Lake Manitoba flood, 10 years later

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 03/06/2021 (1204 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

ON May 31, 2011, an inland tsunami rolled over homes and cottages along the shores of Lake Manitoba. The water rose five feet in a matter of hours, and surged far inland, sending people fleeing for their lives.

It was the most dramatic event in a flood that lasted nearly a year on Lake Manitoba and Lake St. Martin. The damage topped $2 billion and was, even in inflation-adjusted dollars, the most expensive flood in Manitoba history.

The flood was the product of high but natural inflow from the Waterhen River to the north and high but artificial inflow from the Assiniboine River via the Portage Diversion to the south. The diversion of floodwater into Lake Manitoba prevented many billions in damage on the Assiniboine floodplain from Portage la Prairie to Winnipeg. The residents of Lake Manitoba and Lake St. Martin were sacrificed for the greater good.

The flood had far-reaching personal and political consequences. Farms and grazing lands were inundated and rendered unusable for years; homes and cottages were destroyed; lives were forever changed. Entire First Nations communities were evacuated from around Lake St. Martin, and some residents never returned home.

And the flood helped to topple the government of Greg Selinger. The NDP, under the prudent fiscal management of finance minister Greg Selinger during the Gary Doer era, was settling into perpetual governing-party status. They had balanced the budget every year up to 2011; but all that changed in the spring of 2011 as deficit-inducing flood bills poured in. It quickly became clear that expensive new-flood control infrastructure would be needed to prevent a recurrence.

That caused Selinger to renege on a campaign promise. In an unpopular move, he raised the provincial sales tax by one per cent to pay for water-control infrastructure. That triggered a cabinet revolt and ultimately the collapse of his government. For Brian Pallister, the flood was serendipitous. Government fell into his lap.

The 2016 Progressive Conservatives’ election campaign featured a promise, not just to start, but to complete a Lake Manitoba/Lake St. Martin outlet channel in their first term in office. That first term in office ended in 2019. No shovels had hit the ground, and they won’t any time soon. That was a promise made by Pallister. A promise not kept.

From the beginning, his management of the flood file has been a fiasco. The project is currently bogged down in the federal environmental approval process. The stumbling block is getting the agreement of people affected by the project,

Quick: name three groups Pallister is most likely to offend during one of his increasingly unhinged press conferences. First Nations, the Manitoba Métis Federation and the federal government were likely near the top of your list. These are the three groups Pallister must persuade to get new channels excavated on traditional lands.

Under Section 35 of our Constitution, the Crown has a duty to consult Indigenous peoples over major infrastructure projects. First Nations were never consulted when the Fairford Water Control Structure or Portage Diversion were built. Both have done serious harm to bands around Lake Manitoba and Lake St. Martin for the last six decades. As a result, Indigenous peoples are understandably mistrustful about any new project.

The proposed project reroutes and expands the natural outflow from Lake Manitoba, via Lake St. Martin, to Lake Winnipeg. It potentially affects dozens of First Nations with consequences for fish, forests, wildlife, aquifers, grazing lands and communities. Not surprisingly, the federal government and First Nations did not think an email from the province to a chief or band council constituted a genuine Section 35 consultation.

The flood-outlet channels also affect the traditional lands of the Métis people covered under Section 35. To say that relations between MMF president David Chartrand and the premier are frosty would be… an understatement.

It is also unhelpful that Pallister, in his current legislative deluge, has included bills that appear deliberately designed to antagonize Indigenous peoples. Bill 57, the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act, was plagiarized from American legislation purpose-built to curb Indigenous protests; and Bill 56, the Smoking and Vapour Products Control Amendment Act, usurps jurisdiction from First Nations, using health benefits as a stalking horse.

And relations with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau? Pallister was prepared to spend $7 million on a pie-in-the-sky vaccine project just to hold a press conference to embarrass the PM.

Construction of any major infrastructure project in Canada now requires great tact and diplomacy. There is no politician in this country less suited to that task that Brian Pallister. While he remains in office, a Lake Manitoba flood-control project remains an elusive goal.

Scott Forbes is an ecologist at the University of Winnipeg. He owns property on Lake Manitoba that was flooded in 2011.