A Manitoba farmer suffered a setback last week in the debate about who has jurisdiction over land drainage in Manitoba.
Ray Hildebrandt, a farmer at Ninga, Man., found himself in a debate after being charged two years ago with illegally draining water from his land. He drained water from his field without a provincial permit.
The charges against Hildebrandt were dismissed earlier this year by provincial court judge Brian Giesbrecht, who ruled that drainage is a municipal jurisdiction rather than a provincial one.
But last week, the Court of Queen’s Bench overruled Giesbrecht’s decision, suggesting that the province does have a say in land drainage. The latest ruling convicts Hildebrandt of the charges brought against him in 1997.
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“If we don’t appeal, I will have to go back to court and be faced with a fine or jail sentence,” Hildebrandt said. “That’s not a very happy prospect.”
The issue of who controls land drainage became more acute this spring due to the glut of moisture that swamped farmers’ fields in western Manitoba. More than a million acres of land went unseeded this year because of unrelenting rains in May and June.
Hildebrandt farms in the affected area. He and his brother were unable to seed more than 500 acres.
Much of the quarter section that he tried to drain water from two years ago was again flooded this spring. He seeded only 70 acres on that parcel, and had the rest sprayed with Roundup to control weeds.
“They splashed through a lot of water to do it.”
Hildebrandt maintains that decisions about drainage should be made by local municipalities, which he believes have a better understanding of local needs.
The shortcomings of existing drainage, combined with the excess water this spring, are “going to be a real blow to our personal pocketbook,” he said.
“We’ll just have to be more careful about how we spend any dollars that come our way.”
Although he feels strongly about the issue of land drainage, Hildebrandt said a decision about whether to appeal last week’s ruling had to be weighed against the legal costs. The province, which appealed Giesbrecht’s decision, has deeper pockets than his own.
“It’s ironic that I’m helping to pay for their lawyer as well as my own. I feel that provincial funds could be better spent elsewhere, like on improving our drainage system.”
The province appealed Giesbrecht’s ruling, insisting that its natural resources department needed a say in the issue of land drainage, especially where water flows across municipal boundaries.
Hildebrandt’s lawyer, Michael Waldron, argued that drainage is a municipal jurisdiction based on the province’s municipal act. Crown lawyer Mary Goska argued that drainage is a shared jurisdiction. The province gets its authority, she said, through the water rights act, which deals with water diversion.
