Drainage policy
Response to “Much ado about drainage” (WP, March 3).
It is important to make a number of key points about the impacts of drainage as work on new drainage regulations in Saskatchewan moves forward.
First, the article highlighted that there has been substantial unauthorized drainage across Saskatchewan — between 100,000 and 150,000 quarter sections with unapproved drainage works.
While breaking the law is problematic, the key point is that if all that drainage had been vetted through an approval process and still occurred, the impacts on downstream communities and other producers would be the same.
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Worrisome drop in grain prices
Prices had been softening for most of the previous month, but heading into the Labour Day long weekend, the price drops were startling.
We now know, based on the most contemporary science, that wetland drainage contributes in a significant way to downstream flooding.
John Pomeroy, chair of Centre for Hydrology at the University of Saskatchewan, is a leading expert on the topic. Pomeroy’s research conducted in east-central Saskatchewan demonstrated that the wetland drainage that occurred there increased the 2011 flood peak by 32 percent and the yearly stream flow volume by 29 percent.
And more recent work by Pomeroy suggests that the negative impacts of wetland drainage will only increase under the climate change scenarios that we are already experiencing.
And a recent report (Feb. 25) by the federal government’s Parliamentary Budget Office on Disaster Financial Assistance Arrangements highlights the accelerating costs of floods to the provinces and the federal government. From 2005 to 2014, 93 percent of the total disaster payments were a result of flooding. Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba accounted for 82 percent of all the weather event costs during that period with almost all of this being due to flooding.
Saskatchewan’s unregulated drainage was highlighted in this report as contributing to those costs. The report predicted those costs increasing in the future as a result of climate change.
Saskatchewan’s new drainage regulations must include a solid mitigation process where drainage is avoided first, then minimized and finally, mitigated with restoration of wetlands elsewhere if it is to eliminate negative impacts that continue to grow. A functional wetland mitigation is fundamental.
The question before everyone in Saskatchewan is whether they will demand a government that ensures sustainable future that maintains wetlands, or one where the continued drainage of wetlands to benefit a few at a significant cost to communities, agricultural producers downstream and all the taxpayers in Saskatchewan.
If you care about wetlands and a more sustainable future for your community, it’s an appropriate time to let your voice be heard to your respective candidates for MLA. For more information, go to: voteforwetlands.ca
Scott Stephens
Director of Regional Operations – Prairies
Ducks Unlimited Canada
Why New Orleans?
The Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association appears to be trying to make their claim as a farm group by having their annual convention in New Orleans, Louisiana. More likely a tax deduction holiday than anything else.
One has to wonder why this one trick group (kill the Canadian Wheat Board) needs to exist anymore. The single desk CWB is gone, aided by the corporate donations to the WCWGA and the hundreds of thousands of dollars of research money the previous federal government gave them.
Farmers now get to face the grain trade head on individually and without the market research the CWB used to provide. Farmers now have the “freedom” to deal with middlemen who now gleefully take what we used to get through the single-desk while the grain companies provide no price transparency.
Producers have lost billions of dollars of revenue in the last few years due to the loss of the CWB and the excessive basis values the grain companies charged, and they will lose billions more this year as grain is sold in U.S. dollars, yet our price in Canadian dollars has not changed for the better.
The hard assets we paid for, like the hopper cars, the building in Winnipeg, the two laker ships and farmers insight/control into the grain industry are all gone with the loss of the CWB.
It’s a national disgrace anyone can call the one trick WCWGA a farm group. Its sole purpose, when they were not working for the railroads, was to destroy the farmer controlled CWB and replace it with nothing. Its corporate party in New Orleans is a slap in the face to all western Canadian farmers, not to mention the taxpayers of Canada.
Eric Sagan,
Melville, Sask.
Money wasted
Can taxpayers afford another four years of gross money mismanagement from Brad Wall and the Saskatchewan Party? The Lean initiative, the carbon capture failure, the Smart Meters, P3 schools and the Regina bypass. What’s next?
Catering to outside interests seems to be the focus of this government, instead of the lifelong taxpayers of Saskatchewan. Kind of ironic that a party named for our province, and thrust into power by rural residents, forgets where it came from and does nothing for the overall well being of Saskatchewan and its residents.
Wasted billions on multiple pet projects, sending billions out of the province on P3 projects so that it doesn’t have to count it as “debt” on the fiscal report card, paying certain landowners hefty prices for lands while leaving Saskatchewan homesteads in shambles for mere pennies on the dollar of its true value.
Can we afford another four years of this? I know I can’t.
Donald Neuls
Coppersands, Sask.
CWB not needed
Re: “Producer meeting calls for return of Canadian Wheat Board (WP, Feb. 18).
Kyle Korneychuk and a handful of others want the CWB reinstated. He cites a study by Richard Gray comparing crop returns from then and now. I don’t think his figures have much credibility. Ken Sigurdson received 90 percent of the port price when the CWB was in place?
I can’t remember ever receiving more than two-thirds of the port price for my production, and had to wait for over a year for much of it.
The wheat board supporters are comparing the port price under the CWB to the elevator price now. You can pluck figures out of the air to prove anything you wish; that does not make it so.
The old producers who want the CWB back are responsible for less than 10 percent of production. Ask the producers who account for more 90 percent of production what they think about reviving the CWB.
Roger Brandl
Fort St. John, B.C.
