About

The four lenses

The argument I make on this site sits at the intersection of four different ways of looking at land in Canada. I have been all four at different points and, on the Seal River question, all four at once.

The naturalist

A wilderness paddler since boyhood, with most of my serious river time on northern Manitoba waters. The case for the Seal River begins, for me, on the water — what it feels like to travel a fifty-thousand-square-kilometre watershed that still works as a single ecological system. Not many of those are left.

The engineer

Geological engineering at the University of Manitoba. The case for honest siting — protect what is intact, develop what is developable — is, at root, an engineer's argument. Conservation policy that puts a park on top of an orebody is a different kind of mistake than conservation policy that puts a park where there is no orebody. The first one is bad engineering. The second one is good engineering.

The politician

Eleven years in the House of Commons. Five years on the Treasury Board, including five as the longest-serving member of my generation. Cabinet under Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Three and a half years in the Manitoba Legislative Assembly. The argument for the Greenstone Parks framework is the argument I learned in those rooms: durable conservation requires a durable pairing, made publicly, signed by ministers who can be held to it.

The canoeist

The naturalist and the canoeist are not the same lens. The naturalist sees the watershed as a system. The canoeist sees the watershed as a route. The way I think about access, recreational use, and the Indigenous-led carve-out in the management plan comes from carrying a boat through country where the only honest way to be there is on the water.

Public service

Member of Parliament for Charleswood–St. James–Assiniboia, 2004 to 2015, including service as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health, Minister of State (Democratic Reform), and Minister of State (Transport). Member of the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba for Assiniboia, 2016 to 2019.

Why mindful mining

The framework I have been developing is not a slogan. It is a policy posture: honest siting, durable frameworks, Indigenous partnership, and a clear public statement of where Canada protects and where Canada develops. Mining and conservation are not opposites. The job of policy is to make the trade visible, durable, and publicly branded — and then to defend both halves of it.