I was recently reading a blog where taxpayers were complaining about having to subsidize western Canadian farmers that were hard hit by floods this year.
Their beef was that a lot of the flooded areas that will be compensated for are actual sloughs and marshes that had been seeded or cultivated in dry years, and were normally under water in wet years.
After the Second World War, the federal government, through the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Act, had surveyed a good portion of the grain belt. A lot of productive farmland could have been drained into larger bodies of water, and in turn used for irrigation in dry years.
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The lack of a concerted effort to expropriate the right of way for canals and ditches was a major setback.
The other was the lack of funding from socialist governments who did not place infrastructure at the top of their priorities.
At about the time the Liberals were battling with their own prime minister over how many maple leaves should be displayed on our new flag, or whether or not the can of cream of mushroom soup should have a French or English or bilingual label around it, funding for drainage became increasingly harder to get.
In the 1990s, the environmentalists took over from the politicians, and their main concern was that frogs and mosquitoes would feel alienated if their marshes were drained a few miles down from the field.
Today, bird watchers, geese and ducks are enjoying the farmer’s hospitality. And that hospitality, realistically, rests on the shoulders of the taxpayer.
John Hamon,
Gravelbourg, Sask.
