Councillor unhappy with Indigenous consultation on lagoon

A Glenboro councillor is complaining about an Indigenous consultation process after he says the community’s lagoon upgrade became $1.1 million more expensive because of a delay.

The Glenboro lagoon modernization, which is expected to cost $7.7 million, moved forward to tender this year after the Manitoba Métis Federation approved of the plans, Councillor Dale Fisher said a recent interview. The wait to hear back and ultimately get approval from the MMF cost the municipality hundreds of thousands of dollars that will lead to tax hikes and possible service cuts, he said.

“This lagoon would have been up and running, so it was a little over two years ago,” Fisher said. “Everything was complete. And then the federal government and the NDP government said, if you do not consult with these people, we’re gonna pull your funding.”

The Municipality of Glenboro-South Cypress reached out to consult with two Indigenous parties, a local First Nation and the Manitoba Métis Federation, Fisher said. The local Swan Lake First Nation got back “right away” and cleared the project, while the MMF did not respond, prompting the municipality to have to “rattle chains” and go through third parties in order to start the consultation, Fisher said.

“Finally we did get something back after a little over a year and a half, we finally got a reply back,” Fisher said. “But we worked for that long (to make it happen).”

The municipality lobbied through phone calls, emails, and discussions with politicians to get the MMF to consult, he said. The project could not go forward until the work took place.

“Something has to change,” Fisher said. “Stopping projects that are for the environment and health for people and agriculture is so wrong.

“We all deserve clean drinking water not red tape.”

Fisher said he believes a clear timeline should be required for Indigenous partners to return requests for consultations on projects like this because delays can be expensive, and hurt communities.

The deficient lagoon in Glenboro has been at risk of overflowing several times in recent history, and so “raw sewage” has been pumped out from the lagoon into a local marsh seven times since 2017, affecting the water table from which Glenboro gets its drinking water, Fisher said. It also does not have a proper liner.

The delay in upgrading the lagoon has had impacts in the community as a result, he said, along with the added cost.

The Manitoba Water Services Board has covered some of the cost increase, but in the end the municipality is still paying hundreds of thousands of dollars, Fisher said.

He added that the MMF originally sent a letter with various concerns about the project, but then turned around and said it would apprive the project, though no changes had been made.

“We kept rattling chains, and then finally we got to reply back. They said, ‘Okay, we’ll let you go ahead now, but with lots of caution. If there’s something we don’t like, we’ll shut you down,’” he said. “Nothing changed, exactly the same, what it was two years ago, all the way through,” he said.

The MMF also requested payments for the consultation.

The lagoon model is “state of the art” and the MMF should have sent someone to Glenboro to consult rather than work by correspondence out of Winnipeg, he said.

MMF Energy and Infrastructure Minister Jack Park said that the fault is not on the federation. The Glenboro team was delayed in reaching out, but the MMF has been timely in its involvement since being contacted, MMF minister of energy and infrastructure Park said.

Park asserts that Glenboro did not engage with the MMF until 2025, despite filing an application for the project in 2019 and receiving funding from two governments in 2020, he said. The project was supported by Housing, Infrastructure and Communites Canada, which obliges that consultations take place with Indigenous peoples.

“It took nearly three years for the RM to action that direction,” Park said. ”The suggestion that the MMF’s participation impacted the project budget is disrespectful and misleading.”

According to the minister, there is no connection between the increased price of the project and the MMF, because project costs have risen due to other realities such as construction costs and tariffs.

The funding requested from Glenboro for consultations was to complete a technical review of the lagoon project, he said. And Glenboro was not asked to provide any funding to the MMF outside of what HICC allocated to Glenboro for that purpose, he added.

The federation conducted a standard technical review of the project in order to vet it for the interests of Métis citizens, he said. The response time from the MMF has been consistent with other projects of similar size and scope across Manitoba, he added.

“This is standard practice for the MMF as a means of ensuring impacts to Red River Métis rights, claims and interests are properly avoided, mitigated and or accommodated in project planning.”

Many Red River Métis citizens live within the project study area and within the area of impact related to the aquifer, Park said.

In a statement to the Sun, the HICC declined to speak about the specific case in Glenboro, but noted in genereal that “funding recipients are encouraged to plan the scope and potential cost of Indigenous consultation activities in advance.”

» cmcdowell@brandonsun.com