Water agency must focus on current crises

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/07/2021 (1516 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Liberal Party of Canada promised during the 2019 federal election to create the Canada Water Agency. During its first 20 months in office, it has repeated the pledge in ministerial mandate letters, in the 2020 speech from the throne, and in the most recent federal budget. This repetition has provided a pretty clear indication of just what the elected government has in mind.

The Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration (PFRA) is repeatedly cited as, if not a blueprint, at least a model that the new agency should emulate. While co-ordinating the diverse water programs now spread over several government departments, agricultural water issues are seen as a major focus of the CWA, with those issues being linked to climate-change adaptation.

The PFRA was established in 1935 as a regional federal organization charged with the rehabilitation of a drought-ravaged area of western Canada known as the Palliser Triangle. It succeeded. Its success led to a broadening of its mandate to include working with all three Prairie provinces on important water-management issues, perhaps the best example we have of how to get things done through co-operative federalism.

An anomalous federal entity, it was popular with the provinces but seemed less so in Ottawa; it was shut down in 2009.

As a model, it offers several important insights. First, it was established in response to what was seen as a national emergency — the threat of permanent eradication of an important part of Canada’s food-production system. Its mission was clear and unambiguous. Second, as a federal initiative, it was initially not particularly welcomed by Saskatchewan and Alberta, and Manitoba, with only the extreme southwest affected, was at first only peripherally involved.

Whatever their governments might say, farmers quickly came to appreciate the PFRA and so their provincial governments followed suit. The PFRA brought money to the table and used the research generated by existing federal agricultural research stations, in co-operation with farmers and provincial governments, to maximize the impact of that spending.

If we believe what the government has been saying — and who wouldn’t? — the CWA should look something like this: a regionally based institution with the core mandate of leading Canada’s water-related climate-change adaptation; based in western Canada, its first priority will be agricultural water management and supply. It will have a strong science component, and its subsequent priority will be to revise and implement federal water policy to guide the current multitude of federal water programs in a common direction.

Over the next two years $17 million has been set aside to get the CWA up and running. The obligatory consultation process was completed over the winter and a “what-you-told-us” document, outlining what we told them, was released. The “we” in this case is not a broad slice of the general public, but largely individuals and organizations actively involved in water issues.

Getting advice from those most intimately involved with water management and policy in Canada is a good thing, and the many excellent ideas that emerged will be of immense help to the political lead, Terry Duguid, and his minions as they operationalize the new agency.

But the vision, originating in Western Canada and enunciated repeatedly, must remain. In its most recent budget, which provided CWA funding, government took the unusual step of directing that the agency be located outside of Ottawa. To anyone who has heard the sucking sound of the centralizing vortex known as the Ottawa bureaucracy, this seems to be one decision our elected officials got right.

The importance of location should not be trivialized. To fulfil the government’s initial vision, it must be located on the Prairies. It should also be located in a province where there is the possibility of collaboration on agricultural water issues to provide, just as the PFRA did, early benefits to the agricultural community.

The possibility of fruitful co-operation from the governments of Alberta and Saskatchewan simply does not currently exist.

Here lies a great opportunity. It is becoming increasingly evident that Manitoba agriculture — Prairie agriculture — is under stress owing to a changing climate, and that change is coming faster than anticipated. The PFRA successfully partnered with the Prairie provinces to build a resilient water-management system based on the hydrologic regime of the past, but we can no longer rely on systems designed for a regime that no longer exists and is continuing to change.

Our existing agricultural water infrastructure can neither protect against extreme precipitation events nor supply water in times of drought. Existing infrastructure needs to be improved and new infrastructure brought online. The CWA cannot fulfil its mandate without provincial partnership, and provinces cannot build resilience into their water-management systems without federal help.

Manitoba has the opportunity to be the first provincial partner of the new agency. Let’s not let provincial fed-bashing or centrist tendencies in Ottawa stand in the way of an idea whose time has come.

Norman Brandson was deputy minister of the former Manitoba departments of environment, water stewardship and conservation from 1990 to 2006.