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Alberta

‘The saving grace for agriculture’: Farmers look to irrigation amid climate woes

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CALGARY — Sean Stanford’s wheat farm just south of Lethbridge, Alta. falls within the far left corner of Palliser’s Triangle — an expanse of prairie grassland encompassingmuch of southeast Alberta, a swath of southern Saskatchewan, and the southwest corner of Manitoba.

The area is named for explorer Capt. John Palliser, who in 1857, famously declared the entire region a wasteland — so hot and arid that no crops would ever grow.

More than 160 years later, with parts of the prairie provinces suffering through another summer of drought conditions, Stanford’s farm is certainly dry.

“I think we’ve had three inches of rain since we started seeding. It’s been pretty dismal, honestly,” he said in an interview in July.

But Stanford is growing crops, thanks to a series of small sprinklers, attached to a large pipe and powered by an electric motor that disperse water from a nearby irrigation canal over some of his fields.

“Hopefully this fall I’m going to put up a little more irrigation on a couple more fields of mine,” Stanford said, adding he expects his non-irrigated, or dryland, acres to yield about a third of what his irrigated acres yield this year.

“You’re able to mitigate your risks a lot more. Moisture, in my mind, is the No. 1 driving factor in making a crop or not.”

Drought insurance

The economy of southern Alberta would not exist as it does today without irrigation. As early as the late 1800s, public and private investors began to build a vast network of dams, reservoirs, canals and pipelines that opened the area up for settlement and turned John Palliser’s so-called wasteland into a viable farming region.

According to the Alberta WaterPortal Society, there are now more than 8,000 kilometres of conveyance works and more than 50 water storage reservoirs devoted to managing 625,000 hectares of irrigated land in the province.

And while that’s just over five per cent of the province’s total agricultural land base, it accounts for 19 per cent of Alberta’s gross primary agricultural production. Farmers in irrigation districts are able to produce high-value, specialized crops such as sugar beets and greenhouse vegetables.

“There are places that we simply wouldn’t have an agriculture industry if irrigation wasn’t happening — parts of the province are so dry that we wouldn’t be growing anything,” said Richard Phillips, general manager of the Bow River Irrigation District, which owns and operates several hundred kilometres of earth canals and water pipelines, as well as several reservoirs, in the Vauxhall area southeast of Calgary.

“We certainly wouldn’t be growing the crops that are being grown.”

In drier-than-normal years — like the one southeast Alberta is experiencing right now — irrigation is often the only thing standing in the way of full-fledged agricultural disaster, Phillips added.

“If it’s a drought year, dryland produces next to nothing, whereas the irrigated areas are still producing excellent crops,” Phillips said.

“It’s great drought insurance, if you want to think of it that way.”

A growing need

According to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s most recent drought monitor report, 76 per cent of the country’s agricultural landscape is either abnormally dry or experiencing moderate to severe drought this summer.

Some farmers, depending on the region, are dealing with their third or even fourth consecutive year of drought — with 2021 being an exceptionally bad year that saw production of some crops in Canada fall to their lowest level in more than a decade.

That’s part of the reason behind a recent push to modernize and expand irrigation infrastructure in this country.

In Alberta, in 2020, the province and the federal government through the Canada Infrastructure Bank announced a $932-million project to rehabilitate older irrigation equipment in the province, as well as construct or enlarge up to four off-stream irrigation storage reservoirs.

Saskatchewan has also announced a $4-billion project to double the amount irrigable land in the province.

Agriculture Canada predicts that changes in temperature and precipitation patterns due to climate change will increase reliance on irrigation and water-resource management in years to come — most notably across the Prairies and the interior of British Columbia, but “also in regions where there has not traditionally been a need to irrigate.”

Jodie Parmar, head of project development for Western Canada with the Canada Infrastructure Bank, said even Ontario and some of the Atlantic provinces have expressed interest in exploring irrigation projects recently.

“When I engaged in 2020 with provincial governments, in Western Canada in particular, what I heard from them was the need to focus on agriculture and agri-food,” Parmar said.

“And within that sub-sector, irrigation was their top ask.”

The limits of irrigation

Parmer said irrigation can not only be used to bring water to areas that don’t have enough, it can also improve the usage of the water that is available.

With climate change, for example, glaciers high in the Rocky Mountains are melting earlier in the season — and not at the time of year when farmers actually need the resulting runoff water. With irrigation, the water from those early-melting glaciers can be diverted and harnessed in reservoirs to be used for agriculture when it’s actually needed.

But not everyone believes irrigation can solve all of agriculture’s woes — at least, not without a price.

Even with effective water use management, there’s a limit to how much water can be drawn from a single source — and a limit to how much expansion of irrigation the public will tolerate, said Maryse Bourgault, an agronomist at the University of Saskatchewan

“In Saskatchewan, (advocates) talk about Lake Diefenbaker being used for irrigation. But Lake Diefenbaker is also very much involved in tourism,” she said.

“So how will the general public feel about us draining Lake Diefenbaker for irrigation?”

Bourgault added that over-irrigating can also raise the water table of the soil, and when that water evaporates, it leaves salts behind. She said in parts of the world, landscapes and ecosystems have suffered long-term damage.

“So I don’t believe (that it is a solution),” Bourgault said.

“I think at some point you’re going to overdo it. Even if you have the best management, at some point, nature happens.”

Agricultural lifeline

Irrigation is currently responsible for about 70 per cent of freshwater withdrawals worldwide. According to the Princeton Environmental Institute, about 90 per cent of water taken for residential and industrial uses eventually returns to the aquifer, but only about one-half of the water used for irrigation is reusable.

The remainder evaporates, is lost through leaky pipes or otherwise removed from the water cycle.

Bourgault said instead of expanding irrigation, farmers should be seeking to mitigate the effects of climate change through improved crop genetics and alternative farming practices like cover cropping, which can reduce the amount of moisture lost through evaporation.

Still, for farmers like Stanford, who have spent much of this past summer anxiously watching heat-shimmering skies for any hint of rain, irrigation is nothing less than a lifeline.

“If they could get some irrigation acres opened up all the way to the Saskatchewan border and beyond, that would be a huge benefit,” Stanford said.

“To have more moisture, if it’s not going to rain anymore around here, is going to be the saving grace for agriculture in this area.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 13, 2023.

Amanda Stephenson, The Canadian Press

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Alberta

Business owners receive court approval to proceed with COVID lawsuit against Alberta gov’t

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From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

A judge ruled that businesses impacted by COVID lockdowns are allowed to claim compensation for harm and losses incurred due to the provincial chief medical officer’s illegal orders.

A class-action lawsuit on behalf of dozens of Canadian business owners in Alberta who faced massive losses or permanent closures due to COVID mandates has been given the go-ahead to proceed by a judge.

Lawyers representing businesses from Alberta-based Rath & Company announced in a press release on October 30 that it was “successful in its application for certification on behalf of Alberta business owners impacted by Covid-19 restrictions and closures imposed through Chief Medical Officer of Health (“CMOH”) Orders.”

“Justice Feasby of the Court of King’s Bench of Alberta released his decision today certifying the class action in Ingram v Alberta, 2024 ABKB 631,” Rath & Company said.

Lead counsel Jeffrey Rath said the Alberta government has been placed on notice for its actions against businesses during the COVID lockdown era.

The Rath lawsuit proposal names Rebecca Ingram, a gym owner, and Chris Scott, a restaurant owner, as “representative plaintiffs who suffered significant financial harm due to (former Alberta Chief Medical Officer) Dr. (Deena) Hinshaw’s Public Health Orders.”

According to Rath, the class action seeks to certify that “affected Alberta business owners who suffered losses due to the CMOH orders, which were found to be ultra vires — outside legal authority and therefore unlawful — under Alberta’s Public Health Act (“PHA”).

“As a result, the Court Certified multiple claims, including negligence, bad faith and misfeasance in public office. The Court allowed affected businesses to claim compensation for harm and losses incurred due to the illegal CMOH Orders including punitive damages,” Rath said.

Any business operator in Alberta from 2020 to 2022 who was negatively impacted by COVID orders is now eligible to join the lawsuit. Any payout from the lawsuit would come from the taxpayers.

The government’s legal team claimed that the COVID orders were put in place on a good faith initiative and that it was Alberta Health Services, not the government, that oversaw enforcement of the rules.

As a result of the court ruling, Alberta Crown Prosecutions Service (ACPS) said Albertans facing COVID-related charges will not be convicted but instead have their charges stayed.

Thus far, Dr. Michal Princ, pizzeria owner Jesse JohnsonScott, and Alberta pastors James Coates,  Tim Stephens, and Artur Pawlowski, who were jailed for keeping churches open under then-Premier Jason Kenney, have had COVID charges against them dropped due to the court ruling.

Under Kenney, thousands of businesses, notably restaurants and small shops, were negatively impacted by severe COVID restrictions, mostly in 2020-21, that forced them to close for a time. Many never reopened. At the same time, as in the rest of Canada, big box stores were allowed to operate unimpeded.

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Alberta

Alberta introduces bill banning sex reassignment surgery on minors

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From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

Alberta Conservative Premier Danielle Smith followed through on a promised bill banning so-called ‘top and bottom’ surgeries for minors.

Alberta Conservative Premier Danielle Smith made good on her promise to protect kids from extreme transgender ideology after introducing a bill banning so-called “top and bottom” surgeries for minors.

“It is so important that all youth can enter adulthood equipped to make adult decisions. In order to do that, we need to preserve their ability to make those decisions, and that’s what we’re doing,” Smith said in a press release.

“The changes we’re introducing are founded on compassion and science, both of which are vital for the development of youth throughout a time that can be difficult and confusing.”

Bill 26, the Health Statutes Amendment Act, 2024 “reflects the government’s commitment to build a health care system that responds to the changing needs of Albertans,” the government says.

The bill will amend the Health Act to “prohibit regulated health professionals from performing sex reassignment surgeries on minors.”

It will also ban the “use of puberty blockers and hormone therapies for the treatment of gender dysphoria or gender incongruence” to kids 15 and under “except for those who have already commenced treatment and would allow for minors aged 16 and 17 to choose to commence puberty blockers and hormone therapies for gender reassignment and affirmation purposes with parental, physician and psychologist approval.”

Alberta Minister of Health Adriana LaGrange, the bill’s sponsor, said the province’s legislative priorities include “implementing policy changes to continue our refocusing work, position our health care system to respond to pressures and public health emergencies, and to preserve choice for minors. These amendments reflect our dedication to ensuring our health care system meets the needs of every Albertan.”

Earlier this year, the United Conservative Party (UCP) provincial government under Smith announced  she would introduce the strong pro-family legislation that strengthens parental rights, protecting kids from life-altering, so-called “top and bottom” surgeries as well as other extreme forms of transgender ideology.

With Smith’s UCP holding a majority in the provincial legislature, the passage of Bill 26 is almost certain.

While Smith has done far more than predecessor Jason Kenney to satisfy social conservatives, she has been mostly soft on social issues such as abortion and has publicly expressed pro-LGBT views, telling Jordan Peterson that conservatives must embrace homosexual “couples” as “nuclear families.”

This weekend, thousands of UCP members will gather for the party’s annual general meeting, where Smith’s leadership will be voted on along with many other pro-freedom and family policy proposals from members. Smith is expected to pass her leadership review vote with a large majority.

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