Manitoba Métis, Hydro reaffirm partnership with new 50-year, $120M deal | CBC News

A new multi-million dollar agreement spanning half a century has been reached between the Manitoba Métis Federation and Manitoba Hydro.

“It’s a really solid agreement,” MMF president David Chartrand told CBC on Thursday. 

“It’s years in the making, and it puts us in a pathway to knowing where each of us would be standing as we move forward together.”

On Tuesday, Hydro and MMF signed the Revitalization Agreement, an arrangement meant to address the effects hydroelectric developments have had on Métis and Indigenous people throughout the province, Bruce Owen, spokesperson for Manitoba Hydro, said in an interview on Thursday.

The agreement also lays out how the Crown corporation and MMF can work together on future Hydro projects in the interest of both parties.

The deal covers a period of about 50 years, Owen said, and includes an initial payment of $40 million to establish a “revitalization fund.” Annual payments over the 50-year period start at $3 million and decline to $1.1 million.

Chartrand said the deal adds up to $120 million over the 50 years.

“Hydroelectric development … has affected not only Métis but Indigenous hunting rights, cultural harvesting of medicinal herbs or plants, for instance, and also culturally important areas to both Métis and Indigenous peoples, and this agreement is just part of a way of recognizing that,” Owen said.

The new deal comes years after the province cancelled two previous arrangements between the government, Manitoba Hydro and MMF.

In 2018, Brian Pallister’s Progressive Conservative government quashed the Turning the Page agreement (Kwaysh-kin-na-mihk Ia paazh in Michif, the Mé​tis language).

That agreement was signed in 2014 and included $20 million in payments to the MMF over 20 years in exchange for support of Manitoba Hydro projects, like the Bipole III transmission line and the Keeyask hydroelectric generating station.

Pallister also cancelled a $67.5-million arrangement earlier that same year, saying it was “persuasion money” and that the province shouldn’t pay MMF in exchange for its silence. He also said the arrangement wasn’t legally binding.

That prompted MMF to launch a lawsuit against the province, arguing the decision to cancel the payment was unconstitutional and violated the contract and Indigenous rights.

But MMF eventually lost that battle after a Court of Queen’s Bench Justice ruled the province was within its rights to cancel the payment.

For Chartrand, this new deal is a “win-win” for Manitoba.

“There’s no more court cases, there’s no more opposition,” Chartrand said Thursday.

“I don’t even want to mention the guy’s name anymore … We know what he did to us, and we know he did it for the wrong reasons.”

Owen said after that arrangement was cancelled, Hydro and MMF have continued their relationship.

“In a way, we never stopped talking … and I think the ability for both sides to work together to come up with this new agreement, the Revitalization Agreement, reflects that,” Owen said.