Opinion

Advice. Everybody’s got advice. As our new premier is no doubt finding out, much of this advice will either be quite unrealistic or self-serving or both. On the quite fantastic and probably unrealistic assumption that mine is neither, here goes.

The appointment of Tracy Schmidt as minister of Environment and Climate Change has received criticism because she lacks “environmental experience,” whatever that is. Anyone with even modest powers of observation will realize this to be nonsense.

The current federal government appointed a successful business man to be minister of finance, a soldier to head defence, a cop to attend to security and a career environmentalist as minister of environment and climate change — spectacular failures all.

<img src="https://news.myworldfix.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/1796579_web1_28018300_SEAL-RIVER-WATERSHED-LANDSCAPE_JOSH-PEARLMAN.jpg" alt="

JOSH PEARLMAN PHOTO

Northern Manitoba’s Seal River watershed. Water resources, and other environmental concerns, have to be a higher priority for Manitoba’s provincial government.

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“Relevant experience” has never worked very well to ensure ministerial success.

No, Ms. Schmidt’s success will hinge on two factors. The first will be her commitment to the portfolio; and given that she is of a generation with an existential stake in how we deal with climate change, I think that’s assured. The second is the degree of support she receives from you, Premier Wab Kinew.

In the recent election, neither major party had anything substantive to say about the environment for the simple and truly sad reason that it’s not a vote-getter. So, elevating the portfolio from its normal also-ran status to a major ministry will take courage and leadership. Oh, you can toss a few million here and there at Lake Winnipeg, energy conservation and articulate strategies that mean little without the resources to carry them out, without much political risk; but perhaps yours can be a government that sees beyond the next election.

Your decisive action to reconstitute the MPI board was welcome. The board of Manitoba Hydro ought to receive the same house-cleaning. Have a read of the corporation’s Integrated Resource Plan, available on its website.

It’s a stunningly traditional analysis of how to solve a never-before-encountered problem: how to meet all our future energy needs in a decarbonized economy from renewable sources. The answer? In the medium term, natural gas-fired power plants!

This hardly seems visionary. As shareholders we want our corporation to be seeing beyond the end of its nose and to have a board of directors that ensures that it does.

Another appointed body that you will no doubt be reviewing is the Clean Environment Commission. One would think this was a no-brainer; Tory-appointed board, hardly environmentally friendly. But wait a minute, this CEC did something none of its predecessors has done; it said no. At least a qualified no, recommending that the Sio-Silica silica sand mining project not proceed until serious uncertainties were resolved.

Retaining a chair appointed by the previous government has about it that rare non-partisan feel.

On the other hand, leaving the direction of this issue to an obscure advisory committee (not the CEC) appointed by the last government may be non-partisan but not wise. Your minister of environment and climate change has that responsibility and it presents an early opportunity to show her stuff.

There has been no indication that you intend to continue Manitoba’s unproductive resistance to the carbon tax. Good show. Although the tax will not solve our climate change problems and it will hardly change consumer behaviour since we get most of it back — a curious bureaucratic job creation exercise where the hand of government plucks cash from our pocket only to return it a few months later — it’s not worth a fight with the feds.

In fact, we need the federal government, or more to the point its resources, to tackle health care issues of course, but also what in the longer-term is an even more important issue — climate change adaptation.

A starting point in that process could be forming a partnership with the Canada Water Agency that will be headquartered in Winnipeg. It may be the last best hope of rescuing this newly created institution from the smothering embrace of the Ottawa bureaucracy, ensuring that it will be a truly regional agency mandating co-operation with the regional governments. This partnership could be the vehicle for determining just how our region can adapt to the massive changes wrought by climate change on our water regimes.

The point of this unsolicited and meandering advice is to plead for your government to elevate environmental issues in general and climate change in particular, to the top of the public agenda.

It is not there now anywhere in Canada or elsewhere but events in nature over the next decade or so will force it there. Why not get a head start? This can be done by elevating Minister Schmidt’s portfolio to a senior status; allocating significant new resources to a department systematically gutted by previous administrations; reassigning important functions scattered around government — water being the most prominent — to the department; and most importantly, by the premier providing the leadership without which none of this can happen.

Government is a stew of interests, often in conflict, crying out for attention. We have to learn to chew gum and climb stairs at the same time. In a complex and threatening world, we have to be able to address multiple wicked problems at the same time.

Climate change is one of these; hopefully our new government can turn the trick.

Norman Brandson is the former deputy minister of the Manitoba Departments of Environment, Conservation and Water Stewardship.