Amid a wild month of Saskatchewan weather, Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Ralph Goodale says it’s time to consider a project that would connect Lake Diefenbaker to the Qu’Appelle valley.
It’s based on an original plan developed by the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration (PFRA) – a now dissolved branch of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.
The Lake Diefenbaker project was meant to distribute as much water as possible from the massive reservoir in central Saskatchewan to help prevent both droughts and flooding in the aftermath of the “dirty thirties”.
With different areas of Saskatchewan currently facing either drought or flooding, Goodale told a room of officials and stakeholders at the Prairie Water Summit now is a fitting time to renew calls to look into the possibility.
“It’s an idea that is even more relevant today than it was back then,” Goodale said. “The original idea was a driven from the dirty thirties. We’re now facing environmental challenges that are probably even greater because of the onslaught of climate change.”
While parts of the province deal with varying conditions, Lake Diefenbaker is set to rise by half a metre thanks to recent rainfall increasing river flows, according to the Saskatchewan Water Security Agency.
Goodale says this massive project would take cooperation from all levels of government in order to be made a reality, but like Lake Diefenbaker – a massive undertaking both politically and practically – he has hopes it can eventually be built.
“When [John] Diefenbaker and [Tommy] Douglas and [James] Gardiner were arguing about the South Saskatchewan River project, that was a brutal political contest,” Goodale said. “But at the end of the day, they managed to pull it all together and we have this amazing resource in the centre of Saskatchewan as a consequence.”
