, wastewater treatment and drainage systems are aging.

However, the report also identified opportunities for the province to do better. It highlighted some of the untapped potential — for example, stabilizing and bolstering agricultural productivity through more irrigation and incorporating more “nature-based solutions” as alternatives to engineered — and costly — infrastructure.

That report figured large in the province’s “initial water management action plan” released this past summer, which was heavy on lofty goals but arguably light on the investment needed to make them happen.

Now we have a new government committed to building bridges that connect divided communities.

Investing in our water plan will be important to achieving that goal.

Laura Rance is executive editor, production content lead for Glacier FarmMedia. She can be reached at lrance@farmmedia.com