Proposed changes to Navigable Waters Protection Act (NWPA) putting traditional water routes at risk
From http://www.ispeakforcanadianrivers.ca
The NWPA Issue: Rivers At Risk
Transport Canada is in the process of rewriting the Navigable Waters Protection Act (NWPA) to eliminate a developer’s obligation to consider impacts on navigation when building dams, bridges, causeways or other invasive structures on thousands of waterways across Canada.
Transport Canada and industry hope to achieve this by exempting "minor waters" and "minor works" from the NWPA, and by re-defining "navigation" under the act in a way that will strip all legal protection from recreational navigation.
The new law will ignore all whitewater rivers, all seasonal waterways and all vessels with less than a one-metre draft. This is a direct assault on Canada’s tradition of river travel and the future health of our waterways by the same people who are supposed to protect both. It is a fundamental breach of public trust.
More Detail
The Navigable Waterways Protection Act is a law that protects Canada's rivers, streams and creeks. The government wants to change that law leaving the rivers vulnerable. And they don’t want to hear what you think about it.
In January of 2008, the Standing Committee for Transport, Infrastructure and Communities (TRAN) began hearings on proposed changes to the Navigable Waters Protection Act (NWPA).
Virtually all of the groups invited to speak to the TRAN committee about the NWPA over the past few months, have come from the “development” side and have argued and advocated for changes to the act that would eliminate the public right of navigation on most waterways in Canada.
Of 70 stakeholder groups invited to speak, only one spoke for the retention of the public right of navigation, and that was Lake Ontario Waterkeeper.
The TRAN committee, for whatever reason, has only heard part of the story.
Here is a quote from a senior federal bureaucrats who appeared before the TRAN committee and advocated for the erasure of the public right of navigation in Canada.
From Shirley Anne Scharf, a senior manager with Infrastructure Canada:
“The way it (the NWPA) is constructed right now—and I believe David Osbaldeston made this point—minor waters are such that I believe if you float a canoe in a body of water it is considered a navigable water. From that point of view, streamlining the act and excluding things of that nature would be very advantageous.”
For additional information, please also visit http://www.redcanoes.ca/becky/canoe/environmental.html
What you can do today ...
Write your letter:
People need to talk and write to politicians, municipal, provincial and federal and strongly urge them to resist what government is pushing in terms of gutting environmental legislation under the guise of rescuing the economy.
Send your letters to:
Email: Prime Minister, Steven Harper
Email: Environment minister, Jim Prentice:
Email: Transport minister, John Baird:
Look up your federal, municipal and provincial contacts
Find your Members of Parliament at http://www.parl.gc.ca/common/index.asp?Language=E
Do More...
Canadian Rivers Network sent this appeal out January 20th with the attachments I've included under the heading Backgrounder.
Canadian Rivers Network wrote:
As you will see from the attached, the federal government has advanced plans in place to strip navigation rights from thousands of rivers across Canada, and they plan to do this quickly without public consultation under the pretext of saving the economy.
Please review this material and help any way you can:
1) Distribute this information through your networks.
2) Act and encourage others to act by initiating efforts to inform politicians at every level that navigation rights and environmental laws in Canada should not be tinkered with under the guise of helping the economy.
3) If you are a member of an organization that wants to be publicly listed as a supporter of the Canadian Rivers Network, let us know by sending us an email with the name of your organization, and contact information for a designated representative.
4) Speak the media about the NWPA issue at whatever level you can, local, regional, provincial or national.
5) Let us know if you have the name of anyone who is qualified and willing to speak to the national media on behalf of the Canadian Rivers Network.
Please let us know if you require any additional information or assistance.
Email: canrivers@sympatico.ca
Backgrounder:
View the Canadian Rivers Network excellent files and two articles that were written on the issue. They are PDFs and easy to download.
Download
Website:
For more information see the Canadian Rivers Network website: