Deveryn’s Decision – UNESCO has never heard of Bipole project

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 09/07/2011 (5444 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Last month, I wrote about Premier Greg Selinger’s two-day campout on the east side of Lake Winnipeg with a group of environmentalists and reporters.

It was part of Team Selinger’s campaign to stoke fears that an east-side electrical bipole transmission line would cripple a bid to have that area designated as a "world heritage site" by UNESCO.

While writing that column, it occurred to me that we have been reading about this "UNESCO bid" for several years now. A final decision should be just around the corner, I thought.

I went to the UNESCO website, which indicates that the forest on the east side of Lake Winnipeg is one of nine properties added by Canada to a "tentative list" of potential world heritage sites in November 2004.

According to that website, "A tentative list is an inventory of those properties which each state party intends to consider for nomination during the following years."

In other words, it is nothing more than a list of properties that a national government might nominate for designation as a world heritage site sometime in the future.

Given all the rhetoric we have heard over the past few years about the UNESCO bid, I assumed that the site must have been formally nominated for designation sometime after 2004.

Because the UNESCO website doesn’t list properties that have been nominated for designation as world heritage sites, however, I contacted two of Canada’s senior representatives at UNESCO headquarters in France in order to ascertain the status of the east-side designation effort.

To my surprise, they had no information about the bid. They each directed me to the Privy Council Office in Ottawa.

A senior official in the Privy Council Office advised me that "A formal nomination of the site has not yet been completed and submitted to UNESCO …"

Because this information appeared to contradict what our NDP government has been telling us for at least two years, I shared it with Winnipeg Free Press columnist Dan Lett.

He did some digging with his sources in Winnipeg and, in a column that appeared in the Brandon Sun and Winnipeg Free Press a few days ago, he came to the same conclusion I did.

He wrote that "if you are like the author, you will be very surprised the forest east of Lake Winnipeg hasn’t already been nominated, given that Manitobans have been told repeatedly by the NDP government and its supporters that it has."

A few weeks ago, Selinger claimed that UNESCO officials told him that an east-side transmission line would jeopardize the UNESCO bid, only to later admit he has never talked to UNESCO staff. Now we find out that the UNESCO bid doesn’t even exist.

The falsehoods just keep piling up.

Though Team Selinger claims that the site will be nominated for UNESCO designation in 2012 and designated as a world heritage site by mid-2013, there are at least two reasons to doubt that timetable.

First, there is no guarantee when the site will be nominated for designation, or even if it will be nominated.

Only the federal government can nominate sites within Canada for UNESCO designation as world heritage sites — the same people that the Selinger government is currently running attack ads against over the Canadian Wheat Board controversy.

The Harper Conservatives could decide that the minimal potential economic rewards to be derived by designation do not justify the many millions in extra costs that Manitobans would incur through the construction of a west-side transmission line.

Then there’s the possibility that they might instead decide to nominate one of the eight other properties currently on Canada’s "tentative list." It’s within their sole discretion.

Second, even if the property is eventually nominated, UNESCO’s investigation can take years and there is no guarantee the delegates from other nations will vote to designate this site as a world heritage site.

Over the past few months, Manitobans have learned that our NDP government has lied to them about the huge cost differential between the eastern and western lines, and about the level of support within Manitoba Hydro for the east-side line. We were told Selinger had talked to UNESCO officials, only to later find out he hadn’t. Now we find out that there is no "UNESCO bid."

What other misinformation had the NDP fed us?

 

Deveryn Ross is a longtime Brandon resident and has been active at all levels of politics. His column appears each Saturday.

» opinion@brandonsun.com