One year ago, wildfires decimated Nopiming Provincial Park in eastern Manitoba, torching cottaging communities, backcountry campgrounds and popular canoe routes.

But as the park and its boreal ecosystem recovers — a process that will take several decades — Manitoba Wilderness Committee campaigner Eric Reder believes the province should embrace the opportunity to curtail industrial activities within park borders and establish more robust protection for its natural and recreational assets.

“The Nopiming Provincial Park that existed prior to 2025 is gone,” a Wilderness Committee report released Thursday said. “Only an all-of-society recovery solution can bring back what we’ve lost.”

To the Wilderness Committee, that whole-of-society solution involves a moratorium on new industrial activities, a commitment to conserve habitat for local caribou herds, increased engagement with First Nations whose lands overlap the park and investment in recreational infrastructure, including backcountry trails and canoe routes. 

“Doing so will allow the park to serve both nature and people,” the report said. “Manitoba’s outdoor way of life is at stake.”

Meanwhile, the province says it is “currently focused on immediate wildfire recovery needs such as restoring access and services, and on prioritizing initiatives like FireSmart with park users.” Restoration activities in the park are ongoing, a provincial spokesperson said in an email statement, and the province is “actively listening to input from many sources, including park users, residents, cottagers and environmental groups.”

Wildfire engulfed most of Nopiming Provincial Park and burned an area almost 8 times the size of Winnipeg

Nopiming Park’s 1,400-odd square kilometres of Canadian Shield are part of the world’s largest intact boreal forest and home to the province’s southernmost boreal caribou herd. The park features winding rivers popular with canoeists, placid lakes full of wild rice, tamarack bogs and lichen-coated rock outcroppings. 

It boasts a handful of designated campgrounds and backcountry trails, as well as several cottage subdivisions with a mix of permanent and seasonal residents. 

Nopiming Park also hosts hundreds of mineral claims staked by companies seeking gold and lithium, and is home to the Canadian Forces School of Survival and Aeromedical Training.

Much of that infrastructure has been damaged.

A lightning strike near the Bird River sparked the first fire on May 12, 2025. Over more than 200 days it grew to more than 3,500 square kilometres — almost eight times the size of Winnipeg — and engulfed the vast majority of the park. 

Park residents were evacuated for several weeks, some unable to return until late July. According to the provincial spokesperson, 21 cottages within the park were lost, a campground office near Black Lake was destroyed, several canoe routes were affected, trailhead facilities were destroyed and many remote campsites lost infrastructure such as bear boxes, picnic tables and fire pits. 

The military training site was evacuated, too, and several of its “administrative and storage structures … were subsequently damaged or destroyed,” according to a brief prepared for the Minister of National Defence in May 2025. 

While some campgrounds and trails re-opened this month, several backcountry campsites, trails and water routes remain closed until restoration work is complete.

“Nopiming Provincial Park visitors can expect a mix of reopenings and closures through the summer season as recovery work continues,” the provincial spokesperson said.

‘A park needs time to recover’: conservation advocate

After visiting Nopiming Park late last summer, Reder said he was struck by the extent of the damage to his familiar canoe routes and picnic spots.

“The ground was still smoking,” he said in an interview. “The thing that really struck me was that the fire was more comprehensive than we’re used to seeing.” 

Few pockets of boreal forest were unscathed by the burn, especially in what Reder calls “the wild heart” of the forest, which has long served as critical habitat for a herd of vulnerable boreal caribou. The threatened species relies on dense, treed areas for shelter and protection from predators, and are known to avoid clearcuts and disturbances. 

With so much of the forest destroyed, Reder’s biggest concern is protecting the habitat that remains.

“A park needs time to recover,” he said. “Stop the mineral exploration, get the military out of there … a couple of these recommendations are pretty straightforward ways to give peace to the park.” 

To limit further disturbance to sensitive, recovering vegetation, the committee recommends a moratorium on new industrial activity permits, and a permanent end to military training exercises. It also recommends limiting motorized activity such as all-terrain vehicles and outboard motors until caribou habitat use is better understood. 

An opportunity to rebuild — and prioritize recreation and nature

Reder said the fires also present an opportunity to restore the park in a way that prioritizes its recreational potential.

As the park rebuilds, the committee recommends more integration with the local Indigenous communities, including signage and programming produced in collaboration with First Nations that discusses the land’s traditional uses and history. It also recommends the province invest in “people-powered” recreational infrastructure, including trails, canoe routes and wayside stops.

Reder points to the government’s recent decision to re-open fire-damaged portions of the backcountry Mantario Trail, just south of Nopiming, as an example. The province had previously planned to keep the trail closed this summer, but has since announced it could re-open by the end of June as more than 500 volunteers have made “remarkable progress” restoring trail infrastructure. 

“The idea that Nopiming … should have a backcountry route, probably should get into people’s heads right now,” Reder said, adding the increased visibility following the fire has made it easier to plan possible trails. 

For cottages, the report recommends investing in FireSmart programs and limiting the size of human infrastructure to reduce potential losses from fire. 

“All recommendations will be considered as the province works to restore this beautiful area, and considers opportunities for post-fire recovery along with future enhancements and management opportunities,” the provincial spokesperson said.

Julia-Simone Rutgers is a reporter covering environmental issues in Manitoba. Her position is part of a partnership between The Narwhal and the Winnipeg Free Press.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

When 27-year-old Kaitlyn Kitzan was a kid, farmland near her parents’ farm in southeast Saskatchewan cost about $400 an acre.

Today, in that same region, it’s almost ten times as valuable: $3,500 an acre.

Across Saskatchewan, farmland prices increased by an average of 11 per cent annually from 2005 to 2024.

As the value of farmland rises — alongside the costs of everything from fertilizer to fuel and more — Prairies farmers now face the harsh reality that the better business decision might be just to sell their land, rather than farm it. Alongside the pressures running capital-intensive businesses, climate change and volatile markets, the price of farmland is a major stressor for young farmers like Kitzan, who is trying to take over the family farm.

“We’ve seen [a] steady increase in farmland values to the point where [it has] outstripped the productive value of the land” Bill Prybylski, a veteran farmer from east-central Saskatchewan, says, noting high costs and low prices for crops aren’t helping.  

Financial woes aren’t only affecting small family farms. In April, Monette Farms — one of the largest privately owned farming operations in North America with hundreds of thousands of acres across Canada and the United States  — filed for creditor protection, illustrating the challenging financial situations agricultural operators of all sizes are facing.

“Why is land selling for more than its productive value? The only obvious answer would be speculative ownership,” Prybylski says.

Indeed, hedge funds, pensions and other investors have been interested in farmland in recent years, with farm groups like the Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan (APAS) expressing concerns about foreign investment. Although provinces like Saskatchewan and Manitoba — which together are home to about half of Canada’s farmland — have regulations limiting farmland ownership primarily to Canadians and Canadian-controlled entities, the Saskatchewan government recently launched a review of its policies, saying it would take a closer look at farmland ownership, though it noted there is no evidence of foreign ownership of farmland in the province right now. Meanwhile, Ontario announced in April it will introduce legislation to limit foreign acquisition of farmland.

But that’s little comfort to those currently struggling with the price of farmland. “So much land is owned by people who aren’t farming it [themselves],” Kitzan says. “It is almost impossible to buy farmland from those people who are using it as an investment.”

Canada’s largest private farmland owner is an investor who owns 250,000 acres

There’s been a consistent, long-term shift in Canada toward fewer — and larger — farms. Between 2001 and 2021, the number of farms declined from about 250,000 to 190,000, with the average farm size increasing from 676 acres to 809 acres.

At the same time, investor interest in farmland has risen dramatically in recent decades. Investor ownership of farmland in Saskatchewan was negligible in 2002, but climbed to nearly one million acres by 2018 — almost 18 times the size of Saskatoon. An update to that research suggests the trend may be plateauing, but investors continue to be interested in farmland.

One of them is Robert Andjelic. He left a successful career in commercial real estate in Winnipeg in 2007 and turned his attention to Canadian farmland, an asset he believed was undervalued at the time, even though prices were already trending upward in the previous decade.

A few years later, he began purchasing Saskatchewan farmland at around $345 an acre. Today, land values in Saskatchewan have climbed to roughly $1,500 to $5,000 per acre, depending on the region. With more than 250,000 acres in his portfolio, primarily in Saskatchewan, Andjelic is considered Canada’s largest private farmland owner.

“I used to trade gold, silver, oil, other commodities. Today I have zero in anything else other than farmland. I’m 100 per cent invested in farmland.”

For Andjelic, there’s no doubt that Canadian farmland values will continue to rise. He sees farmland as a resilient, long-term, wealth-preserving investment — particularly during economic downturns.

“The world needs Canada and Canada’s production,” he says, adding food is not an optional consumer good.”

As the global population rises, so too does the demand for food. At the same time, farmland globally is becoming scarcer. Each year, an estimated 22 billion tonnes of fertile soil is lost to erosion, while millions more acres are degraded or converted to urban and industrial uses. 

As a result, there are simply fewer parcels of land available than there are buyers, Justin Shepherd, senior economist at Farm Credit Canada (FCC), says.

“Overall, it’s a really tight supply of land, and there’s been consistent and strong demand from producers looking to grow,” he says, adding there’s limited land for sale.

At the same time, advances in technology and larger equipment mean farmers can manage more acres with the same workforce, incentivizing them to keep expanding and increasing competition for land, which pushes prices higher, he says.

But that creates challenges in terms of access, he says, particularly for younger farmers trying to enter the market.

“We’ve looked at the affordability of farmland and recognize that we’re near historical records for many regions.”

And while Canadian farmland values have experienced growth periods before, all these recent factors have combined to create a longer and more sustained period of land price increases than at any other time in recent history.

A mega farm that wants to feed a billion people a day files for creditor protection

High land prices, and the financial challenges in agriculture, are creating a squeeze for farmers big and small. This was made even clearer in late April when Monette Farms — one of the largest private farming operations active in North America — filed for creditor protection under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act.

The company reportedly farms approximately 475,000 acres of owned and leased land across Canada and the U.S. The business, a collection of companies that originated from a family farm in Swift Current, Sask., had a goal to “feed a billion people for a day.”

In a note to stakeholders, the company said it was attempting to restructure its debt after rising interest rates and mounting costs strained its finances.

In a court document, Darrel Monette, the head of Monette Farms, said “the real property alone had a valuation exceeding the value of the group’s consolidated liabilities,” suggesting land value alone is more than its total debts. The document states Monette Farms holds about $900 million in secured debt.

Though the company didn’t specifically cite farmland prices as a reason it was facing strain, Monette Farms’ situation drew significant attention from Canadian farmers, reflecting tensions that had been building for years. 

In light of this, many say it’s now critical to confront whether farmland values have outpaced what is financially sustainable to actually farm. Prybylski, who is also the president of APAS, says the current system not only limits expansion for young farmers like Kitzan, it also threatens the very future of the family farm. (Approximately 97 per cent of Canadian farm businesses are family-owned and operated.)

Prybylski welcomes the Saskatchewan government’s move in April to launch a comprehensive review of its farmland ownership rules, examining ownership verification, enforcement and transparency, particularly around corporate ownership.

“Whenever we’ve talked to farmers,” he says, ”the conversation always comes around to stories of foreign ownership.”

Many farmers believe farmland simply shouldn’t be an investment strategy. But Andjelic thinks concerns about a disconnect between profitability and land stewardship miss the mark. 

He argues the two are closely linked — and that long-term investor returns depend on how well the land is managed.

He says he only rents his land to farmers he considers leaders in soil and crop management, requiring them to demonstrate their practices through an application process. He says his team also regularly visits farms, reviewing crop rotations, soil practices and overall land management.

“Soil is both of our bread and butter,” he says. “We’re only as good as the soil and the way we treat that soil. If somebody is mining the land, I don’t care if he pays me two times more than what the market is, he’s not going to get it.”

Eight billion people need to eat

The growth in Saskatchewan farmland values has begun to slow in recent years, but prices still increased by 9.4 per cent in 2025. At the same time, interest rates, farm profitability and regional climate pressures are predicted to play a larger role in affecting farmers’ bottom lines.

Ted Cawkwell, a farmland realtor based in Saskatoon, says some drought-affected areas — particularly in the southwest — have been under pressure as crops have failed or brought in low prices.

“Some of those areas… have had no crop for five, six years,” he says. “Grain prices are low and input costs are high and machinery costs are high. It’s tricky.”

As a result, real estate listings for farmland are increasing in some regions and taking longer to sell, not because values have dropped sharply, but, Cawkwell says, because buyers lack cash.

“The listings that are there just aren’t selling because the farmers don’t have cash,” he says.

But Cawkwell remains optimistic about the long-term outlook, pointing to the big picture.

“We have eight billion people … and people need to eat. You can do without the new house, you can do without the new shoes, you can do without the new car — but you can’t do without food.”

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Summary

• Manitoba is one of Canada’s sunniest provinces, but it hasn’t prioritized solar power as an electricity source.
• Instead, the province relies on hydroelectricity for almost all of its energy needs. But as electricity demand increases and droughts make hydroelectricity less reliable, Manitoba Hydro has warned capacity could run out as soon as 2030.
• The province argues solar power isn’t well suited to meet Manitoba’s energy demands, which spike in the cold, dark winters. So, it’s prioritizing fossil fuels instead.

In the early 1970s, licence plates were stamped with the slogan “Sunny Manitoba” — a nod to long summer days, crisp blue winter skies and frequent sun dogs reflecting off of blinding white snow. While the slogan later changed, Manitoba’s ranking as Canada’s second-sunniest province has not. 

Despite that sunny reputation, solar power — one of the most developed renewable energy sources — makes up a small fraction of the province’s electricity grid.  

“It’s extremely marginal, especially when you compare to other jurisdictions like Alberta and Saskatchewan,” James Wilt, policy development manager at Climate Action Team Manitoba, said in an interview.

Manitoba boasts a predominantly emissions-free grid, with 97 per cent of its power generated by a network of hydroelectric dams. But the provincial utility, Manitoba Hydro, has forecasted that its once-abundant renewable energy source will soon fall short. There is growing demand for power amid the electrification of sectors like transportation and heating and the rapidly growing interest in developing power-hungry data centres. Combined with more unpredictable water levels owing to climate factors like extreme drought, it’s all prompted the utility to warn that capacity could run out as soon as 2030.

Manitoba’s plight is not unique: power producers around the world are navigating pressures to keep pace with skyrocketing demand. The International Energy Agency’s most recent world energy outlook states “the age of electricity is here,” and demand will continue to grow “much faster than overall energy use” in the coming decade. It predicts renewables will grow “faster than any other major energy source” in that time, led by solar power. 

But not in Manitoba. The province’s near-term energy plans include building new wind farms and natural gas-power; utility-scale solar isn’t on the table, with Manitoba Hydro going as far as saying solar power is “opposite to Manitoba’s energy needs.”

Others, however, believe more investment in solar infrastructure and government incentives could help build a more resilient grid without resorting to fossil fuels.

Welcome to the sunbelt: Manitoba is second only to Saskatchewan for sun

Solar power technology has been on the market since the 1980s, and in that time has become less expensive and more efficient, establishing solar power among the most accessible renewable resources. 

“The thing with solar is that it really does work effectively anywhere,” Wilt said. “Of course, there are differences in the number of hours of sunlight … but even if it’s farther north or on a rooftop that isn’t perfectly angled, it can still generate a really significant amount.” 

Some systems are solar thermal, meaning the sun is used to heat either water or air (think hot water tanks or air-source heat pumps). Solar-powered electricity, however, is generated by solar photovoltaic systems, which use specialized panels to convert sunlight into an electric current.

Photovoltaic systems are typically classed as either distributed, meaning they are installed on individual homes, businesses and farms to generate power for that property, or utility-scale, which refers to larger solar farms that send electricity directly to the grid.

These systems share the same central principle: when the sun is shining, they’re generating power — regardless of the season or the temperature. 

And that’s where Manitoba has an advantage: according to an analysis by Natural Resources Canada, the province (particularly the southern region) has some of the greatest solar power potential in the country. 

Winnipeg ranked fourth on the Canada Energy Regulator’s 2018 list of major city solar potential, behind only Regina, Saskatoon and Calgary, with the potential to generate an average of 6.6 kilowatt-hours of electricity per square metre, per month. Manitoba ranked second among provinces, behind only Saskatchewan.

A 2020 Manitoba Hydro study of properties with existing solar electricity systems found panels produced power for about eight hours per day in the winter and more than 14 hours per day in the summer months.

“We are in the sun belt of Canada,” Lorena Mitchell, lead designer at solar power installation and education company Evolve Energy, said in an interview. “We do get an awful lot of sunlight hours here in Manitoba.”

Solar power makes up 0.005 per cent of Manitoba’s electricity

Manitoba’s ranking at the top of the solar-power-potential charts hasn’t translated into an abundance of solar energy. 

As of December 2024, the most recent numbers available, Manitoba’s current solar capacity of 41 megawatts is exactly middle of the road among Canadian provinces and territories. All of that capacity comes from distributed sources, such as homes, businesses and farms, Manitoba Hydro communications director, Scott Powell, said in an interview. 

All told, solar power makes up 0.005 per cent of Manitoba’s energy mix.

“Solar power is definitely part of the energy mix in Manitoba, but what we’ve seen is it’s more so put on very localized production,” Alexander Lavoie, board chair of the Manitoba Sustainable Energy Association, a non-profit advocacy organization, said in an interview.

The gap is more stark when compared to neighbouring provinces Saskatchewan (108 megawatts) and Ontario, which ranks first with over 2,500 megawatts. Alberta — another Prairie sun-belt province — ranks second with nearly 2,300 megawatts, though a less-than-favourable political climate has seen investment interest in solar energy decline. South of the border, Minnesota has more than 3,300 megawatts of installed solar capacity, which accounts for about six per cent of the state’s electricity.

Part of the discrepancy stems from Manitoba’s unique regulatory environment, Lavoie said. In some jurisdictions, like Alberta, private energy companies can develop large-scale solar resources, whereas Manitoba’s public utility model means any major infrastructure investments need approval from an external body — the Public Utilities Board.

Manitoba offers the second-cheapest power in the country (behind Quebec) and must get approval from the utilities board to raise electricity rates, which can constrain capital expenditures.

“Low electricity rates in Manitoba make the investments probably a little bit more difficult to manage,” Lavoie said. “[For] utilities of scale, there may be other opportunities that provide a better [return on investment].”

Still, solar generation has boomed in Canada, from 0.1 terawatt-hours in 2010 to nearly five terawatt-hours in 2023 — about one per cent of the national energy mix, or enough to power 195,000 homes for a year. The energy regulator predicts that share will keep growing, reaching 13 terawatt-hours by 2040.

Quebec, which operates a similar electrical grid makeup to Manitoba, plans to install three gigawatts of solar power by 2035 and an additional 300 megawatts of distributed solar in the next 10 years. New Brunswick will install a 10-megawatt solar project co-owned by Tobique First Nation this year, while Prince Edward Island’s solar incentive program was paused in 2025 because it was oversubscribed.

And while Manitoba has seen its share of solar growth, it is not betting on the sun to meet its future energy needs.

Manitoba Hydro says long, dark nights and snow make solar panels less desirable

Typically, Manitoba Hydro sees the greatest demand for electricity in the early mornings and late evenings of cold winter days, and that peak winter demand is a big part of why Manitoba has hesitated to invest in solar power.

“As much of the system’s winter peak load occurs during the non-daylight hours, solar provides little to no energy when it is needed most,” Manitoba Hydro states in its 2025 integrated resource plan.

The plan, which is intended to guide the utility through the next 10 years of the energy transition, lists six resources it believes will be feasible to develop in that time — existing and expanded energy efficiency programs, wind power, short-term battery storage, natural gas and upgrading the existing hydroelectric infrastructure. Solar isn’t included.

In a slide outlining the rationale for leaving utility-scale solar off the table, Manitoba Hydro notes that while it comes with the advantages of low costs, low maintenance, negligible emissions and easy scalability, solar power “provides zero accredited winter capacity in Manitoba,” adding solar panels are “often covered in snow,” and their “energy production profile does not pair well with Manitoba Hydro’s demand.”

Instead, the utility is prioritizing new generation options that can help address a forecasted shortage of more than 250 megawatts during those peak times. 

“The [integrated resource plan] is really about growing our capacity and, at the same time, ensuring we can provide the electricity when we need it most,” Powell said. “At a utility scale, other sources of energy are typically more available and effective based on our load curve.” 

To Wilt, at the Climate Action Team, this approach to assessing the value of solar power “takes a very narrow-minded focus on meeting demand without thinking about the system holistically.”

Battery-storage technology has evolved alongside intermittent resources like solar and wind power, and could allow solar energy to be stored and used when it’s needed most, he said. 

While Manitoba Hydro plans to run a five-megawatt battery-storage pilot in the coming years, according to the integrated resource plan, Wilt pointed out Manitoba already has a power-storage advantage.

The hydro-powered grid is backstopped by Lake Winnipeg, which has been engineered to serve as a reservoir, with the utility able to control flow to its generators. In other words, the lake essentially serves as a battery that can complement other renewable power sources. 

From Manitoba Hydro’s perspective, while the reservoir will be used to help backstop upcoming wind resources, “you can only backstop it so far,” Powell said. 

Wilt said the Climate Action Team does not want to downplay the “difficult position” Manitoba Hydro is in when it comes to managing its reservoirs and generation capacity in the face of increased pressures.

“But we would argue that a great way to shore up and prevent overutilization of potentially compromised reservoirs is by adding the lowest cost generation to the mix during the summer,” he said. 

“We think that there should be tons of solar put on the grid for the summer, tons of wind put on the grid for the winter — which is when it’s most effective — and have battery storage which can help smooth out the intermittency. Having all of these in place will help keep more water behind the reservoirs.”

Manitoba Hydro solar pilot project was a success — but wasn’t renewed

A decade ago, the forecast for solar power in Manitoba was sunny. 

With solar photovoltaic power gaining popularity, the provincial utility launched a pilot project in 2016 offering customers a $1-per-watt incentive to install solar panels on their properties. This rebate was considered among the best in the country at the time, and covered up to one-third of the cost of installations. 

Mitchell, at Evolve Energy, has worked in the solar energy space for more than 20 years. She noticed Manitobans interest in solar started to spark in 2013, “then they launched the rebate program and that’s what really kicked it off.”

The pilot program was a success, generating 2.6 megawatts of new solar generation capacity and diverting approximately 3.5 gigawatt hours of energy from the provincial grid each year, about equivalent to the power use of 137 homes.

“By all accounts, Hydro was just completely overwhelmed by the number of applicants,” Wilt said. 

(At Hydro, Powell said the pilot was “very well received at the time.”)

Customers were set up with a bi-directional meter that allowed each property to both import and export power to and from the hydroelectric grid. This kind of grid-connected system is common for residential and small commercial solar generation: when the sun is shining, the property draws power from the solar array and sells whatever it doesn’t need back to the grid. When it’s dark, the system can still draw power from the grid as normal.

Excess power is compensated using either net-metering or net-billing. Net-metering — used in nine of 13 provinces and territories — credits the property owner for each kilowatt-hour of energy they send to the grid, charging users only for the difference between the power they use and the power they contribute. 

Net-billing, on the other hand, effectively pays distributed solar producers an electricity rate for each kilowatt-hour sent to the grid. Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia use net-billing systems, with varying rates across the jurisdictions. 

Under Manitoba’s solar pilot project, the excess energy rate, as it’s called, was on par with electricity rates charged by the utility. 

When the pilot project ended, the solar landscape in Manitoba changed.

Some contractors that had come to the province looking to cash in on the solar boom vanished; several customers were left scrambling to finish setting up their systems before the incentive program ceased. 

“When it ended, the whole local industry collapsed,” Wilt said. 

The responsibility for doling out future solar power incentives shifted to then-newly formed Crown corporation, Efficiency Manitoba, which is tasked with administering initiatives to help Manitoba reduce its electricity and natural gas consumption. The new program, launched in 2022, offered a $0.50-per-watt incentive for residential installations, up to $5,000, and $0.75 cents for farm or business installations. It also switched to an excess energy rate set by Manitoba Hydro that “reflects the current market value” of electricity.

“Net-billing appropriately recognizes the value of that excess energy when it’s sold back on the grid,” Powell said. “Net-metering would pay customers at a rate that incorporates the full cost to deliver electricity to residential customers. Solar customers don’t have to absorb that cost, so it wouldn’t be appropriate to pay that full rate.” 

That price — which is established each spring — has fluctuated widely in the years since. In 2025, it was just over four cents per kilowatt-hour, in 2021, it reached a low of 2.4 cents. This year, it’s just over seven. 

“It can certainly provide uncertainty for potential investors and developers,” Lavoie said.

According to Jana Brunel, manager of strategic initiatives at Efficiency Manitoba, the program has seen “steady uptake,” with 750 installations to this point. Manitoba’s cheap and predominantly low-emissions energy, however, can limit the uptake when compared to other jurisdictions.

“We have low energy rates, which make the payback of some investments different,” Brunel said in an interview. 

Efficiency Manitoba also works with customers to match the size of their solar generation to their energy use, which results in less excess energy generation, Brunel explained. 

“If you can install solar to really reduce the energy you need to use from the grid … that’s where the biggest financial savings come,” she said. “That’s why our program is really geared at properly sizing a system not to have an abundance of excess energy being sent back to the grid.” 

Mitchell said the program has been “pretty good” for residential customers and “really amazing” for farms and commercial businesses. Those larger properties who receive higher excess energy rates, including those who are locked in to the on-par price, have seen a return on investment in their solar installations within six to nine years, she said.

“We’re seeing the uptick for them, finally, really happening this year,” Mitchell said.

For residential customers with smaller systems, Mitchell said her business designs systems to protect their investment from the fluctuating energy price.

“I try to caution them that this is what’s going to cause their investment to go up and down,” she said. “It’s like playing the stocks.”

Manitoba’s energy crunch looms, but solar adoption lags

In 2024, Efficiency Manitoba and Manitoba Hydro commissioned Dunsky Energy + Climate Advisors to outline a roadmap to help reduce peak demand through customer-facing initiatives such as energy-efficiency upgrades, heat-pump programs and distributed solar. 

The study found that by 2037, peak demand could shift towards the late afternoon, driven by factors like electric vehicle charging and improved energy efficiency. In such a scenario, distributed solar could reduce that demand by up to117 megawatts.

But it also found solar adoption “is not projected to approach levels observed in the past pilot program in the initial years of study unless lucrative incentives … are provided.”

“Despite continued global cost declines for solar [photovoltaic] systems, the decline in Manitoba’s solar [photovoltaic] market following the end of the pilot program, coupled with significant reductions in compensation for excess generation, is expected to reduce customer demand for the next several years,” the study said.

“However, as solar [photovoltaic] system costs continue to decline, adoption is projected to increase in the later years of the study.”

At Efficiency Manitoba, Brunel said solar power “certainly plays a role in helping reduce electricity consumption and energy consumption,” and its efficacy will improve in the long term as battery storage technology evolves and energy efficiency programs take root. 

“When solar [photovoltaic] systems can be paired with battery storage, that presents more of an opportunity to use the electricity,” Brunel said.

Manitoba Hydro isn’t closing the door either, Powell said. 

“We’re technology agnostic. If solar was the right answer for our system and our customers, that’s what we would be going with. But there are other technologies, other forms of energy, that offer better value for the system we have,” he said. 

“Could that change in the future? Absolutely.” 

But with power shortages looming, Mitchell believes Manitoba is already behind on solar investments. 

“As things go critical in Manitoba for a net need for energy, they’re going to have to come back and address this, because a few gas turbines isn’t going to do it,” Mitchell said. 

“I think diversifying the grid and making it healthier and stronger is the way to go, and you can do that very easily with renewables.”

Julia-Simone Rutgers is a reporter covering environmental issues in Manitoba. Her position is part of a partnership between The Narwhal and the Winnipeg Free Press.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Canada’s vast landscape, which boasts 20 per cent of the world’s fresh water, a quarter of global wetlands and 28 per cent of its boreal forests, is critical to its economy. Natural resource industries — forests, farms, fisheries, mining and oil and gas — together make up approximately seven per cent of Canada’s gross domestic product. 

Tension exists between expanding these industrialized sectors and protecting the ecosystems on which they depend. In Manitoba, some worry protecting the Seal River Watershed, which spans more than 50,000 square kilometres in the province’s north, will hinder opportunities in mineral resources and hydro; to the east, critical mineral mining ambitions in Ontario’s Ring of Fire clash with the protection of the Hudson and James Bay Lowlands, the second-largest carbon sink on earth; and in B.C., Coastal First Nations have protested that lifting the large tanker ban through their waters will endanger the protected Great Bear Rainforest.

These tensions make it easy to frame nature as the antithesis of economic activity, if it’s always put in opposition to projects that are described as growing Canada’s wealth, sovereignty and security. But a growing chorus of economic and policy leaders, alongside conservation groups, are making the case for nature to be seen as a critical financial asset — not a barrier, but another opportunity for economic growth. 

The federal government’s vision for conservation, laid out in its 2026 nature strategy, is of a nation that “protects, restores, and values nature as a foundation of our economy, sovereignty, and well-being.” 

One of the pillars to achieving that vision is “valuing nature and mobilizing capital,” according to the strategy. It estimated the value of “ecosystem services” — the direct and indirect contributions of nature to well-being and quality of life — to be $3.6 trillion, or “more than double our 2018 GDP.” In other words, the government is looking to spur more private sector investment in conservation by showing businesses how valuable nature is to their bottom lines.

The numbers show conservation is comparable with many of Canada’s major industries. While it may not produce the same scale of economic value as major resource extraction sectors like oil and gas — which does not approach the value of sectors like health care or education — it is a significant contributor to Canada’s economy. And the return on investment is high: a recent analysis by the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS) found every dollar spent on protected areas generated more than $3.50 in visitor spending, helping fuel local economies and generate government revenues. 

Like the oil and gas sector, Canada can choose to invest in the potential of conservation and champion it as a cornerstone of our country’s economic future. And as Canadians grapple with the increasingly severe impacts of the climate crisis, the role of intact ecosystems becomes even more valuable. 

These nine charts capture some of the value of Canada’s natural environments, and the economic potential of conservation.

Economic contributions from protected areas — by province

Gross domestic product (GDP) contributions of selected Canadian industries

How are the industries defined?+

Statistics Canada tracks economic activity indicators for a wide range of sectors using the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), which assigns a code to specific activities and sectors. Industries and government agencies tally these statistics in different ways to determine overall sector impacts. 

This analysis uses Statistics Canada’s data, and defines each industry as follows:

Agriculture: Crop and animal production (farming), related support activities and food manufacturing, including mills, bakeries, meat and dairy production.

Fisheries: Aquaculture, fishing, hunting and trapping and seafood product preparation.

Forestry: Forestry and logging, related support activities, wood and paper product manufacturing. 

Mining: Mineral mining (ore, non-metals, potash) and quarrying activities, including related support. Also includes mineral product manufacturing and metal manufacturing. 

Oil and gas: Oil and gas extraction and related support activities, petroleum and coal product manufacturing, natural gas distribution and pipelines.

Transportation: Air, rail, water, truck and transit and ground transportation (including public transit and taxis). 

Utilities: Electric power generation, transmission and distribution and water and sewage systems.

Jobs and compensation

More than 150,000 people work in protected and conserved areas — not far behind the oil and gas and forestry sectors. As the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society points out, many of these jobs are in Indigenous, rural and remote communities, where unemployment rates are high compared to urban areas. In parts of Canada where other economic opportunities are scarce, protected and conserved areas offer the opportunity to create long-term stable employment. 

Conservation provides value, but how are conservation workers valued? Compensation for the approximately 150,000 Canadians who work in protected areas is low, compared to other sectors; on average, an oil and gas worker makes nearly four times as much annually. 

Tax revenues and subsidies

Governments collected more than $1.4 billion in tax revenues from parks and protected areas in 2024, most of which stemmed from visitor spending, according to the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society’s analysis. That’s comparable to government tax revenues from the forestry industry, at $1.2 billion. Major resource industries like forestry and oil and gas also create government revenue through royalties and other fees. 

But for many of these industries, government revenues can be offset by tax breaks, grants and other subsidies.

Governments invested $2.3 billion in parks and protected spaces in 2024, generating $0.62 in revenue for every dollar invested. By comparison, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) estimates the federal government spent $3.17 billion USD (or $4.34 billion CAD) on fossil fuel subsidies — almost $1 billion USD more than the United States spent on subsidies, despite their industry’s far greater output. That number is likely an underestimate, as a lack of clear data and complex incentive structures make it difficult to track how much governments give out to industry. 

Environmental Defence, which releases an annual report tracking Canadian fossil fuel subsidies, estimates the government doled out more than $30 billion in subsidies and financing to fossil fuel companies in 2024. Most of that funding came in the form of a $20-billion loan for the Trans Mountain Expansion project. 

Carbon storage

The Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society estimated the carbon stocks stored in Canada’s existing protected areas by comparing protected area boundaries to data showing the carbon concentration in soil, vegetated areas and seabed sediments. 

It found a total 51.4 gigatons of carbon stored in the country’s protected forests, peatlands, wetlands, soil and seabeds. 

If this carbon was all emitted as carbon dioxide, the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society estimates, it would equate to 188.4 gigatons of emissions. 

By protecting these regions from industrial disturbances like mining, logging or draining, that carbon stays in the ground. If released, that carbon comes at a cost. 

Canada’s industrial carbon price, which charges businesses for emissions that exceed a predetermined limit, is $110 per tonne as of 2026. A carbon credit — doled out for activities that remove or avoid carbon emissions — is worth the same.

At that price, the carbon stored in Canada’s protected areas is worth $20.7 trillion. 

That’s about 10 times the value of Canada’s global mining assets ($352.6 billion), global energy assets ($827 billion) and domestic farm sector assets ($992.4 billion) combined.

Annual carbon capture

Protected and conserved areas remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, a process known as “carbon capture.” Manitoba’s Riding Mountain National Park, for example, removed an average of 108,328 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year from the atmosphere between 1990 and 2020. This is significantly less than Shell’s Quest carbon capture and storage project, but it’s also just one of hundreds of parks and protected areas across Canada.

Most parks, like the ones included in this chart, are sequestering carbon each year. However, when parks or protected areas are hit by wildfires, they can become carbon emitters.

– With files from Michelle Cyca

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Summary

• Last spring in Manitoba marked the start of the second-worst wildfire season in Canadian history. Experts warn these types of fires are becoming more common with climate change.
• A Narwhal and Winnipeg Free Press analysis found $500 million in costs directly tied to the Manitoba wildfires, including evacuations, emergency costs, insured losses, healthcare costs and many more.
• The Manitoba government alone spent seven times its projected budget on emergency response — more than the operating budgets of two of its departments combined.

A little more than a year ago, during a time usually marked by lingering snowbanks and the first hints of spring, parts of Manitoba were engulfed in flames.

An early heat wave on the heels of several months of drought combined to produce ideal conditions for spring fires. 

Within days, the province was at the epicentre of what would become the second-worst wildfire season in Canadian history.

Between May and August, fires tore through 2.3 million hectares, decimated provincial parklands and forced more than 33,000 residents out of their homes. Two people died; at least one firefighter was severely injured.

The scale of the disaster was unprecedented — so were the costs.

An analysis by The Narwhal and the Winnipeg Free Press found at least $500 million in expenses directly attributable to the wildfires — costs tied to emergency response, evacuations, damaged infrastructure, shuttered businesses, lost homes and much more. The true cost will never be known, as the impacts are far-reaching and far less tangible, and likely far, far higher.

But the tangible costs are many: wildfires scorched the provincial economy, burning through hundreds of millions in public funds, searing the bottom lines of several local businesses and taking a heavy toll on thousands of families’ finances. 

In the fiscal year including those wildfires, Manitoba spent $383 million on government emergency expenditures. Nearly all of that, $375 million, was attributed to wildfires, seven times more than what was budgeted.

To put that figure in perspective, the combined operating budgets of the Environment and Climate Change Department ($117 million) and the Department of Natural Resources ($147 million) totalled $264 million, meaning Manitoba spent 42 per cent more on emergency wildfire expenses last year than it did on the operating budgets for those two departments combined.

In a statement in response to a detailed list of questions, the government said a full picture of wildfire costs won’t be available until public accounts are released in September — after the next wildfire season has passed.

The statement described last year’s fires as “generational in nature,” but experts warn many of the same fire-prone conditions are still present. Fire weather is expected to be the norm in the future, as warmer temperatures dry out fuel sources and trigger more lightning storms, among other factors. 

The provincial budget’s risk outlook acknowledges the potential cost of that threat: “If similar conditions persist in 2026 — with climate change contributing to more frequent extreme weather events such as droughts — the province could face continued risks to employment, labour displacement, reductions in tourism and agricultural output and overall economic performance.”

Despite that, Manitoba’s $50-million emergency expenditure budget wasn’t changed for 2026. The government said it is “a sizable emergency expense contingency,” while also noting an increase in funding for wildfire preparedness, prevention and emergency management. 

The government has earmarked more than $4.5 million in new funding for additional seasonal firefighter positions and emergency management staff, upgraded weather and fire-mapping tools and aerial firefighting services.

Another year of devastating wildfires could further strain an economy navigating several stressors at once. Beyond the direct costs linked to firefighters, air tankers and evacuation support, natural disasters have profound indirect — though often unmeasurable — costs that ripple throughout the economy.

table of contents

• Wildfire protection budgets
• Out-of-province firefighters
• Largest evacuation in Manitoba history costs millions
• Damaged property, damaged infrastructure
• Business closures dampen economic activity
• Intangible impacts

Wildfire protection budgets

In 2025, the province spent about $70 million across four departments to manage emergency wildfire response, including fire suppression equipment, provincial firefighters and emergency management teams. 

That’s expected to increase this year as the province aims to hire another 19 emergency firefighters, four conservation workers and 15 emergency management personnel. 

However, the budget for wildfire suppression — just under $14 million — has been relatively unchanged since 2022, even as Canada experienced two of its worst-ever fire seasons in 2023 and 2025. 

Two years earlier, in 2020, the wildfire suppression budget was more than double what it is today, at just under $30 million.

As for staff, the Manitoba Government and General Employees’ Union, which represents members of the province’s wildfire service, released a report in December that noted 64 fire ranger positions and 25 per cent of wildfire division positions were vacant when the fire season began. 

“Our staffing levels are ’70s, ’80s levels — not current,” one staff member told the union. 

While the union has applauded this year’s five per cent increase to the conservation and wildfire service budget, it noted a full complement of staff with adequate training, equipment and compensation (Manitoba firefighters make the second-lowest hourly wage in the country) could help mitigate the growing risks associated with wildfires. 

“The 2025 fire season was not an outlier, but the new normal as the impacts of climate continue to wreak havoc on communities and natural areas,” the report said.

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Out-of-province firefighters

The severity of the fire season — combined with the depleted complement of firefighters — meant Manitoba needed significant out-of-province support to battle the summer blazes. 

Manitoba brought in more than 250 personnel, both from Parks Canada and provincial fire teams from Alberta, British Columbia, Quebec, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. The province also hosted another 250 firefighters from the United States, 200 from Mexico, 40 from France and 65 from New Zealand and Australia. 

The province did not provide a breakdown of its payments to other jurisdictions.

Instead, The Narwhal and Free Press reviewed publicly disclosed provincial government contracts valued over $10,000 and labeled: “Emergency services related to forest fires.” The review found 20 contracts worth a combined $6.5 million inked with other government departments.

The Société de protection des forêts contre le feu, a non-profit fire protection agency based in Quebec, received about 40 per cent of those funds. The agency sent more than 150 firefighters from Quebec and France, as well as logistics support, through June and July. While Manitoba’s records show contracts totalling $2.8 million, the agency’s annual report indicates it billed Manitoba for more than $5.1 million in 2025. This suggests some out-of-province payments are not yet recorded in Manitoba’s contract records.

The province also paid $2.7 million to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre, which “coordinates the sharing of firefighting resources” across Canada, and helped mobilize aircraft and international personnel to fight the Manitoba fires, according to a statement from the centre. Manitoba also recorded eight contracts worth just under $500,000 for “other firefighting equipment.”

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Largest evacuation in Manitoba history costs millions

According to Manitoba’s recently released interim review of the wildfire season, it was “one of the largest evacuation operations in Manitoba’s history.” 

Consider the numbers: 59 communities impacted, more than 33,000 residents evacuated, including 4,100 air evacuations by the Canadian Armed Forces and 2,300 people temporarily relocated outside the province.

Both the Canadian and American Red Cross were called on to support evacuations; many evacuees lived in congregate shelters in Winnipeg, Thompson, Winkler and Portage la Prairie after hotels became overwhelmed. 

These evacuations, some of which lasted several weeks, others months, took an unprecedented toll. Evacuees suffered mental health impacts owing to the fear, uncertainty and stress of being separated from family and their homes, many missed school and work, or were forced to close their businesses. First Nations evacuees, particularly those in remote, northern communities, reported additional strain as they were relocated to urban environments, isolated from familiar foods, community and culture. 

Not all of these impacts can be quantified, but will nonetheless have long-lasting effects on many Manitoba communities.

The financial responsibility for evacuee support is spread across federal, provincial and local governments, with Indigenous Services Canada responsible for evacuations affecting First Nations, and the federal government providing disaster financial assistance to affected municipalities. According to the interim review, nine disaster financial assistance payments have been made thus far, totalling $3.4 million.

While the province did not specify how much of the $375-million emergency expenditures were earmarked for evacuees, government contracts show Manitoba spent upwards of $60 million on accommodations, food, transportation and other evacuation support. 

Most of that money — $53 million — was paid to the Canadian Red Cross, which helped lead evacuations. These payments do not include the Red Cross’s work with Manitoba First Nations, which is paid for by Indigenous Services Canada. 

Contracts show approximately $4 million in space rental and cleaning fees, including a $1.7 million contract with Canad Inns, and 40 other contracts with hotels, inns and resort centres across Manitoba and western Ontario, where some evacuees were sheltered. 

Catering, groceries and other food bills amounted to $813,000, while the bill for planes, cars, fuel and other transportation was more than $3 million. 

Evacuations are particularly challenging for residents living in hospitals and personal care homes, or receiving regular medical care like dialysis appointments. According to Shared Health, Manitoba’s provincial health authority, the Flin Flon hospital was evacuated in May, as were personal care homes in Flin Flon, Lynn Lake and Thompson.

“The evacuation in the north was the biggest the province has seen,” Shared Health wrote in a May 2025 press release. 

Those patients were transported either by commercial, chartered or, in some cases, individual medivac flights, Jessica Davis, who served as the provincial air ambulance manager for Shared Health through the 2025 wildfire season, said in an interview. 

MedEvac flights cost between $10,000 and $20,000 each direction, she said, while commercial medical flights come with costs between $50,000 and $60,000. 

Shared Health has not yet compiled the final figures, but estimates more than 100 patients were evacuated from hospitals and personal care homes in northern communities. While some of the evacuation costs were shared with the federal government, Kristyn Ball, director of patient flow, noted at least one health-care facility sustained “significant damage,” and many others were costly to shut down and start up again during the evacuations. Davis emphasized the overtime accrued by health-care staff added to the evacuation costs.

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Damaged property, damaged infrastructure

Governments typically absorb the bulk of natural disaster costs, spreading the economic impacts across multi-billion-dollar budgets. For homeowners in the fire’s path, the impacts are acute.

According to the Insurance Bureau of Canada, insurers handled several thousand claims related to the Manitoba wildfires last year, the majority of which came from homeowners. 

In the wake of a natural disaster, Canada’s insurance companies navigate an influx of claims, ranging from “the worst, which is when people have lost everything,” to claims for evacuation-related expenses like hotel rooms and rental cars, Aaron Sutherland, the bureau’s Pacific and Western region vice-president, said in an interview. 

When the sum of insurance claims reaches $30 million, the industry conducts surveys to estimate the total recovery costs. The fires in the Flin Flon and Lac du Bonnet regions both met those thresholds, Sutherland said. 

Estimates compiled in September pegged insured damages from the Flin Flon and Lac du Bonnet fires at $250 million and $60 million respectively. They’re expected to be updated as the one-year mark approaches.

While these estimates help form a picture of the individual costs to rebuild after a fire, they’re only part of the picture. About 90 per cent of Canadians have some form of property insurance; those without may incur steep losses that are neither recoverable or tracked. 

“There’s a real human toll to these events as well,” Sutherland added. “If you’re in the unfortunate situation where you have lost everything, that has a massive impact on your life. Even if you’ve got your insurer there to help you begin to put those pieces back together, you’re looking at belongings, mementos, pictures, things like that, that you may never get back, and it’s absolutely devastating.”

Even for those whose personal property is unscathed, damage to wider infrastructure can have knock-on effects.

Last year’s fires damaged more than 1,200 Manitoba Hydro poles, interrupting electrical service in several communities. Five generating stations were temporarily shut down or evacuated — the first time the utility has ever evacuated its power infrastructure — leading to about 70 megawatts of lost generating capacity. 

In addition to power interruptions, “telecommunications disruptions affected multiple communities, boil-water advisories were issued and postal and other essential services were suspended in several areas,” the review notes. 

According to a statement from the Crown utility, 1,500 customers were affected by power outages, “including some communities where the outages lasted for weeks or months.”

Manitoba Hydro estimates the wildfires cost the utility approximately $50 million between infrastructure repairs, emergency response crew wages and service interruptions.

It was “without doubt the most impactful wildfire season in Manitoba Hydro’s history, in terms of the number of assets impacted, employees involved in wildfire response, and communities impacted by power outages,” Peter Chura, Hydro’s media relations officer said.

Meanwhile, the increasing frequency of wildfires, severe floods and other natural disasters is causing concern for the insurance industry. In time, it could lead to increased premiums as insurers look to balance growing recovery costs.

“Insurers, for a long time, have been a bit of a canary in the coal mine,” Sutherland said. 

“We are trending in the wrong direction in terms of the cost of these types of events. It’s a clear indication of the need for us, as a society, to improve our resilience.”

Insured damages from weather-related disasters totalled $14 billion nationwide between 2006 and 2015. In the decade since, that total has more than doubled to $37 billion, according to the Insurance Bureau of Canada. The average number of claims has doubled, too. 

“Insurance price is risk; that risk is growing. If we want to see a more affordable insurance marketplace, we have to take action to begin to reduce the risk facing communities, facing our properties and facing our families,” Sutherland said.

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Business closures dampen economic activity

In 2025, Natural Resources Canada released a research paper outlining a method to estimate the direct and indirect costs of extreme wildfires, acknowledging there are “numerous gaps” in the current understanding of socioeconomic impacts from wildfires.

The study notes it can take several months to fully understand how wildfires have impacted regional economies as business disruptions, lost opportunity costs and the impacts of ecosystem loss ripple through industries. 

Natural resource sectors including mining and forestry, as well as local tourism economies, tend to be most directly impacted by wildfires. For communities in the north, these industries are often the backbone of the local economy.

Last June, Statistics Canada estimated the potential economic disruption from the 2025 wildfires, and found 2.4 per cent of Manitoba’s GDP, including one quarter of the northern region’s economy, was at risk of fire-related disruption — the largest share of any province.

The fires that tore through the eastern portion of the province forced several popular provincial parks to remain closed throughout the busiest season. 

While it’s still too early to pinpoint the exact impact the 2025 wildfires had on visitation and revenue (numbers will be available in August), Travel Manitoba conducted an internal survey of tourism operators last summer to gauge the scope of the impacts, chief operating officer Angela Cassie said in an interview. 

A little more than half of tourism operators — from lodges and outfitters to campgrounds, festivals and outdoor recreation services, to restaurants and transportation — reported cancellations, Cassie said. 

Forty per cent reported lost revenue due to decreased visitation and 18 per cent had to close their businesses entirely for mandatory evacuations, she added.

Impacted businesses reported average revenue losses of about $175,000. 

“The earnings from that summer season often sustains their businesses all year,” Cassie said. “A lot of them are looking at the summer of 2025 as a lost summer.” 

For some businesses, the impacts will extend far beyond one season of depleted revenues. Five per cent reported damaged or lost property as a result of the fires, while others lost habitat, which could impact future bookings. 

One in 10 tourism operators reported mental-health challenges in response to the crisis, Cassie said. 

The high-profile nature of last year’s wildfires had an impact too. As Manitoba declared successive province-wide states of emergency, countries in Europe, for example, warned travellers of the risks of visiting Manitoba. As the province worked to shelter tens of thousands of evacuees, Premier Wab Kinew asked tourists to avoid booking hotel rooms. 

“There’s the physical loss because of cancellations or just people not booking last year but then are you losing people who are maybe now choosing other locations for the summer and not choosing Manitoba?” Cassie said.

Travel Manitoba is on a mission to “earn that business back” with a $1.35-million marketing campaign. The industry group has earmarked an additional $1.35 million for a wildfire assistance program that will cover up to 90 per cent of the cost of fire prevention equipment (such as sprinklers, hoses and water pumps) and training for tourism businesses. 

“This year will be really important for a lot of [businesses]. They’ve come through this winter extremely lean, so this summer is going to be extremely important,” Cassie said. 

The province’s mining industry was impacted, too, with at least four companies reporting shutdowns, evacuations or delays related to the wildfires. 

The Tanco lithium mine in eastern Manitoba, owned by Chinese company Sinomine, was evacuated in early May. Hudbay’s Snow Lake operation was shut down for seven weeks in July and August, incurring more than US$4 million in costs, according to the company’s financial reporting. Grid Metals’ Makwa facility was shuttered for several months, from early May until late July, and was only able to complete one day of field work in the second quarter.

Alamos Gold, near Lynn Lake, was investigated in connection with a major fire in the region, after a burn pile reignited at the MacLellan mine site. 

The company was forced to evacuate, delaying the ramp up of construction on a new mine and contributing to a 48 per cent increase in capital funding for the project, according to the company’s latest quarterly report.

Mining companies also contributed to evacuation and firefighting efforts in the communities where staff live and work, and donated a combined $1.25 million to the Red Cross relief effort.

While impacts to Manitoba’s forestry industry are not yet tabulated, analysis of fire boundaries shows 1.2 million hectares of the province’s logging licence areas burned — about 10 per cent of Manitoba’s regularly harvested forests.

According to the province’s economic development council, “wildfires lead to reduced supply, processing shutdowns and volatile price swings” for the forestry industry. The 2023 wildfires prompted a 20 per cent dip in June and July lumber production compared to the previous five-year average, according to a report from the Canadian Climate Institute.

“Whole regions now have nothing but young trees. There’s nothing to harvest,” B.C.-based wildfire researcher Bob Gray said last October.

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Intangible impacts: health, carbon emissions will add to future costs

The costs compiled here represent only a portion of the long-term economic impacts wildfires will have on Manitoba’s economy. It will take several months for government agencies and private companies to finish taking stock of the damage; some losses will never show up in financial records or industry reports.

For example, communities are left to clean up debris, remediate damaged sites and conduct inspections; these costs can be difficult to tabulate, according to the federal government’s report on the economic impacts of wildfires. 

Other indirect impacts are unlikely to be formally tied to the 2025 fires, making them challenging to capture when calculating the costs of a natural disaster.

The Manitoba wildfires released a total 44 megatonnes of cumulative carbon emissions by mid-summer — a provincial record — according to data from the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service, part of the European Union’s environmental monitoring programme. That’s equivalent to two years of Manitoba’s annual, human-caused emissions. 

“As a result, smoke plumes repeatedly blanketed large parts of Canada and North America, and on several occasions travelled across the Atlantic, reaching western, central and eastern Europe,” the Copernicus report notes.

Wildfire smoke increases risk of respiratory and cardiovascular illness, putting long-term strain on health-care systems.

A Health Canada study published in 2024 estimates that between 2013 and 2018, air pollution from wildfire smoke contributed to 240 deaths from short-term exposure and 2,500 from long-term exposure, and generated annual health-care costs between $4.7 and $20 billion.

There were 18 days between May and October last year where Winnipeg’s daily average concentration of fine particulate matter — one way to measure wildfire pollutants — exceeded federal limits of 27 micrograms per cubic metre. The average concentration peaked at 57 micrograms per cubic metre in early June.

Only nine days exceeded federal limits in Winnipeg amid Canada’s worst-ever wildfires in 2023.

The trauma of fires, evacuations and destruction will also have far-reaching mental health impacts for impacted communities and the front-line workers responding to the crisis. 

“The mental-health support part of the [health-care] system is one that’s required long after the fire is out,” Jeff Martin, director of emergency and continuity management for Shared Health, said in an interview. 

With its interim review, Manitoba has started to strengthen its wildfire preparedness and response systems across several government departments. In addition to financial investments to boost emergency staffing and firefighting resources, the province plans to improve evacuee support with more culturally-responsive services, smoother registration systems, more robust financial support and more assistance geared at vulnerable populations. It plans to streamline its overall emergency funding processes, update its wildfire response guidelines and improve coordination and communication between agencies and jurisdictions. 

“We were as prepared as we could possibly have been for a season like we had,” Lisa Naylor, the minister responsible for the Emergency Management Organization, said at a news conference this week for the release of the interim report.

“We hope we won’t see a season like that this year and, at the same time, we’re going to be even more prepared.”

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Julia-Simone Rutgers is a reporter covering environmental issues in Manitoba. Her position is part of a partnership between The Narwhal and the Winnipeg Free Press.

Updated Friday, April 24, 2026, at 9:16 CT: This article has been updated to correct how much more the Manitoba government spent on emergency wildfire expenses compared to the total operating budgets of two of its departments. It was 42 per cent more, not 35, as previously stated.

Updated Friday, April 24, 2026, at 10:50 CT: This article has also been updated to correct an earlier statement from the Insurance Bureau of Canada about the total of insured damages from weather-related disasters in recent decades. The bureau clarified the figures were cumulative, not annual, as they had previously stated.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Seven years after a coalition of four northern Manitoba First Nations banded together to conserve the province’s last major undammed river, the Seal River Watershed is now “on the cusp” of permanent protection.

On Friday, the Seal River Watershed Alliance, the province and the federal government released a joint proposal to designate the 50,000-square-kilometre ecosystem — one of the world’s largest intact watersheds — as an Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area.

“This announcement is an absolutely historic moment in time where we have all different levels of government [and] … the nations coming together to preserve some of the most beautiful areas in the world,” Manitoba Environment Minister Mike Moyes said Friday. 

“I am so proud to be part of a government that is moving forward on this historic agreement that is going to protect seven per cent of Manitoba.” 

The proposal recommends creating a “mosaic” of national and provincial parks across the region, including a national park on the eastern third of the watershed and a new Indigenous traditional-use provincial park on the western two-thirds.

To accommodate a new national park, the proposal recommends adjusting the boundaries of the three existing wilderness parks, Nueltin Lake, Caribou River and Sand Lakes, and transferring about 18,500 square kilometres of predominantly Crown lands to the federal government. 

The mosaic approach would allow for a variety of economic activities including tourism, recreation and traditional harvesting practices, the proposal says. A little under half of the national park would remain open for licensed hunting and outfitting for 10 years as a “transitional measure,” while hunting, outfitting “and the full range of outdoor activities that typically occur in Manitoba’s provincial parks would continue to be permitted in the new provincial park.”

Industrial activities like mining, hydroelectric developments and forestry would be barred throughout the protected region. Future land management decisions would be made by a joint management board elected by leadership from all parties, the proposal says.

Alongside the proposal — which is open for public comments through EngageMB — the province announced a $4-million endowment contribution to support long-term operational funding for the project. 

“We are celebrating major new investments in the Seal River Watershed, we are sharing a proposal for protecting these lands and waters for all people, and we are breaking trail for what protected areas in the province can look like,” Stephanie Thorassie, executive director of the Seal River Watershed Alliance, said Friday. 

“It’s inspiring to see you standing side by side and talking about our work together. You are showing the world what nation-to-nation-to-nation partnership looks like — not just in words, but in action.”

The Alliance, made up of members from the Sayisi Dene, Northlands Denesuline, Barren Lands and O-Pipon-Na-Piwin Cree Nations, formed in 2019. By 2022, it had secured a commitment from provincial and federal governments to explore a protected area in the region.

It took two years — and a change of government — for the parties to sign a memorandum of understanding agreeing to move forward with a feasibility study for the protected area, and to temporarily ban mining in the region. The study was completed in early 2025, concluding that an Indigenous-led protected area was feasible, and would come with ecological, cultural and economic benefits.

The watershed is wintering habitat for scores of caribou and home to more than 30 species at risk, including polar bears, wolverines, belugas and lake sturgeon. The landscape itself stores 1.7 billion tonnes of carbon, equivalent to about eight years’ worth of total greenhouse gas emissions in Canada.

Tourism in the region generates about $11 million in revenues per year, according to the feasibility study, and the Alliance has already created about two dozen jobs for community members and youth. 

“This is a practical, community-driven approach. It protects the land and supports opportunities for the future, from land-based education and sustainable tourism, to jobs that keep people rooted in their home,” Rebecca Chartrand, Minister of Northern and Arctic Affairs and member of Parliament for Churchill—Keewatinook Aski, said Friday. 

In late March, the federal government released its $3.8-billion nature protection strategy, which included a commitment of $74.7 million over 11 years and nearly $8 million in ongoing funding to support the Seal River protected area. 

“The investments announced today will create more opportunities for these youth, opportunities to find jobs and stewardship and tourism, to gain knowledge and training and to feel pride in who they are and the work that they do,” Sayisi Dene Chief Kelly-Ann Thom-Duck said Friday. 

The proposal is now open for public consultation. Manitobans have until June 2 to submit feedback on the plan through the province’s EngageMB portal, including the proposed boundary changes to existing provincial parks and the transfer of Crown land to the federal government for a new national park. 

Public feedback will be shared with the Alliance and Parks Canada to help inform next steps.

“We think this is a very important way to have a safe, clean and healthy environment, to support Indigenous cultures and also to open up new tourist opportunities for Manitobans and Canadians,” Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew said Friday.

Julia-Simone Rutgers is a reporter covering environmental issues in Manitoba. Her position is part of a partnership between The Narwhal and the Winnipeg Free Press.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Summary

• Manitoba released its latest budget last week.
• Conservation groups released a joint statement following the budget’s release saying it does not adequately address environmental issues.
• The Manitoba government points to a new fare-free transit program for youth and an 11 per cent funding increase for the Environment Department, though advocates point out the funds are mostly for existing initiatives.

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The Manitoba government has made big promises to protect and prioritize the environment as it works to boost economic development and become a “have province.” But climate groups say the latest provincial budget, released Wednesday, has failed to deliver.

A coalition of environmental organizations including the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS), Manitoba Eco-Network and Climate Action Team Manitoba gave the province “a near failing grade for its lack of meaningful investment in climate action and environmental protection,” according to a Friday release.

“Manitoba’s 2026 budget and the past two budgets before it have been extremely disappointing for climate and nature,” Ron Thiessen, executive director of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society’s Manitoba chapter, said in an interview.

“The accelerating rate of extreme wildfires that have been choking our airways show we can’t wait to reduce emissions and protect the lands that remove carbon from the air. We feel quite strongly that without very strong provincial investment in climate and environment, our well-being suffers and health-care costs will continue to rise.”

In late January, the organizations were among more than two dozen local climate, business and labour groups that presented a letter to the government calling for increased investment in energy efficiency initiatives, public and active transportation and land and water protection in this year’s budget.

While Manitoba’s Environment and Climate Change Department saw an 11 per cent funding increase, the funds are predominantly earmarked for existing initiatives, including $10 million in ongoing funding for Efficiency Manitoba’s home energy retrofit program and extending the electric vehicle rebate, which has helped more than 5,000 Manitobans switch to electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles since July 2024.

It also includes a pledge to work with the City of Winnipeg and other municipalities to make transit free for children and youth, acknowledging “public transit is a key component in our path to net zero.”

Environment and Climate Change Minister Mike Moyes said the fare-free program will cost approximately $10 million and discussions are currently underway with Manitoba municipalities including Flin Flon, Selkirk, Brandon and Winnipeg about its implementation.

“It’s something I’m hearing lots about in the community and that lots of parents are excited about, both in terms of saving money for bus passes and bus tickets, but it’s also building out the next generation of bus riders,” Moyes said in an interview.

On conservation, the budget reiterated Manitoba’s $250,000 contribution to study the feasibility of a marine conservation area in Hudson Bay as part of the Port of Churchill expansion. The budget also included a modest increase to the parks and trails budget, including $1 million to “fully staff our parks,” capital funds for upgrades at five provincial parks and disaster relief funding to rebuild wildfire-damaged campgrounds at Nopiming Provincial Park.

Environmental organizations say these investments “fall short across the board.”

“The choice to double down on balancing the budget while further cutting taxes is pushing greater climate costs and devastation onto the next generation, while missing myriad opportunities to grow low-carbon industries and jobs,” Laura Cameron, director of Climate Action Team Manitoba, said in Friday’s release.

“A climate plan without investment is simply a wish list.”

Thiessen said he applauds the province’s conservation efforts and its commitment to 30-by-30 targets — targets adopted at the 2022 United Nations Convention on Biodiversity to conserve 30 per cent of lands and waters by 2030. But a “revolutionary investment” is needed to meet that ambitious goal, Thiessen said, including a funded plan to support Indigenous communities identifying and planning new protected areas, and support for new parks and campgrounds within a 200-kilometre radius of Winnipeg.

“We’re seeing serious and accelerated new investments in development, which is much needed, however, we’re not seeing the investments in climate and conservation to balance those outcomes,” Thiessen said.

While the report card called the free youth transit program “a positive step, and a great affordability measure,” climate action groups and transit unions have been calling for the province to increase operational funding for Winnipeg Transit, and ultimately restore the 50-50 funding partnership with the municipality.

“Public transit is one of the most effective tools we have to reduce emissions and improve affordability, yet the government continues to underinvest in the services Manitobans rely on every day,” Cameron said in the release.

Asked to respond to the failing grade from environmental groups, Moyes said the province is “incredibly proud” of its climate record thus far.

“We recognize that we’ve achieved a lot, but that there’s more to do,” he said.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Table of contents

• Step 1: Begin in a time of crisis
• Step 2: Get to know the region’s permafrost — and assume ‘the ground is going to move’
• Step 3: Prepare to build a pipeline above-ground — or chill the oil
• Step 4: Expect cost overruns, especially as the climate changes
• Step 5: Monitor in perpetuity. Adapt to a warming climate

“This is no picnic,” warned a somewhat cryptic job poster on the walls of an Edmonton pipeline construction firm in summer 1942.

“Men hired for this job will be required to work and live under the most extreme conditions imaginable. … Men will have to fight swamps, rivers, ice and cold. Mosquitos, flies and gnats will not only be annoying but will cause bodily harm. If you are not prepared to work under these and similar conditions — do not apply.”

The job was a secretive government project in the wilderness of the Canadian North. In less than two years, a team of 30,000 would enlist to lay a four-inch-wide steel pipe from a recently discovered oilfield near Norman Wells, N.W.T., to Whitehorse, Yukon.

The “stupendous” and “unusual” construction project, as it would be called in the years after its completion, was the first attempt to build a pipeline in the North American Arctic. 

It would ultimately lay the foundation for many decades of oil exploration in the North.

Today, a fragmented trade relationship with the United States and an oil crisis driven by a new conflict in the Middle East have bolstered Canadian politicians’ calls for new oil and gas infrastructure.

As investors hesitate to back the east-west pipeline proposals that face opposition from Indigenous communities and environmental advocates, a decades-old idea to build a link to the Port of Churchill on the shores of Hudson Bay has picked up steam.

While not all of northern Manitoba is as ice-laden as the Northwest Territories or Alaska, any pipeline from Alberta’s oilfields to Manitoba’s northern coast would need to cross the Canadian Shield, the tundra and permafrost. These ecosystems are changing rapidly as the planet warms; more than half of existing infrastructure in the Arctic is projected to incur damages by mid-century as a result of climate change. 

If Manitoba, the federal government and industry players are serious in their pursuit of pumping oil and gas through the Port of Churchill, they will need to build on the legacies — and lessons — of northern pipelines that have come before.

Step 1: Begin in a time of crisis

The first time a pipeline was strung across the hard, icy wilderness of the North American Arctic, the world was at war. 

It was the spring of 1942, just months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the U.S. War Department (as it was called then, too) was concerned its Arctic bases were exposed to attacks by Japanese forces. 

Behind closed doors, the U.S. government devised a plan to shore up its Arctic security with two daring infrastructure projects: a highway slicing through the ice from Dawson Creek, B.C., to Delta Junction, Alaska, and a pipeline feeding crude from the untapped Norman Wells oilfield in the Northwest Territories across the Mackenzie Mountains and on to a refinery in Whitehorse.

This secret wartime pipeline, built by the Imperial Oil Company, would be called Canol — short for Canadian oil. 

“At the time Canol was begun, our situation was not a happy one. … The sea lanes to Alaska might be blocked, and with a shortage of freighters and tankers it was imperative that an overland route to Alaska be opened up and given an assured fuel supply,” Richard Finnie, a historian and filmmaker who produced a documentary about the pipeline, said in a 1947 article in the Canadian Geographical Journal.

“All that was done, and with amazing speed.” 

It took just 22 months to lay the 1,000-kilometre pipeline; it would take just nine months to abandon it. By 1947 the war was over and the oil link was no longer needed. Canol was dismantled, its steel repurposed. 

But its short-lived presence made a permanent mark on the North.

Before Canol, Finnie said, there were no airports, no roads longer than 15 kilometres, and certainly no oil infrastructure. The project proved to governments, business and engineers that the harsh northern terrain, with its unyielding granite and ice, could be tamped down with concrete and steel. 

In the decades since, two more major pipelines have been built in the northern reaches of the continent: Enbridge’s Line 21, from Norman Wells to northwest Alberta, and the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System that cuts the length of the northernmost American state.

The Trans-Alaska pipeline, a four-foot-wide, 1,200-kilometre-long pipe that zigzags through Alaska’s mountain valleys from an oilfield at Prudhoe Bay to a marine terminal at Valdez, was also built in just two years. It had previously been stalled for several years due to legal and environmental challenges, but was ultimately approved when the 1973 Arab-Israeli war thrust America into an oil crisis.

Now, a new oil crisis is renewing old interests.

Amid what the International Energy Agency called “the largest supply disruption in history,” Canada has agreed to contribute 23 million barrels to global emergency oil supply. Despite being the world’s fifth-largest producer of both crude oil and natural gas, pundits and politicians argue a lack of pipelines is stymying the country’s export capacity.

“We must build new pipelines west, east, north and south — without delay and without hesitation — to supply Asian, European and American markets with safe, reliable and responsibly produced energy products,” Alberta Premier Danielle Smith wrote in an op-ed for the Financial Post this month. 

Manitoba’s Port of Churchill is now being heralded as a potential trade hub allowing the country’s resources more rapid access to eastern markets. Momentum is building in support of an energy corridor that could carry oil, natural gas, potash or hydrogen from the Prairies to Hudson Bay. 

In January, Premier Wab Kinew announced multiple energy companies are interested in backing the proposal, while a November agreement with the federal government pledges to simplify regulatory approvals for a port expansion.

In the 2026 budget, the NDP announced a further $10 million to “keep building the momentum on this project and attract even more private sector interest in a potential energy corridor.”

Under these political conditions — and with significant investments from either the private or public sector — pipelines can be built quickly. 

“There’s just an idea that we don’t do enough in the Arctic,” Heather Exner-Pirot, director of energy, natural resources and environment at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, said in a late February interview. Canadians periodically worry the country does not have enough presence in the Arctic, or is under-utilizing its resources, she added. 

Those fears are “based on a very superficial understanding” of the Arctic, she said. But coupled with a desire to diversify exports and opposition to an east-west pipeline through B.C. to the Pacific Ocean, they have made the prospect of a new northern pipeline more enticing.

But in reality, she said, building in the North — over Manitoba’s muskeg and permafrost — is an expensive and dangerous logistical challenge.

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Step 2: Get to know the region’s permafrost — and assume ‘the ground is going to move’

When Canol was first proposed, scientists knew so little about building infrastructure in the Arctic, they had yet to come up with a term for its characteristic, perennially frozen ground. It was Stanford University professor Siemon Muller who first coined the term permafrost after being sent to investigate where the Alaska Highway and Canol pipeline would be built.

In simplest terms, permafrost is a term for ground that remains frozen year-round, though it is formally defined as “earth materials that remain below 0 C for two or more consecutive years.”

Permafrost is typically described as either continuous (appearing over more than 80 per cent of the ground), discontinuous (covering between 30 and 80 per cent) or sporadic (less than 30 per cent). Almost half of Canada’s land area is underlain with permafrost, predominantly across the Territories. 

While the top layer of soil, called the active layer, thaws briefly in the summer, the permafrost below remains at a relatively stable freezing temperature. Gravelly, rocky soil is often considered “ice-poor,” and is able to maintain its stability even when the ice thaws. Finer soil tends to create “ice-rich” permafrost, where frozen moisture is necessary to the structural integrity of the surface. 

Understanding these nuances is a prerequisite to designing any pipeline infrastructure in the North, University of Alaska Fairbanks geophysicist Vladimir Romanovsky said in an interview. 

“If it’s present, the second very important question is: how much ice is in that permafrost?”

Romanovsky has been working with permafrost since the mid-’70s — right around the time the Trans-Alaska pipeline was built. Understanding of permafrost was still limited then, but would grow as engineers planned a route across the Arctic. 

In January 1969, representatives from some of North America’s largest oil and gas producers and mining operations met at the University of Calgary for the third Canadian conference on permafrost, where a session was dedicated to discussing the challenges of building pipelines over the frozen ground. 

By this point, scientists understood the permafrost “is in a very delicate state of thermal equilibrium with its environment, and any disturbance will cause thawing and degradation,” T. A. Harwood, chairman of the National Research Council’s permafrost subcommittee, said in a presentation. This is further complicated by the discontinuous nature of much of Canada’s permafrost layer, he added, which makes the ice “patchy and unpredictable.” 

Understanding the ice content helps engineers assess how the permafrost will change under the temperature stresses created by a pipeline, Romanovsky said. Oil pipelines are usually transporting a heated product, while gas pipelines are often chilled. 

“Both of them impact the environment in terms of permafrost. The heated oil pipeline will thaw permafrost if it’s placed into the ground; the chilled gas may actually create new permafrost,” he said.

When permafrost thaws, a layer of water forms under the ice, which can cause the ground to shift — a phenomenon called subsidence. The problem is exacerbated on slopes, where the soil can become oversaturated and form landslides. Newly frozen areas can swell or heave, posing infrastructure risks. 

“Permafrost, generally, is not just frozen dirt. It’s a highly sensitive, temperature-dependent foundation,” Alireza Bayat, professor of civil engineering and director of the Canadian Underground Infrastructure Innovation Centre at the University of Alberta, said in an interview.

As the active layer thaws and freezes, the changing grounds can cause pipes to either sink into the soil or be pushed up out of the ground, Bayat said.

“Essentially you’re assuming the ground is going to move. How can we build or design a pipe that’s able to handle that?”

To make a pipeline work in the discontinuous permafrost seen in northern Manitoba, Romanovsky said scientists and engineers will need to consider the extent of the ice layer and calculate the degree of cooling needed to keep the frost stable through the pipeline’s lifespan. Extra margin should be built in to account for climate change, he said, which is rapidly warming the Arctic.

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Step 3: Prepare to build a pipeline above-ground — or chill the oil

After finding a major oilfield at Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, in the 1960s, oil and gas executives were consumed with “the problem of deciding on the best means of transporting this oil to market.” 

In his presentation, Harwood suggested a couple possible routes: either straight across the permafrost to Alaska’s south shore, or through the Mackenzie River Valley. The latter seemed the more sensible option to Harwood, given the pipe could either link up with existing infrastructure in Alberta or be carried on to the Port of Churchill — which was being used for seasonal grain shipments at the time — where “it appears reasonably certain that it would be possible to ship oil … to any continental port throughout the year.”

The decision would ultimately be made to run the pipeline across Alaska, allowing easier access to western markets and fewer regulatory challenges. 

But the question of how to lay a pipeline carrying either hot, liquid oil or pressurized, cold gas was still unanswered. 

At that point “no one [had] actually constructed a pipeline in the North and operated it,” Harwood said.

He proposed three solutions: building a road with a large crown — effectively a peak in the centre — along which a pipeline could be nestled in insulating materials, laying the pipe in a trench dug into the active layer of the permafrost or suspending the pipeline above ground. 

The original design for the Trans-Alaska pipeline was drawn up by a Texas company that planned to use the same methods it had for its southern lines, Romanovsky said: “Dig a trench, put the pipe in, cover it and everything will be good.” 

“That would be a disaster if that would have happened,” he said.

The design was reviewed by Arthur Lachenbruch, a permafrost scientist at the United States Geological Survey, who determined the proposal to bury a four-foot-wide pipe the length of the state would likely thaw the surrounding permafrost.

“Where the ice content of permafrost is not high, and other conditions are favorable, thawing by the buried pipe might cause no special problems. Under adverse local conditions, however, this thawing could have significant effects on the environment, and possibly upon the security of the pipeline,” Lachenbruch wrote in a 1970 report.

Lachenbruch’s report changed everything, Romanovsky said. 

The pipeline was already facing pushback in the courts from both environmental organizations and Indigenous Alaskans. It was the first major test of the newly passed National Environmental Policy Act, and led to lengthy environmental impact assessment hearings, where critics used Lachenbruch’s report to support their case.

Construction stalled while the pipeline owner, now called the Alyeska Pipeline Service Company, was forced back to the drawing board. 

Instead of burying the line, engineers decided to suspend more than half of the 1,200-kilometre link on H-shaped support beams, a novel construction method for the time.

The 78,000 beams were each fitted with an innovative technology, called thermosyphons, designed to regulate the temperature of the permafrost.

“It’s a very smart engineering design,” Romanovsky said. 

The thermosyphons (also called thermopiles) don’t require any energy. Instead, the space-age technology consists of sealed tubes inserted several metres into the permafrost that contain a small amount of pressurized gas.

In the summer months, when the permafrost is colder than the air, the thermosyphons don’t have much work to do. But in the winter, when the temperature below ground is warmer than the atmospheric temperatures, the gas condensates into a liquid and drips to the bottom of the tube. Below ground, the liquid absorbs heat from the surrounding ice and evaporates, drawing the heat up and out to the surrounding air. 

“This convection goes on all winter long, taking heat from the ground, bringing it to the atmosphere and releasing it,” Romanovsky said.

Years after the Trans-Alaska pipeline came online, Canadian oil companies returned to the idea of laying a pipe through the Mackenzie Valley, this time connecting the oilfield at Norman Wells, N.W.T., to existing infrastructure in Zama, Alta. 

Unlike the Trans-Alaska line, Enbridge’s 869-kilometre Line 21, which came online in 1985, is the first Canadian Arctic pipeline to be buried in the permafrost.

To mitigate the risk of subsidence, the Norman Wells pipeline runs cold. The oil is chilled before entering the line to mirror the average ground temperature throughout the year, averaging between 0 C and -1 C. (Oil in the Trans-Alaska line is kept between 38 C and 63 C). 

Because clearing the ground for a pipeline right-of-way removes some of the natural insulation on the permafrost, several thaw-sensitive slopes along the route were insulated with woodchips to prevent melting. Monitoring technology was installed in strategic locations to measure ground temperature, check for pipe movement and estimate thaw depths. 

The pipeline has not been without incident. 

1,500 barrels of oil spilled after the pipe failed in 2011. Two years later, the federal pipeline regulator found 77 buried lines in the region were at risk of failure; the town of Norman Wells ranked as the community with the highest number of federally regulated pipeline incidents in 2013. In 2016, the pipe was shut down for nearly two years due to risks posed by a shifting permafrost slope.

Imperial Oil plans to “wind down” operations at the Norman Wells oilfield this fall, citing declining production.

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Step 4: Expect cost overruns, especially as the climate changes

Regardless of whether the pipe is to be built above or below ground, designing and constructing infrastructure able to withstand shifting permafrost is, above all, “very expensive,” Romanovsky says. 

At the earliest stages, a feasibility study estimated the Trans-Alaska pipeline would cost between US$863 million and $1.05 billion, depending on its capacity. By 1975, after re-working the design to factor in the permafrost, the budget was $6.4 billion. 

In the end, it cost more than US$8 billion —10 times the original estimate. 

Similarly, Canol came with an initial estimate of $500 million (in 2025 CAD) but in the end cost $3.2 billion. After the war, American cabinet members criticized the project as “useless and a waste of public funds.” 

These ballooning costs are often attributed to the limited permafrost expertise during initial designs; they do not account for the additional costs of maintenance and repair.

Bayat, at the University of Alberta, said Arctic pipelines require specialized materials, design characteristics and construction methods to withstand the forces caused by moving permafrost while mitigating the pipe’s risk to the environment — all of which can be costly.

The remote location can also add to the cost, as it leaves operators reliant on winter roads and other temporary infrastructure when building and maintaining the pipe.

“You will spend some money to keep it in good shape,” Romanovsky, at the University of Alaska, said of Arctic pipelines.  

For example, the company tries to survey the pipeline by helicopter every day, weather permitting.

When the Alaska project was being designed in the mid-’70s, Romƒanovsky said, engineers and geophysicists were concerned about how the pipeline could impact the permafrost, but few were aware of the long-term risks a warming climate could pose to the pipe itself.

In 2020, several supports holding the pipeline aloft began to bend as the permafrost slope they were attached to began to thaw and shift, threatening the integrity of the pipe and forcing the ownership group to replace the beams and refreeze the slope. The same year, flood damage cost the operators US$10 million to repair the pipeline, while preventative maintenance to safeguard sections against further flooding was expected to cost a further $10-15 million.

These expenses are expected to climb as warming accelerates permafrost thaw. 

A scientific review of research from the last 20 years estimates as much as 50 per cent of Arctic infrastructure — including the Trans-Alaska pipeline, and some Canadian highways — are at high risk of damage by 2050. Maintenance costs, the review estimates, could increase by more than $15 billion in that time, while unavoidable damages could cost upwards of $21 billion.

Manitoba has already felt the impacts of shifting permafrost on infrastructure. 

The Hudson Bay Railway, which runs more than 800 kilometres between The Pas and Churchill, was among the first major transportation projects built over Canadian permafrost. Since its construction in the late 1920s, it has required regular maintenance as the weight and heat of train traffic thaws the ice-rich permafrost over which it was built. The railway was out of service for 18 months after being washed out by floods in 2017.

Federal and provincial governments have spent upwards of $500 million to purchase, repair, maintain and upgrade the railway since 2018.

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Step 5: Monitor in perpetuity. Adapt to a warming climate

As part of the environmental agreement that greenlit the Norman Wells pipeline, Enbridge and the Canadian government collaborate on research and monitoring, which provides long-term data about the impact of pipeline infrastructure on the permafrost.

That data is among the longest permafrost monitoring records in the country. The long view of the ice helps form a picture of how permafrost is changing alongside the global climate — and trends show the ice is warming quickly, Romanovsky said.

“In places where the permafrost was warmer, it’s already started to thaw from the top down,” he said. “In the future, with further warming, it will be happening in more and more regions, and be happening faster and faster.”

A 2024 report from the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme found permafrost has warmed by two to three degrees since the 1970s, as ground temperatures reach record highs. The thawing has substantial impacts on the landscape, causing erosion, slumping and pooling of water. That melting permafrost in turn releases trapped carbon dioxide, further fuelling the warming effect.

The Arctic Research Consortium of the United States warns the standard 30-year climate data engineers typically use when planning infrastructure projects has become “insufficient,” as climate change speeds up. 

“In the past, pipe design was kind of static … they were based on the fact we know how the weather is or how the ground is,” Bayat said. “Those assumptions are now more dynamic and they are changing with the climate.”

These warming trends could render existing mitigation technologies like thermosyphons ineffective, Romanovsky added.

During an engineering conference in Portugal in 2008, Edmonton-based Duane DeGeer presented on the unique considerations for Arctic pipelines, reporting the success of both the Norman Wells pipeline and the buried segments of the Trans-Alaska line had “prompted pipeline designers to consider burying Arctic pipelines wherever possible.” 

To mitigate heaving and sinking, the report referred to research on thicker, stronger, better insulated pipes, as well as controlling the temperature of materials inside, varying burial depth and soil cover and, above all, conducting long-term monitoring of soil temperatures and pipeline integrity. 

According to Bayat, more resilient materials, better temperature control methods, as well as more advanced monitoring technology, have become more accessible over time. 

Engineers now use a “strain-based design” philosophy that accounts for the inevitable ground movement caused by permafrost, and plans for pipes that can withstand those forces, he said. Construction practices have also evolved, with directional drilling (an underground tunnelling technique) replacing the traditional open-trench methods.

Major strides have been made in monitoring technology, he added, with fibre optic sensors, digital inspections and predictive analytics that “allow us to have more eyes on those pipes and be more proactive than reactive.” 

Ultimately, Bayat said, building a new pipeline in the North will come with many unknowns.

“This is not the area [where] we go and build pipes every day. … When it comes to the North, yes we have examples, but only a few, and they’re from the past,” he said. 

“These foundations are rapidly changing. What will the pace of that change be? How much further is it going to change? Those are the things that need to be taken into account.”

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Julia-Simone Rutgers is a reporter covering environmental issues in Manitoba. Her position is part of a partnership between The Narwhal and the Winnipeg Free Press.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Summary

• Ducks Unlimited Canada announced it is providing $1-million worth of land to a farming research organization in Manitoba.
• Brookdale Research Farm north of Brandon, Man., will now have more space to test farming and conservation practices.
• The organization says cattle farmers are important partners in conservation on the Prairies, where wetlands are regularly lost to agriculture.

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A Manitoba farming research non-profit will now have more space to let cattle roam and graze on prairie grasslands — and study how that grazing impacts biodiversity — through a partnership with Ducks Unlimited Canada.

On Monday, the long-standing conservation organization announced it is providing $1-million worth of land to nearly double the size of the Brookdale Research Farm just north of Brandon, Man. 

“This expansion of land is going to be an opportunity to do commercial-scale case studies and data collection … and then share it back to producers in a real-world setting,” Mary-Jane Orr, general manager of Manitoba Beef and Forage Initiatives, said in an interview.

Brookdale Farm — one of two farm stations managed by Manitoba Beef and Forage Initiatives — typically tested new technologies, land-management practices and other farming innovations on a smaller footprint, less than 20 acres at a time. With the addition of the 467-acre Odanah Pasture, the organization will be able to work with farmers at a more true-to-life scale, helping ease the risk for farmers looking to implement new practices with their herds.

“Oftentimes when you’re doing research at a small scale, the question is: ‘Will this work on a larger farm?’ So this is actually putting that application into practice and showing that, actually, yes, this is going to work for larger farms here in Manitoba,” Karli Reimer, head of communications and outreach at Ducks Unlimited Canada for the Prairies region, said in an interview.

The new parcel is also an opportunity to showcase the impact of restoring croplands to their natural state, Orr added.

Ducks Unlimited Canada purchased the land in 2020 with funds from “conservation-minded government agencies in Canada and the United States, including Manitoba’s conservation trust,” according to a press release. The parcel had previously been used for crop production, and its wetlands and uplands had been drained. Over five years, Ducks Unlimited restored the land to its natural state: a rich grassland with more than 100 wetland basins. 

Healthy wetlands and grasslands are a win-win for cattle farmers and conservationists alike.

“More productive grasslands make for more productive cattle. But those more productive grasslands are also making more productive ecological areas,” Melissa Atchison, a southwest Manitoba cattle producer and the research and extension specialist for Manitoba Beef Producers, said in an interview. 

“Being able to get good production out of our cattle while also providing great benefits from a biodiversity standpoint, from a habitat standpoint, from an ecological goods and services standpoint, is just a really cool win for everybody involved.”

Historically, bison roamed the wetland-dotted prairie, Orr said. As they grazed, they helped diversify the grasslands and created a canopy structure for wildlife and waterfowl. Today’s cattle farms can effectively mimic that process.

“It’s creating this beautiful net win: keeping cattle on the landscape is maintaining habitat for untold numbers of species, from pollinators all the way up to mallards,” she said. 

Orr said Beef and Forage Initiatives is in the process of landing a collaborator who will raise cattle on Odanah Pasture and share data about their decision-making process, economics and marketing decisions. The research will be shared with other farmers, helping demonstrate what processes, technologies and land-management decisions are most effective for the cattle, the business and the land. 

“We need to be profitable, and environmental sustainability is a big piece of that profitability,” Orr said. 

Manitoba’s billion-dollar beef sector, comprising more than 6,500 cattle farms, plays a key role in conservation, Reimer said.

Monday’s announcement marked the third annual Ducks Unlimited Canada Day in Manitoba, an official recognition honouring the organization’s 90-year history supporting conservation in the province, as well as Manitoba Agriculture Awareness Day.

“Ducks and cows have a lot in common,” Reimer said. “We really care about habitats for waterfowl, wildlife and people — grasslands and wetlands — and that is exactly what the beef sector needs to be profitable and productive.”

Julia-Simone Rutgers is a reporter covering environmental issues in Manitoba. Her position is part of a partnership between The Narwhal and the Winnipeg Free Press.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Summary

• A new report says Canada is falling behind on its commitment to protect 30 per cent of lands and waters by 2030.
• That’s true in Manitoba, too, but a vast Indigenous-led conservation area proposed for the province’s north could help.
• Advocates are urging the federal government to renew conservation funding that is expiring this year, stressing the economic value of natural spaces.

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There are just four years left on the clock for Manitoba — and the rest of the country — in the race to conserve 30 per cent of lands and waters by 2030. But halfway through the timeline adopted at the United Nations Convention on Biodiversity in 2022, Canada has made little progress, adding less than one percentage point to its protected land tally and three points to its protected waters. 

The country needs to double its protected areas to meet its target, known as 30-by-30. But conservation groups, including the Wilderness Committee and the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS), warn progress could stall even further as federal funding for conservation initiatives is set to run out at the end of the month — and there’s no indication it will be renewed.

“We have a conservation economy that we can build on, that gives local jobs, that helps honour our Indigenous reconciliation commitments,” Sandra Schwartz, national executive director of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, said in an interview. 

“It’s an opportunity for the country to invest strategically in our future, while also delivering on a global commitment that our country made.”

The society is urging the federal government to re-invest in conservation, armed with new research showing protected spaces generate significant economic returns. And with the right funding, the Wilderness Committee says Manitoba’s approach to establishing these spaces could be a model for other provinces.

Canada has so far protected 13.8 per cent of land

The world is in the throes of a biodiversity crisis. Wildlife populations declined 70 per cent between 1970 and 2018, according to the Living Planet Index, which measures the relative abundance of more than 5,000 species over time, and the United Nations has found species are being driven to extinction far faster than the natural baseline. When the World Economic Forum released its global risk report in January, biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse ranked as the No.2 long-term threat to the global economy. 

“Biodiversity is what makes the world habitable for us,” Eric Reder, director of the Wilderness Committee’s Manitoba office, said. “Habitat for species, the place for nature to be wild, is essential.”

Experts agree habitat loss is a key driver of biodiversity loss. According to a February report from the committee, Canada was already at a disadvantage when the 30-by-30 commitment was adopted in 2022 as part of an effort to halt and reverse this trend. The country had failed to reach any of the conservation targets it agreed to in the previous three decades, and had only managed to formally protect 13 per cent of lands and 12 per cent of waters, lagging behind other nations. 

As of 2026, Canada has improved to just 13.8 per cent of lands and 15.5 per cent of marine areas. It will need to protect another 1.7 million square kilometres, an area the size of Alaska, to meet the target.

Plan to protect Seal River watershed in Manitoba could add 50,000 square kms of conserved areas

Manitoba has formally protected just 11 per cent of its wild areas, despite having “more wilderness within its borders than most countries in the world,” the Wilderness Committee report says.

Still, the report is optimistic about the province’s future. Reder said that’s because the province has a history of empowering Indigenous-led conservation.

Pimachiowin Aki, a stretch of undisturbed boreal forest on the eastern side of the province that has been formally managed by four Anishinaabeg nations since 2002, was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2018. 

More recently, the province has supported an alliance of four Cree and Dene nations in establishing a protected area in the Seal River watershed, a 50,000-square-kilometre expanse of northern Manitoba that encompasses the province’s last undammed major river, and serves as critical habitat for seals, caribou, shorebirds and more than 250 other species.

In January 2024, the province gave the watershed interim protection from mining and other industrial activities; last March the alliance, along with federal and provincial governments, determined a protected area is feasible. When complete, the Seal River watershed could protect seven per cent of the province, increasing Manitoba’s tally to 18 per cent.

Manitoba Environment and Climate Change Minister Mike Moyes said the province has prioritized its partnerships with local communities, including First Nations and rural municipalities, and is working toward a “mosaic” of protected areas through these partnerships. 

“These are folks that live in the areas that we’re talking about, right across the province, and so ensuring that they’re a part of these projects moving forward is critical,” Moyes said. “All of our work is for Manitobans, by Manitobans.”

Conservation advocates urge feds to add funding for protected areas

The Wilderness Committee report notes underfunding is the most significant barrier to protected- area growth, as governments “continue to prioritize short-term resource extraction over long-term protection.” 

The society cautions any progress Canada is making towards the 30-by-30 target could be stymied as federal funding runs out. 

The Enhanced Nature Legacy Fund, introduced in the 2021 budget, provided $2.3 billion over five years to support 30-by-30 initiatives, and aimed to reach an interim target of protecting 25 per cent of lands and waters by 2025. 

That funding expires at the end of the month and the federal government has not indicated whether it will be renewed. A representative for Environment and Climate Change Canada did not answer specific questions about whether Ottawa intends to renew the funding or introduce a new budget line for conservation initiatives.

Schwartz and leaders of other nature protection groups sent an open letter to Prime Minister Mark Carney this week, urging the government to renew and strengthen funding for nature. 

“Without renewed funding, the conservation work that is already under way and has been for several years could stall,” Schwartz said. “We’d have rural and more remote jobs at risk. We’ll have communities and Indigenous partners left without the support that they were promised.” 

When the money runs out, it will leave the responsibility for funding protected areas to the philanthropic and private sectors, which are not sufficiently resourced to fill the gaps, she added.

Schwartz explained protected areas are comparable to other large infrastructure initiatives, including the mining and oil and gas projects the federal government has championed through its Major Projects Office. 

“Environmental protection is not a trade-off,” Schwartz said. “When we have a healthy environment, we also typically have a very healthy economy. It’s a return on the investments the government has already made.”

Protected areas generate billions for the economy: report

A recent study from the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society found protected spaces are a significant contributor to the economy. 

The federal government spent $1.8 billion on protected areas in the 2023-24 fiscal year. In return, those same areas generated $10.9 billion in gross domestic product and 150,000 jobs — many in rural and remote communities, the report found. Every public and non-profit dollar spent in these areas generated $3.62 in visitor economic activity, jobs in the sector contributed $6.6 billion in labour income and tax revenues generated a return of $1.4 billion.  

“Investing in nature is an affordability act for the future,” Reder said. “The economists are telling us that we need more parks, we need more protected areas, we need more tourism investment. The money folks are telling us that we need to spend on nature.”

Moyes said the province has “a variety of irons in the fire” when it comes to future conservation initiatives, and is working with the federal government, local communities and other partners to meet its 30-by-30 commitments.

“We’re always going to ensure that there is adequate funding to get these projects across the line,” Moyes said.

“The environment is our backbone, and it’s important that we’re protecting the environment in order to have economic development.”

Julia-Simone Rutgers is a reporter covering environmental issues in Manitoba. Her position is part of a partnership between The Narwhal and the Winnipeg Free Press.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Summary

• Winnipeg has a long-term plan to reduce the amount of raw sewage it releases into rivers during storms.
• Part of that plan is to use green infrastructure solutions such as rain gardens and permeable pavement to reduce stormwater runoff.
• One city councillor says Winnipeg should be more ambitious with its adoption of green infrastructure, and wants the province to step in to make it happen.

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A Winnipeg councillor is calling on the province to use its powers under the Environment Act to require the city to use more innovative and green technology solutions as it overhauls its sewage system.

In a letter to Manitoba Environment Minister Mike Moyes, Coun. Brian Mayes (St. Vital) asked whether the province is enforcing a clause in the environmental licence for combined sewer overflows that requires the city to use “green technology and innovative practices” when designing and building new sewage infrastructure. 

“If the city is not implementing measures to meet the ‘green technology’ and ‘innovative practices’ requirements, it is important to understand how the province interprets these terms and how compliance … is being evaluated and enforced,” Mayes wrote. 

“The mandatory wording of the licence suggests these provisions are not discretionary.”

Winnipeg is in the early stages of a 70-year master plan to reduce combined sewer overflows — a phenomenon where diluted raw sewage is released into the city’s rivers during heavy rain or spring melts — by separating runoff and household sewage pipes where possible and installing rainwater storage and screening infrastructure across the sewage system. 

Addressing the issue has been long overdue. Between 2013 and 2023, the city dumped 115 billion litres of sewage into its river system.

The city has set aside about 10 per cent of the capital budget for these upgrades to “review and implement” green infrastructure solutions such as rain gardens, permeable pavements and retention ponds.

While Mayes said he appreciates the nearly $105 million the city plans to spend, he believes Winnipeg “really could be doing more.”

“We can’t just keep building these concrete solutions,” Mayes said in an interview.

“It’s good that we’re trying to reduce raw sewage going into the rivers. That is a good thing, I am proud of that. I think if we can do some of it in a more environmentally friendly way, then that’s a victory.” 

Mayes said he asked city staff about the requirement after Winnipeg announced a pilot project to build catch basins — essentially storm drains — in areas of the city with combined sewers. 

At a February meeting of council’s waste and water committee, department staff told councillors “there really isn’t an opportunity for green infrastructure” in the catch basin initiative and noted the city takes “a global approach” to green technology requirements.

“Our understanding of the intent of the clause was not so much that every piece of pipe put in the ground has to have a green component. It was that we need to prioritize overall getting more green infrastructure in our system,” department director Tim Shanks said during the meeting.

Mayes isn’t convinced the city’s approach satisfies the requirements laid out in the environment licence. He would like to see the province encourage the city to invest more in innovative solutions like green roofs and rain gardens that can both absorb and filter stormwater before it reaches the sewer system. 

“We shouldn’t just forget about this,” Mayes said, suggesting the importance of the combined sewer master plan has been overshadowed by larger, more expensive infrastructure projects like the upgrades to the North End water treatment plant.

“Anything we can do to reduce that sewage overflow risk, I think, is another step forward.”

Cities across North America have employed natural infrastructure solutions to reduce the amount of rainwater and runoff that enters the sewers, thereby reducing strain on aging pipes and reducing the frequency of sewer overflows.

In a statement, city communications coordinator Lisa Marquardson explained the city looks for green infrastructure opportunities in the preliminary design stage of its sewer projects. 

“If an option makes sense and is feasible, we carry it forward into detailed design and, where possible, into construction,” Marquardson said.

Recent successes include a retention pond in the Cockburn Calrossie drainage area in southwest Winnipeg and the implementation of Silva cells, underground structures filled with loosely packed soil capable of both retaining larger volumes of stormwater and supporting large tree growth in the northeast. The city has also planned a soil storage and boulevard rain garden project on Leila Avenue and a dry pond for water retention in the city’s north end. Further green infrastructure opportunities are currently being assessed in several sewer districts.

Marquardson said the city regularly updates the province on its combined sewer projects and “because [green infrastructure] and innovative practices are part of our standard approach … we have been able to provide these updates without issue.”

In an emailed statement, a spokesperson for the province said Manitoba has approved the city’s global approach, which “applies the green‑infrastructure requirement at the regional infrastructure level rather than a neighbourhood level,” adding the Environment Department regularly meets with the city to discuss progress toward the combined sewer overflow master plan. 

“Our government is committed to taking care of the environment and of our waterways in Manitoba,” Environment Minister Moyes said in a statement. 

“We are working with the city to make sure investments are made in smart, green infrastructure that protect our communities, homes and rivers.”

Julia-Simone Rutgers is a reporter covering environmental issues in Manitoba. Her position is part of a partnership between The Narwhal and the Winnipeg Free Press.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.