Hydro turmoil empowers protesters

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This article was published 23/03/2018 (2778 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

One day after Manitoba Hydro’s board quit amid public acrimony, First Nations put their dam-related grievances with the energy utility on public display in downtown Winnipeg.

Activists, advocates and environmentalists organized a rally that drew about 100 people to the Crown corporation’s headquarters during the afternoon rush hour Thursday.

The event was organized under the First Nations’ Wa Ni Ska Tan group, along with the Winnipeg-based Manitoba Energy Justice Coalition.

It followed the highly charged resignation Wednesday of all but one of the 10 Tory-appointed directors to the Hydro board.

The board accused Premier Brian Pallister of refusing to resolve critical issues, saying he had refused to meet with members for a year. The premier retorted the board was upset his government had nixed a multimillion-dollar “persuasion” payment to the province’s Métis peoples — a charge Indigenous leaders condemned as playing a race card.

In the fallout, First Nations located on river systems with hydroelectric-generating development wasted little time in getting their historic grievances before the public.

The rally started outside the Portage Avenue headquarters of Manitoba Hydro with speeches. Plans called for the event to wrap up at Circle of Life Thunderbird House on Main Street, after a march downtown.

“We have agreements with Manitoba Hydro and the province and they’ve refused to talk to us for five years,” South Indian Lake resident Leslie Dysart said.

The rally offered a platform for South Indian Lake’s O-Pipon-Na-Piwin Cree Nation residents, as well as people from Nelson House’s Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation, Sagkeeng First Nation, Misipawistik in Grand Rapids and Pimicikamak Cree Nation in Cross Lake.

All the communities are on major river systems that have hydro developments. They all have agreements with Manitoba Hydro that rally organizers claimed don’t serve their communities.

“When the water was dammed, our way of life was changed to meet the needs of cheap hydro power,” said Carol Kobliski from Nelson House. “Water is life and without water, we no longer exist.”

Organizers called on Hydro to scrap a process designed to reconcile utility-community conflicts. Instead of helping, the Regional Cumulative Effects Assessment has become a stumbling block, they said.

Some accused the Crown corporation of using the process to pay lip service to the concept of consultation without acting on their concerns.

“Our children are doomed to a poor future if this is ongoing,” Dysart said. “This can change. I know it can change.

“I live and breathe in South Indian Lake. I’m a hunter, a fisher and a trapper. I live on these shorelines. I have studied Hydro. They have the ability to change and they can operate more responsibly in order for us to live in some kind of harmony.”

Manitoba Hydro released an email statement in advance of the rally, saying the utility welcomed informed public debate about its activities.

The Clean Environment Commission recommended the regional impact assessment as an ongoing process in its 2013 report on the Bipole III transmission line.

It’s undertaken before the licensing of any additional projects in areas fed by the Nelson River, and its scope includes hydro developments at Jenpeg, Kettle, Long Spruce, Limestone, Bipole I, II and III, as well as associated transmission lines and infrastructure.

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca