Goodale pushing big water project for Saskatchewan

Water problems in Saskatchewan run the gamut from flooding to droughts, sometimes in the same season.

Ralph Goodale wants to make an old plan new again which he says will fix all of Saskatchewan’s water problems.

The federal public safety minister opened the Prairie Water Summit in Regina on Monday afternoon, talking about the South Saskatchewan River project.

“I started talking about this (project) a couple of years ago as one of the things we should think about in the context of climate change, because these water problems — either too much or too little — are just going to get more and more and more severe with every passing year,” Goodale told the media after his address.

The project would create conduits from Lake Diefenbaker to different parts of the province, and Goodale said it would mitigate both drought and flooding problems.

According to Goodale, the idea was originally created out of experiences in the Dirty ’30s. He said the environmental challenges we’re facing now are putting both our water resources and communities in jeopardy.

“It’s not just a case of having too little (water) and suffering through droughts and wildfires, but as we’ve seen in Saskatchewan in two of the last six years, we have these massive summer storms, they dump a year’s worth of precipitation in 48 hours, and then it all drains through the Qu’Appelle Valley and causes havoc and ends up flooding Brandon and southern Manitoba as well,” he said.

The federal government put aside $1 million in the spring budget to investigate the viability of the idea. Goodale said we should know the level of interest and enthusiasm sometime in the next year.

It wasn’t clear how likely Goodale thinks the project will be to get approved; he said the upfront cost is very large, but the benefits will be even greater.

Goodale said the bigger issue will be getting everyone on the same page to take on the project, which is why he was talking about it at the summit.

The full prairie region was represented in that hotel hall, according to Goodale — local governments, Indigenous governments, agricultural and water organizations, and chambers of commerce.

He said at the summit that they’re trying to give space to everyone, for their ideas, questions and criticisms, and to put everything on the table.

Goodale said it’ll take a number of conversations to get things going, and answering a couple of questions: “How ambitious are we about solving issues like this and tackling big potential opportunities like this? And do we have the political will to work together?”