The application, supported by the respective provincial governments, was submitted to the federal government last year for review. It has now been approved and will be sent to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to consider for the prestigious international World Heritage Site designation.

“Congratulations to the First Nations that have undertaken this tireless effort and a big thanks to the federal and provincial governments for their tremendous support,” said Ron Thiessen, executive director of the Canadian Parks & Wilderness Society (CPAWS) Manitoba chapter. “It’s wonderful to be part of advancing large-scale boreal protection and sustainable communities on the east side of Lake Winnipeg.”

For more information – Ron Thiessen – 204 794 4971

-30-

• Read the press release from the Manitoba government
• View Display Panels from celebration event at the Manitoba Legislative Building

The vast area on the east side of Lake Winnipeg is home to Bloodvein First Nation. They worked with the province to develop a land use plan that is now officially solidified in legislation.

Congratulations to Bloodvein First Nation for their hard work and determination to safeguard part of the world’s largest intact section of Boreal Forest. We also applaud the Manitoba government, environmental groups, and Manitoba citizens for supporting large-scale wilderness protection in the region,” said an exuberant Ron Thiessen, Executive Director of the Manitoba chapter of CPAWS.

Through a provincial campaign, CPAWS has educated and inspired tens of thousands of Manitobans to voice their support for protection of the east side of Lake Winnipeg.

This is a great day for Manitoba,” Thiessen added. “CPAWS is proud to work with all involved in protecting the Boreal’s web of life.”

The Boreal is the world’s largest source of fresh water and the northern lungs of the planet. As only about 1/5th of the world’s original forests remain intact, protecting the region on the east side of Lake Winnipeg has positive environmental implications across the globe.

See more at the Pew Environment Group

These men, who were born and raised near the Bloodvein River, point to ancient pictographs that are part of their heritage. (Photo: Hidehiro Otake)

Bald eagles soar over Manitoba’s Bloodvein River and a forest of lichen-draped Jack pines and mattress-thick moss. Piloted by grinning guides who shout at one another in Ojibwa, our boats splash through a series of churning rapids en route to an ancient rock painting on a granite cliff.

This river and the forest surrounding it are at the core of a campaign to create a UNESCO World Heritage Site on approximately 4.3 million hectares of boreal forest straddling the Manitoba-Ontario border, about one-third of the way up the eastern side of Lake Winnipeg. The goals of the Pimachiowin Aki preservation project are clear: protect a largely intact swath of trees and lakes and rivers, and the cultural traditions that live on here, from encroaching development. What’s less clear from the river, however, are the politics behind the proposed site — chiefly, the battle over the location of a major hydroelectric transmission line, as well as competing visions of economic development among First Nations.

“We have a lot to share with you and to teach you,” says Sophia Rabliauskas, the project’s soft-spoken community coordinator, during a spring tour of the area organized for journalists, environmentalists, scientists and politicians, including Manitoba Premier Greg Selinger. “Hopefully, people will get a chance to see that.”

Nearly a decade ago ago, four local First Nations began developing a plan to apply to UNESCO for World Heritage Site status (a fifth First Nation joined the group later). The land in question is home to about 7,200 members of the Bloodvein, Little Grand Rapids, Pauingassi, Pikangikum and Poplar River first nations, as well as a pair of provincial parks (Atikaki and Woodland Caribou) in Manitoba and Ontario, whose governments have been part of the pitch from the start.

Pimachiowin Aki (pim-MATCH-chowin ahh-KEY) means “the land that gives life” in Ojibwa, and the UNESCO application is rooted in both the natural and the cultural value of the region. Becoming a World Heritage Site would not only preserve habitat for threatened species, including woodland caribou and lake sturgeon, but also showcase traditional ways of relating to the land, such as harvesting wild rice and hunting moose.

“The original idea was just protection of traditional territory,” says William Young, owner of the Bloodvein River Lodge, the base for our river excursion. “Now we want to manage the area within our traditional territory. I think becoming a UNESCO site would give it more exposure both internationally and in urban Canada, especially Winnipeg.”

A UNESCO designation as a world-class landscape tends to draw tourists, which could be a boon to a place already popular with Americans and Europeans, who come to fish for pickerel and pike and to experience First Nations culture.

Until now, the culture of these communities has been protected by their isolation. To travel south, residents usually cross Lake Winnipeg to reach Highway 8, a two-hour trip by boat or, in winter, by truck when the ice is solid. There’s also an old winter logging road east of the lake that heads south. To fly, it costs $250 for a one-way ticket out of Bloodvein.

That will change, however, with the construction of a four-season highway along the eastern shore of Lake Winnipeg that will extend about 150 kilometres north of Bloodvein to Berens River. The new road is scheduled for completion in 2014 or 2015 and would connect to southern highways and provide easier access to health care and fresh food for residents of remote communities. But there are fears it could also bring alcohol, drugs and gangs to northern reserves. Moreover, the road could potentially open up the area to mining and forestry companies, although getting a UNESCO designation would significantly limit the extent of industrial development.

The most pressing industrial issue is the new hydroelectric transmission line, Bipole III, that Manitoba Hydro plans to build from the north of the province to Winnipeg. Politicians are arguing over the location of the line — indeed, it has become one of the main issues in early October’s provincial election — and over whether its route will affect the proposed UNESCO site.

Manitoba’s current NDP government wants the power line to be built west of Lake Winnipeg, claiming that selling electricity to the United States hinges on the power being produced and transmitted in an environmentally friendly manner. “As you know, Alberta has a reputation with the oil sands,” says Premier Selinger. “We don’t want to be put into that basket.”

The Progressive Conservatives — a close second in early polls — are in favour of a shorter and cheaper route down the east side of the lake, through Pimachiowin Aki. That wouldn’t prevent the area from becoming a UNESCO site, says Hugh McFadyen, Leader of the Official Opposition, who points out that construction jobs and profit-sharing by Manitoba Hydro would help northern First Nations. “What they shared with us is the devastating poverty in those communities,” he says, “and the hope to find some ongoing economic development.”

George Kemp, chief of Berens River First Nation, supports the east-side route and his community has not signed on to the UNESCO bid. “This is another attempt to lock up the east side by environmentalists from outside our communities,” he says. “There is a false promise that ecotourism is the answer for economic development.”

After years of meetings and boxes of studies, a decision is expected from UNESCO by late 2013 or 2014. Roughly half of all nominations are accepted, and Canada already has 15 UNESCO sites, including SGang Gwaay on Haida Gwaii, B.C., and Wood Buffalo National Park on the Alberta– Northwest Territories border.

Back at the Bloodvein River Lodge, two women fry pickerel and stir a pot of moose stew. Martina Young, a greyhaired elder wearing a T-shirt that spells out R-E-S-P-E-C-T, talks about the potential economic benefits of the road but also her uncertainty, even fear, of the unknown. Change is coming, regardless of UNESCO’s verdict, and people in Bloodvein are both worried and hopeful about the future.

From Arctic tundra to primeval rainforest to arid desert, our natural world has been fragmented by ever-expanding towns and cities, crisscrossed with roads, transmission lines and pipelines, and pockmarked by pump jacks, flare stacks, and other infrastructure used to drill, frack, and strip-mine fossil fuels from the ground.

The need to supply food, fibre, fuels, shelter, and freshwater to more than six billion people is driving the wholesale conversion of forests, wetlands, grasslands, and other ecosystems. Researchers have discovered that farmland and pasture now rival natural forest cover in extent, covering 40 per cent of Earth’s land surface. And although advances in modern agriculture have brought millions of hectares of once-unsuitable scrub land into food production, the environmental consequences of our growing “foodprint” have been severe in some regions, resulting in the loss of wildlife habitat, degraded water quality, and widespread soil erosion. Worldwide fertilizer use alone has grown by more than 700 per cent over the past 40 years to sustain crop yields over an ever-increasing area.

On the other hand, Canada’s rugged and inaccessible terrain, small and concentrated population, and relatively recent history of urban and resource development have spared us from the scale and intensity of land-use change that many other regions have experienced. A review of the state of Canada’s forests and woodlands by Global Forest Watch Canada concluded that we are one of the few countries with large tracts of forests relatively undisturbed by human activity. They found that about half of Canada’s forests are still intact. Most are found in the greenbelt of northern boreal forest that stretches across the country.

One of the largest areas of untouched boreal wilderness left in the world straddles a significant section of Eastern Manitoba and Northern Ontario. The local Anishinabe First Nation calls this massive 43,000-square-kilometre region Pimachiowin Aki (Pim-MATCH-cho-win Ahh-KEY). In English, it means the “the land that gives life”.

Home to such threatened species as woodland caribou, and dotted with freshwater lakes, wild rivers, and biodiversity-rich wetlands, Pimachiowin Aki has remained more or less unchanged for some 5,000 years, roughly as long as recorded human history. It is the very absence of clear-cuts, mines, hydroelectric dams, transmission lines, and other industrial infrastructure, along with the region’s rich cultural landscape, that makes Pimachiowin Aki so exceptional, and it is for this reason that First Nations communities want to protect it as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

As Sophia Rabliauskas, a Pimachiowin Aki spokesperson and leader from the community of Poplar River, says, “As First Nations, we already know the value of this land—because we live on it, and live with it every day. Now we want our neighbours, people who live in cities and people around the world, to understand just how important it is.”

Fortunately, the Manitoba government has listened and is working with First Nations to protect the area for its unparalleled ecological and cultural richness. If they succeed, it would join other world-renowned UNESCO World Heritage Sites, including the Pyramids at Giza in Egypt, the Great Barrier Reef of Australia, and the 7.7 million-hectare Ténéré Nature Reserve in the Sahara Desert region of Niger.

However, obtaining international recognition for Pimachiowin Aki as a UNESCO World Heritage Site is no easy task. The Manitoba government and local communities have had to make difficult decisions to sustain the ecological integrity of the region in the face of industrial pressures. Most notably, the government decided to reroute a planned multibillion dollar hydro transmission line away from the area. It would have cut through the heart of the World Heritage Site. The controversial decision has become political fodder in the current Manitoba election campaign.

Many environmental groups and scientists, including the David Suzuki Foundation, support the government’s difficult decision. We believe Pimachiowin Aki must be protected as a special place where rivers run wild, caribou roam unfettered by industrial development, and the centuries-old values of its indigenous peoples are honoured and respected.

Written with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Terrestrial Conservation and Science Program director Faisal Moola. Learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org.

Public Forum: Thursday, Sept 22, 1:00 – 2:30

Speakers will include: Lynne Fernandez (Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives), John Ryan (University of Winnipeg)

All are welcome

A letter to the editor on July 8, 2011, from Garland Laliberte and Karen Friesen (“Weighing The Costs Of Bipole III”) argued that the cost of the east side route would be $1 billion less than the west-side route. A letter of rebuttal to Laliberte and Friesen, which argued that their estimate of the difference in costs was inaccurate and exaggerated, apparently fell through the cracks.

This was followed on July 9 by an article written by Sun columnist Deveryn Ross titled, “Deveryn’s Decision — UNESCO Has Never Heard Of Bipole Projects.” The gist of Ross’ column is that he didn’t understand the long, complicated process required to obtain a UNESCO World Heritage Site designation for a site nominated by a national government, in this case, the federal government in Ottawa.

That’s fine. However, once he had puzzled out how the process worked, he could have outlined the remaining steps in the process for the benefit of Sun readers by pointing out that the process begins with the preparation of a nomination document for submission to Parks Canada.

The people involved with The Pimachiowin Aki World Heritage Project (the project seeking heritage site designation for the boreal forest east of Lake Winnipeg) are now finalizing the nomination document. Parks Canada will review the applications over the coming months and formally submit Canada’s nominations to UNESCO in February 2012.

The UNESCO review and approval process takes roughly 13 months, which means that a decision on the boreal forest nomination should be forthcoming in early 2013. (This information is available at heartoftheboreal.ca.)

But he didn’t do this. Instead he launched into a tirade against the government, blaming the premier and cabinet ministers for his ignorance and repeating hearsay from other sources previously refuted in other publications.

A letter by Conservation Minister Bill Blaikie addressing some of the issues raised by Ross (“Tories Biggest Threat To UNESCO Bid”), was published in the Sun on July 15. In particular, Blaikie attempted to provide Ross with information that would help him better understand the process involved in obtaining UNESCO designation. As part of his explanation, Blaikie noted that: “Protecting 40,000 square kilometres of boreal forest, an area roughly the size of Denmark, takes time and effort. This has the potential to be the largest protected area of boreal shield in North America, but it needs to be done right if it’s going to be successful.”

You’d think that Ross would be grateful to Blaikie for providing him with the appropriate information on the process involved in obtaining UNESCO designation.

However, in his column of July 25 (“Deveryn’s Decision — Serious Accusations Must Be Backed Up With Facts”) Ross launches into a rant accusing Blaikie of misrepresenting his views: “Everything I wrote in my July column was the truth, based upon hours of research, including information obtained from credible sources as far away as Paris … If you’re going to accuse me of misinforming, misleading and/or lying to readers of this newspaper, a vague accusation isn’t good enough. Bring facts. It’s what I do on this page every Saturday.”

This is not what we have a right to expect from a newspaper columnist. It seems to us that if we want to find facts and solid analysis on the Bipole III debate and the programs of Manitoba Hydro, we would be well advised to look beyond the columns of Mr. Ross.

Garland Laliberte and Karen Friesen’s letter of July 8, 2011 (Weighing the costs of Bipole III) is presumably intended to clarify the difference in the cost of running the Bipole III transmission line down the west side of Lake Winnipeg as opposed to the east side. If that was indeed their intention, their efforts have gone seriously awry.

The numbers of interest to citizens of Manitoba have been explained in detail most recently by John Ryan in a piece published by CCPA – Manitoba titled, “Bipole III: Winnipeg Free Press and the Conservative Campaign of Misinformation.” In brief, the relevant numbers are:

Cost of west side transmission line = $1,260,000 million

Cost of east side transmission line = $805,000 million

Difference in costs of construction = $455,000 million

Additional cost of line losses on west side = $232,000 million

Total difference in cost of west side transmission line = $687,000 million

Laliberte and Friesen suggest that most Manitobans don’t understand the numbers. This is an insult to most Manitobans. These numbers are clear and concise. Moreover, most Manitobans will recognize that the total difference in cost of $687,000 million is less than the $1, 000,000 number used by the coalition, and much, much less than the bogus numbers used by the Conservative Party of
Manitoba.

As well, most Manitobans understand that over the 60 year life of the project, the annual cost to Manitoba households of the difference in the total cost of the west side line will be approximately $6.00 per year – a little better than 1 and a half cents per day.

In conclusion, I would note that if there are any mischievous claims being made in this debate, they are being made by the people who deny that there is any potential loss of export sales associated with the east side route, and the people who dismiss out of hand the interests and aspirations of First Nations peoples leading the campaign to “Help make The Land That Gives Life A UNESCO Heritage
Site.”

Errol Black
726-4895

What the Free Press does not make clear is that the Conservatives don’t arrive at their costs by some innocent procedure of including various questionable expenses.

First, they cite the overall cost of the west route as being $4.4 billion, asserting that this is based on a Manitoba Hydro estimate, without disclosing the exact source so it is impossible to verify this number. Second, they cite the east route’s cost as being $800 million and subtract this from $4.4 billion. They then claim that the resulting figure of $3.62 billion is the cost of the extra 500 km within the west route – and that this constitutes “waste” and will cost each Manitoba family $11,748.

This disingenuous argument has no foundation in fact. In the first instance, on March 31, 2011 Manitoba Hydro released a report citing the overall cost of the west route to be $3.28 billion, not the unverified Conservative claim of $4.4 billion. Secondly, in citing the cost of the east route as $800 million, the Conservatives omitted the $1.83 billion for the necessary converters, which are required for both routes. This calculated manoeuvre leads to the preposterous claim that the extra 500 km of the west route transmission line would cost $3.62 billion or $11,748 per family. What they haven’t said is that this would work out to $7,240,000 per km, as opposed to the actual cost of $910,000 per km, which is the identical figure for the east route and the usual cost of a DC transmission line.

On May 30, at a legislature committee meeting, Mr. Brennan, Hydro President and CEO, reported that for the extra 500 km in the west route, over a 60 year period (the lifetime of a line), the actual costs per Manitoba household would be $13.68 per year. He also stated that since Manitoba households account for only one-third of the total power in the line, this should be divided by three. Although Mr. Brennan did not include line losses, this could be rectified by adding one-third more to Mr. Brennan’s adjusted figure. Overall, on the basis of his figures the annual cost should be about $6.00 per household – somewhat less than Mr. McFadyen’s figure of $11,748.

The editorial’s claim that Manitoba Hydro’s official estimate was determined by “throwing out every conceivable cost, save the kitchen sink” is unmitigated rubbish. Hydro’s overall estimate of $3.28 billion for the west route consists of $1.83 billion for two converters, $1.26 billion for the transmission line, and $.19 billion for extra apparatus. To determine the cost of the extra 500 km of line on the west route, the $805 million cost of the east transmission line is subtracted from the $1.26 billion cost of the west line. The result is $455 million, and to this should be added the line losses of $232 million (Hydro’s data) – for an overall total of about $690 million.

For the Conservatives to claim that instead of less than $700 million, the cost of the extra 500 km of line would be $3.62 billion is absurd. Yet, for the past several months, this is what has been steadily presented to the Manitoba public. By failing to address these inaccuracies, the Free Press editorial continues to advance the Conservative’s campaign of misinformation.

The editorial errs further by accusing former premier Gary Doer of a decision “seven years ago to prevent Hydro from negotiating with east-side communities.” In actual fact, the Manitoba government and Manitoba Hydro conducted negotiations with First Nations for several years. After some 80 meetings, stakeholders were unable to reach a consensus.

When these meetings came to an impasse because of lack of unanimity in allowing a transmission line to pass through their territories, and because of the possibility of a UNESCO world heritage designation for this area, in 2007, confronted with these seemingly irreconcilable problems, the Province decided to direct Bipole III along the west route.

In its concluding remarks the editorial makes the argument that the money spent on the additional costs of the west route would be better spent on the people on the east side. While concern for the people on the east side is a welcome progressive move since previous concerns have been focused solely on ‘savings’, the editorial loses credibility by perpetuating the false argument that this money could be used “to build a road along an east-side corridor”.

In actuality, an east side transmission line would veer away as far as possible from the settlements of the First Nations, whereas roads are required to go directly to these settlements. Such roads are now being built. Moreover, no road is necessary for the construction of a transmission line, other than a caterpillar trail to haul the cable and cement for tower pads. In all likelihood, the steel towers would be brought in by helicopter and fastened by guy wires to the cement pads. So although the editorial opens the door slightly on the prospect of monies going to east side people, it drops the ball in lacking a concept on what is really involved. It also fails to note that proponents of the east route have never acknowledged that substantial funds may have to be paid as compensation to First Nations in order for a transmission line to pass through their territory.

There are legitimate advantages and disadvantages that could be put forward in debating the east and west routes, but deliberate distortion of facts is not helpful. As Manitoba’s largest newspaper, the Winnipeg Free Press should try to ensure that their readers have all the facts so that they can decide for themselves what makes best sense.