Time to revamp Hydro’s water licence

On Sept. 1, Manitoba Hydro’s 50-year licence to divert 85 per cent of the flow of the second largest river in the province and flood the fourth largest lake expired. How different will the next 50 years of the Churchill River Diversion look?

The northern project is a cornerstone of the engineering wonder that provides Manitoba with inexpensive and reliable electricity.

Using control structures and a nine-kilometre channel blasted through granite, the project backs up the Churchill River — which carries five times more water than the Red — as it flows through Southern Indian Lake, a lake 50 times larger than West Hawk and Falcon lakes combined, causing it to overflow southward toward the huge dams on the distant Nelson River.

After touring Southern Indian Lake in 2022, Wab Kinew — then opposition leader — referred in a statement to witnessing “islands disappearing into the lake, shorelines eroding quickly, a landscape covered with debris, (and) fish spawning grounds lost….”

The prospect of CRD licence renewal opens the door to a new era. Our collective understanding of lakes, rivers and shorelines has evolved since the ’70s. Plus, governments generally don’t bulldoze Indigenous communities aside for the sake of “progress” any more.

Generational change is at hand.

During a Clean Environment Commission hearing in 2015, David Cormie of Manitoba Hydro looked ahead to the licence renewal process. “The world around us is evolving and we are learning new things. Our social licence to continue to operate as if we were still back in the 1970s is changing, the standards are changing…. And I think that’s what is contemplated when it comes to (licence) renewal.”

That hearing considered Lake Winnipeg Regulation, the other cornerstone of Hydro’s northern system. Its 50-year licence also expired recently.

Cormie anticipated that leading up to 2026, Hydro “would be participating in an evaluation of all the options… We would want to strike a modern balance.”

None of this has happened.

Despite 50 years notice, on Sept. 1, the government, as if caught off guard, issued a one-year “short term extension licence” for CRD, as if nothing has changed since 1976. Business as usual.

Note that legislation provides for interim licences (like a building permit), final licences (like an occupancy permit) — which are good for 50 years from project completion, at which point they come up for renewal — and “short term extension licences” which can more or less be granted as the minster wishes.

The actual process for licence renewal is a mystery. Two older projects that should have undergone licence renewal — Grand Rapids and Kelsey — have instead been granted successive short term extension licences since 2014 when their 50-year licences expired.

Welcome to the ’70s.

Actually, it’s worse. Legislation and oversight are so loose that Hydro operated CRD under an interim licence for 45 years. Worse still, since Hydro wanted more water than the interim licence allowed, government granted annual permission to increase flooding on Southern Indian Lake and increase the allowable annual fluctuation of the lake level from 0.6 metres to 1.37 metres.

Over time, in this regulatory vacuum, the vibrant commercial fishery that made South Indian Lake self-reliant, collapsed from 400,000 kg annually to nothing.

When the CRD licence was finally finalized in 2021, these licence “deviations,” as they were called, were baked into the final licence, despite the explicit objection of O-Pipon-Na-Piwin Cree Nation and Tataskweyak Cree Nation.

In these pages, the chiefs of those two nations — Shirley Ducharme and Doreen Spence — said the original interim licence for CRD was “a licence to destroy our lands” and they noted that Hydro was requesting no changes to that licence, other than inclusion of their favoured “deviations.” The company got their way.

The chiefs noted that, “the diversion was built without our consent, and against our wishes.” Then: “We would like to think times have changed since the 1970s. We’ll see.”

In 2022, Kinew said that if the NDP came to power they were “committing” to give “Hydro affected First Nations and the Métis a meaningful say in the future decisions of Hydro.” Referring to CRD licensing, he said the NDP would ensure that “future operation of Hydro” would be “responsive to the needs of these communities.”

The government will now consult, study and reassure. For 2021 licence finalization, consultations and studies resulted in no changes to the licence parameters. None, except that Manitoba removed a requirement to “fully mitigate any effects of the altered levels and flows.”

Will studies and consultations be different this time (they have yet to start formal consultations)? What exactly will “meaningful say” consist of for First Nations?

A year from now, when Manitoba quietly issues another short term extension licence — because years of groundwork are required — will anything substantive have changed? We’ll see.

Will Braun is a writer and farmer from Morden.