Good afternoon, members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today.

As mentioned, my name is Jillian Brown, and I represent the Saskatchewan Irrigation Projects Association. As an organization, we sincerely appreciate the committee's recognition of the need to consider Saskatchewan irrigation in this discussion.

In my comments today, I'd like to highlight our industry's recognition of the importance of surface water sustainability and share with you a few features of irrigation that are not always considered. I'll comment on conditions of drought in Saskatchewan over this past year, substantial opportunities being lost for Canada with continued delays in development of the Lake Diefenbaker irrigation expansion project and, most importantly, the role of irrigators in solution building. I'll also highlight the critical role that the federal partnership with Saskatchewan plays in this context.

Saskatchewan irrigators and our stakeholders are focused on working proactively and collaboratively on solutions that meet the needs of managing water and food sustainability. Water-scheduling research, adoption and exploration of water-efficient technologies such as subsurface and drip irrigation, as well as high-efficiency nozzle and pivot advancements, and participation in engagement sessions with other water users are all examples of ongoing actions in Saskatchewan today by irrigators.

In addition to yield gains driving business, jobs and community sustainability, irrigation has environmental outcomes that are not always front of mind for those who are not producers. As highlighted by the academic community in journals such as Global Change Biology, Canadian Journal of Soil Science, and Agronomy for Sustainable Development, irrigation has been shown to provide producers with greater options to manage their crop rotations, meaning improved soil health and improved soil water use efficiency. In addition, irrigation is a practice that has been shown to increase soil carbon sequestration by 11% to 35% on average in semi-arid regions of Canada. No other agricultural technology provides the same land use efficiency increases as irrigation.

Despite these features, Saskatchewan still lacks sufficient infrastructure capacity to increase irrigation, and the results have meant considerable hardship to communities and costs to government.

In 2023 in Saskatchewan, there were more than 50 rural municipalities declaring agricultural state of emergency due to drought, which contributed to the nearly $2.5 billion in estimated crop insurance payouts for the year, which, as you know, is a significant tax burden to the Canadian taxpayer.

At the same time that this drought and crop loss was occurring, Lake Diefenbaker, the largest reservoir in Saskatchewan, saw more water leave from it in evaporation than from irrigation. Today, Lake Diefenbaker is one of the world's largest underutilized reservoirs, with an original yet unrealized design capacity available to irrigate more than 400,000 additional acres of cropland in the province.

To provide context, even at full buildout, if every acre of the 400,000 potential acres was developed into irrigated land, this would take four feet of water off the top of the reservoir, which has a mean depth of 22 meters.

Seeing the potential of Lake Diefenbaker be reached and Canadians capture these gains requires provincial and federal co-operative leadership and vision that just hasn't been possible since the reservoir was filled in 1967. Progress on Lake Diefenbaker is a real opportunity to take environmentally sustainable action to support national food security.

In conclusion, partnership between the federal and provincial governments to support irrigation development is vital for achieving both agricultural productivity and environmental and climate resiliency, which are both absolutely necessary for Canada. Saskatchewan currently has a vast amount of unutilized potential for solutions in this space that offers monumental opportunity.

Thank you for your time and consideration. I'm happy to take any questions or support further discussion.

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