Buying into the Hydro Dams: a closer look at the "new deal"

By William Osborne
Thompson Nickel Belt News
December 18, 2000


(Editors note: Split Lake Cree (Tataskweyak) disagree with the positions expressed in this letter. See Chief Beardy's "Letter to the Editor" within the "Articles" section of this website.)

The Government of Manitoba and Manitoba Hydro recently entered into a "partnership" on new hydro development with Tataskweyak First Nation at Split Lake. The parties say this full and proper partnership between the First Nation and Hydro sets a precedent for future development. A review of the historical record and present facts suggest that it is a cynical and depressing development.

Twenty-three years ago, the same parties entered in the Northern Flood Agreement (NFA). At the time, NDP Premier Ed Schreyer told northern residents, in a letter addressed to each of the, that the Churchill-Nelson Rivers hydro mega-project heralded an era of development, benefits and employment for them. So much so, that the Crown parties were promising fairness and equity, including employment "to the maximum possible extent", environmental and social remediation, infrastructure, roads, training and education, compensation, and other assistance to residents of the reserves.

As noted by the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry (AJI) in 1991, Hydro got what it wanted - a very lucrative project that generates riches in the South. But the promises to the aboriginal peoples were never kept and the full ongoing economic benefits that could have flowed to them and to northern Manitoba never arrived. Rather, the Crown parties spent hundreds of millions (legally disguised as "NFA implementation") to "extinguish" - to quote Hydro CEO Bob Vernon (Winnipeg Free Press article dated April 17, 1988) - their NFA obligations to the ban, including Tataskweyak First Nation at Split Lake. Now, in respect of "future projects" Hydro and the Province seem to have rediscovered the virtues of fairness and equity. More particularly, if First nations will bless the construction of further mega-projects, a small part of the original NFA promise of fairness, equity and benefits may ("Trust us!") be carried out.

There are good reasons to take a hard look at this announcement. First, the latest agreement - Hydro Minister Greg Selinger calls it a "precedent for future hydro development" - seems like the sort of beneficial initiative that was intended by the first flood agreement, the NFA! However, as noted by the AJI, and the subsequent 1996 Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, the Crowns parties simply never carried it out. Why are aboriginal peoples now asked to assent to further destruction of their traditional lands in order to obtain some of the benefits they were already promised years go in respect of the overall Churchill-Nelson mega-project?

Second, Premier Doer says "it is the province's intention that any future hydro development will be subject to a full environmental process before the government would be in a position for potential approval." This is no more than the law requires, but why would anyone be asked to sign onto the new project before its social and environmental impacts are assessed? Is this perhaps more about obtaining uninformed prior consent on behalf of the aboriginal inhabitants than about ensuring environmental acceptability.

Third, there is no reason why the 1977 NFA cannot still provide the basis for this rediscovered Crown commitment to benefit victims of flooding and environmental destruction. The Government of Manitoba and Manitoba Hydro recognize the NFA as a Treaty, yet NFA Treaty rights of the Tataskweyak Cree people were extinguished, under duress and by a complex legal process, o the pretense that it would not affect their Treaty rights. Why not simply right this historic wrong? Perhaps the reason is that the wrong is still intended, and that the real agenda may be a continuing desire to complete the extinguishments of the NFA by starving out its last Cree signatory, Pimicikamak Cree Nation.

What is in the NFA to make the Government of Manitoba and Manitoba Hydro so intent on extinguishing it? Article 5 provides example: 5.3 Manitoba and/or Hydro undertake to ... remove debris of any nature, which results from the actual construction or from the flooding of land or by diversion of waters in the total area encompassed by the overall project.

Pimicikamak Cree Nation is now alone in defending this legal right that obliges the Government and Manitoba Hydro to clean up project debris in the entire project area. The lives of those who live in the impact zone, including Pimicikamak citizens, are afflicted by vast quantities of debris resulting from ongoing erosion and destruction of thousands of miles of shorelines, lake and river habitats. Pimicikamak people call it an environmental slum. The Inter-Church Public Inquiry last year called it "an ecological and moral catastrophe". (June 30, 1999 statement of the Panel of the Inter-Church Inquiry into Northern Hydro Development) Driven by the NFA, Manitoba Hydro recently began the clean up, at a rate that will take more than 100 years to complete. The Government of Manitoba and Manitoba Hydro no doubt prefer to avoid having to clean up their environmental mess and having to disclose to its bondholders and the public the financial liability this represents.

Finally, Hydro CEO Bob Brennan says, "hydro electric development within the Tataskweyak Cree Nation region represents 75 percent of the power generated by Manitoba Hydro." The implication is that Manitoba Hydro has achieved aboriginal consent for this power generation and for its impacts on the environment, impacts that are of growing concern to Manitoba Hydro's customers, especially those in the United States who have a choice of where to buy their electrical power. This statement by Hydro seems to dellegitimize efforts to draw attention to the terrible social and environmental effects of Manitoba Hydro's power "in the total area encompassed by the overall project." It expressed the supposedly historic new beginning in Split Lake for what it mostly is: a publicity stunt. This stunt was staged to continue to divide aboriginal nations from one another, and to reassure American customers that they can count on Manitoba to continue to sacrifice its priceless boreal river, lake and forest ecosystems for a few unsustainable export dollars.

note: quotes marked with * come from a press release issued by Split Lake Cree First Nation on October 17, 2000

(William Osborne lives in Cross Lake and is the a member of the Pimicikamak Cree Nation Executive Council responsible for Communications and Finance.)

close window