(Part two of a two part series)
As I wrote in last week’s column, the federal government, under Prime Minister Stephen Harper, is currently proposing a number of changes to the Canada Fisheries Act which they are trying to slip through attached to the government’s Budget Omnibus Bill due at the end of the month.
These changes would not only virtually eliminate any enforcement of our habitat protection laws, they would also allow industry to, for all intent and purposes, self-govern their own environmental impact when it comes to various projects, not to mention monitor their own self compliance. I don’t know, but it all seems a bit “iffy” to me.
I mean, it was only a couple of years ago that the federal government, under Harper, tried to put through changes to the Navigable Waterways Protection Act. In a similar fashion, these changes were not readily evident. They were contained in the Budget Implementation Act.
Why would anyone have thought to look within the Budget Implementation Act for possibly changes to the Navigable Waterways Protection Act – changes that would have a negative impact on our lakes, rivers, streams and oceans?
There were a number of specific amendments designed to eliminate the public’s rights, through the Navigable Waterways Protection Act, on thousands of waterways across Canada.
Those amendments were designed to also eliminate any obligation on the part of industry and developers to consider the impact any new project may have on navigable waterways when building such things as roads, bridges, causeways, or dams on, through, or around the waters they may cross or cause to change in any way.
Back then the federal government introduced their proposed changes to the Navigable Waterways Protection by including wording that exempted “minor waters” and “minor works” from the act and by re-defining the word “navigation” under the act in a way that stripped all legal protection from recreational navigation.
The government’s “rewritten” act ignored all whitewater rivers, all seasonal waterways, and all vessels with less than a one-metre draft – which effectively included most fishing and/or water sport boats.
At the time, Mark Angelo, chairman of the Outdoor Recreation Council and head of the British Columbia Institute of Technology’s Fish, Wildlife and Recreation Department, stated that “such changes would create a tiered system of waterways, granting government the discretionary authority to identify those waterways deemed worthy of federal protection… while limiting any assurance of an open and accountable public approval process.”
The federal government argued that the changes were intended to remove an antiquated regulatory burden from developers and governments for “shovel-ready” projects to stimulate the economy.
All I know is that all these proposed changes, to the Canada Fisheries Act and the Navigable Waters Protection Act, only serve to allow both levels of government to impose legislation that puts our lakes, streams, rivers and oceans at risk. And I don’t like it.
Now, I’m not prone to things like conspiracy theories.
Nor do I even totally distrust the government.
But I do have a hard time with any government, federal or provincial, that would seem to be intent on sneaking through things that are supposed to be for the good of we, the people – not to mention our lakes, rivers, streams and oceans.
