Qu’Appelle Valley Indian Development Agency (QVIDA II) [Flooding claim]

This file is a revival of a prior mediation in which the Commission was involved and reported on in this past fiscal year. The negotiation history is recapped here, followed by the current status of the newly constituted negotiations.

Between 1888 and 1961, the federal and provincial governments built or financed four major dams and 150 smaller ones on the Qu’Appelle River system in Saskatchewan, thereby flooding and degrading over 14,000 acres of land. The lands were lost through recurrent and, in some areas, continuous flooding attributed to water-storage projects constructed under the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Act. At issue for the First Nation communities involved in this claim is damage caused by the construction, in the 1940s, of eight water-control structures along the Qu’Appelle River.

The current negotiations, which began late in December 2005, see the Qu’Appelle Valley Indian Development Authority (QVIDA), now representing a group of three Saskatchewan First Nations, pursuing claims against Canada for this flooding of their reserve lands. The QVIDA table now includes the Sakimay and Ochapowace First Nations with the Piapot First Nation at the table as an observer, though it not yet had its flooding claim accepted for negotiation.

Work is in the early stages and has focussed on information gathering, planning, consideration of various approaches to determining boundaries/lands lost to flooding, as well as ways to improve on the negotiation process and relationships between the parties.