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Alberta

‘Not as dramatic’: Saskatchewan farmers draining water demonstrate benefits

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GRENFELL, Sask. — It’s an area of farmland Ryan Maurer says is worth as much as a Lamborghini. 

High run-off flooded one of his fields in spring 2022, leaving shallow pools of water. This was before the farmer opened ditches to drain it. 

“Would you take your Lamborghini and park it in a slough?” Maurer asked on his farm near Grenfell, Sask., about 125 kilometres east of Regina.  

No, he says, he wouldn’t.

“But society’s asking us to do that,” Maurer added. “And then they turn around and tell us to grow more food.”

Maurer’s land is part of a drainage network known as the Tetlock Conservation and Development Area Authority. It’s where farmers work together to move water through each other’s land and out into a creek. 

The farmers in the Tetlock network say the water is moved in a managed and slower pace when it’s released, helping mitigate potential flooding downstream. There are control gates, smaller culverts, tile piping and holding ponds.

In fact, the Tetlock normally only adds 0.5 per cent of water to the flow of the creek, indicates data provided by the farmers who oversee the network. 

“It’s not as dramatic as everybody says it is,” said Owen Pekrul, a farmer who’s also part of the drainage network. “Because it’s a ditch or it’s organized, they think it affects a lot of things.”

But for some, drainage is a problem. 

Farmers downstream of some other networks say huge gushes of water continue to wash out their fields each year. 

Environmental groups also worry about the loss of wetlands, as some are drained to make way for more arable acres. They say this puts habitats at risk and causes water quality to degrade.

Rural municipalities have raised concerns about illegal works causing water to breach grid roads.

Rural officials have asked the Water Security Agency, which is in charge of overseeing drainage, to ensure illegal drainers get permits.

“The biggest concern that we have is that many ratepayers just are not following the rules that are in place, the laws if you will,” said Helen Meekins, a councillor with the Rural Municipality of Pleasantdale in southeast Saskatchewan.

“The rural municipality isn’t against drainage,” Meekins added. “But, if they go through the permit process, then at least we know where there’s going to be more water and how it’s going to affect the infrastructure that we have in place.”

Some farmers say managed networks, such as the Tetlock, could help address flooding issues as long as everyone upstream and downstream can work together. 

Maurer, as well as others involved in the network, are members of the Saskatchewan Farm Stewardship Association, a group that has lobbied the province for managed drainage to promote soil health and crop production. 

He said drainage helps him turn soil that’s too salty into something that can grow healthy crops. 

It also allows him to be more productive with his time on the field. That’s because those working the machines don’t have to move around various sloughs when they apply fertilizer and spray chemicals. 

“These little sloughs are a couple inches of water. There’s nothing major,” Maurer said. “So, we over-apply. How do we get around that? Well, drainage and management is the answer.”

Not all drainage has been done in a managed way in Saskatchewan.

For decades, producers have dug ditches to move water out without approval from the Water Security Agency.

In 2018, Saskatchewan’s auditor estimated there were up to 9,712 square kilometres of land with unapproved works.

The agency has said it’s brought many unpermitted works into compliance by working with landowners and making sure the stream, pond or lake can handle the amount of water flowing in. 

Research projects have also been looking into best practices. In one, a farmer has been draining water from various sloughs into one larger consolidation pond. 

Candace Mitschke, the executive director with the Saskatchewan Farm Stewardship Association, said different solutions are required for each farm because landscapes across the province aren’t the same. 

But, she said, issues can be resolved when people work together. 

In rare cases, farmers have expropriated downstream land so they can get a permit and manage the water appropriately. 

“Sometimes you’re not going to get people to co-operate no matter what you do. In those cases, that’s when expropriation is that important piece and enables that network to function,” Mitschke said.

The Water Security Agency still has a ways to go to bring all unapproved works into compliance. 

Since 2017, only about a third of land with unpermitted works, about 3,146 square kilometres, has been brought into compliance. 

Saskatchewan’s auditor has recommended unpermitted drainage be addressed quickly. The longer people wait, it noted, the more frustrated they become.

The auditor has also recommended the agency establish a wetlands policy to ensure water quality doesn’t degrade, which the agency says it’s working on.

For Maurer, it’s all about water management. He again pointed to the Tetlock network as an example of good practices. 

“If everybody did that, it would be managed going in,” he said. “Just by saying, ‘Quit draining water,’ it doesn’t help anybody. It creates the problem.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 22, 2023.

Jeremy Simes, The Canadian Press

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Alberta

The beauty of economic corridors: Inside Alberta’s work to link products with new markets

Published on

From the Canadian Energy Centre

Q&A with Devin Dreeshen, Minister of Transport and Economic Corridors

Devin Dreeshen, Alberta’s Minister of Transportation
and Economic Corridors.

CEC: How have recent developments impacted Alberta’s ability to expand trade routes and access new markets for energy and natural resources?

Dreeshen: With the U.S. trade dispute going on right now, it’s great to see that other provinces and the federal government are taking an interest in our east, west and northern trade routes, something that we in Alberta have been advocating for a long time.

We signed agreements with Saskatchewan and Manitoba to have an economic corridor to stretch across the prairies, as well as a recent agreement with the Northwest Territories to go north. With the leadership of Premier Danielle Smith, she’s been working on a BC, prairie and three northern territories economic corridor agreement with pretty much the entire western and northern block of Canada.

There has been a tremendous amount of work trying to get Alberta products to market and to make sure we can build big projects in Canada again.

CEC: Which infrastructure projects, whether pipeline, rail or port expansions, do you see as the most viable for improving Alberta’s global market access?

Dreeshen: We look at everything. Obviously, pipelines are the safest way to transport oil and gas, but also rail is part of the mix of getting over four million barrels per day to markets around the world.

The beauty of economic corridors is that it’s a swath of land that can have any type of utility in it, whether it be a roadway, railway, pipeline or a utility line. When you have all the environmental permits that are approved in a timely manner, and you have that designated swath of land, it politically de-risks any type of project.

CEC: A key focus of your ministry has been expanding trade corridors, including an agreement with Saskatchewan and Manitoba to explore access to Hudson’s Bay. Is there any interest from industry in developing this corridor further?

Dreeshen: There’s been lots of talk [about] Hudson Bay, a trade corridor with rail and port access. We’ve seen some improvements to go to Churchill, but also an interest in the Nelson River.

We’re starting to see more confidence in the private sector and industry wanting to build these projects. It’s great that governments can get together and work on a common goal to build things here in Canada.

CEC: What is your vision for Alberta’s future as a leader in global trade, and how do economic corridors fit into that strategy?

Dreeshen: Premier Smith has talked about C-69 being repealed by the federal government [and] the reversal of the West Coast tanker ban, which targets Alberta energy going west out of the Pacific.

There’s a lot of work that needs to be done on the federal side. Alberta has been doing a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to economic corridors.

We’ve asked the federal government if they could develop an economic corridor agency. We want to make sure that the federal government can come to the table, work with provinces [and] work with First Nations across this country to make sure that we can see these projects being built again here in Canada.

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2025 Federal Election

Next federal government should recognize Alberta’s important role in the federation

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From the Fraser Institute

By Tegan Hill

With the tariff war continuing and the federal election underway, Canadians should understand what the last federal government seemingly did not—a strong Alberta makes for a stronger Canada.

And yet, current federal policies disproportionately and negatively impact the province. The list includes Bill C-69 (which imposes complex, uncertain and onerous review requirements on major energy projects), Bill C-48 (which bans large oil tankers off British Columbia’s northern coast and limits access to Asian markets), an arbitrary cap on oil and gas emissions, numerous other “net-zero” targets, and so on.

Meanwhile, Albertans contribute significantly more to federal revenues and national programs than they receive back in spending on transfers and programs including the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) because Alberta has relatively high rates of employment, higher average incomes and a younger population.

For instance, since 1976 Alberta’s employment rate (the number of employed people as a share of the population 15 years of age and over) has averaged 67.4 per cent compared to 59.7 per cent in the rest of Canada, and annual market income (including employment and investment income) has exceeded that in the other provinces by $10,918 (on average).

As a result, Alberta’s total net contribution to federal finances (total federal taxes and payments paid by Albertans minus federal money spent or transferred to Albertans) was $244.6 billion from 2007 to 2022—more than five times as much as the net contribution from British Columbians or Ontarians. That’s a massive outsized contribution given Alberta’s population, which is smaller than B.C. and much smaller than Ontario.

Albertans’ net contribution to the CPP is particularly significant. From 1981 to 2022, Alberta workers contributed 14.4 per cent (on average) of total CPP payments paid to retirees in Canada while retirees in the province received only 10.0 per cent of the payments. Albertans made a cumulative net contribution to the CPP (the difference between total CPP contributions made by Albertans and CPP benefits paid to retirees in Alberta) of $53.6 billion over the period—approximately six times greater than the net contribution of B.C., the only other net contributing province to the CPP. Indeed, only two of the nine provinces that participate in the CPP contribute more in payroll taxes to the program than their residents receive back in benefits.

So what would happen if Alberta withdrew from the CPP?

For starters, the basic CPP contribution rate of 9.9 per cent (typically deducted from our paycheques) for Canadians outside Alberta (excluding Quebec) would have to increase for the program to remain sustainable. For a new standalone plan in Alberta, the rate would likely be lower, with estimates ranging from 5.85 per cent to 8.2 per cent. In other words, based on these estimates, if Alberta withdrew from the CPP, Alberta workers could receive the same retirement benefits but at a lower cost (i.e. lower payroll tax) than other Canadians while the payroll tax would have to increase for the rest of the country while the benefits remained the same.

Finally, despite any claims to the contrary, according to Statistics Canada, Alberta’s demographic advantage, which fuels its outsized contribution to the CPP, will only widen in the years ahead. Alberta will likely maintain relatively high employment rates and continue to welcome workers from across Canada and around the world. And considering Alberta recorded the highest average inflation-adjusted economic growth in Canada since 1981, with Albertans’ inflation-adjusted market income exceeding the average of the other provinces every year since 1971, Albertans will likely continue to pay an outsized portion for the CPP. Of course, the idea for Alberta to withdraw from the CPP and create its own provincial plan isn’t new. In 2001, several notable public figures, including Stephen Harper, wrote the famous Alberta “firewall” letter suggesting the province should take control of its future after being marginalized by the federal government.

The next federal government—whoever that may be—should understand Alberta’s crucial role in the federation. For a stronger Canada, especially during uncertain times, Ottawa should support a strong Alberta including its energy industry.

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