Word is flying around the recreational and commercial paddling communities about the federal government's plans to gut the NWPA. Attached is a letter on the issue to the government committee from our friends on the Kipawa River. If you want to take action or write a letter, now you have the background information. But you had better do so quickly!


Les Amis de la Rivière Kipawa
c/o Wayne Donison 55-40 Silvercreek Pkwy N Guelph, Ontario N1H 7X5
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May 26, 2008
Mervin Tweed
Chairman
Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities
RE: Proposed Changes to the Navigable Waters Protection Act
Dear Mr. Tweed:
I am the vice-president of a river advocacy group called Les Amis de la Rivière Kipawa, registered as a not-for-profit corporation in the Province of Quebec.
It has come to our attention that the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities is currently considering proposed changes to the Navigable Waters Protection Act.
We have only recently, within the past couple of days, become aware of the efforts of your committee. As a volunteer organization representing the paddling community, the people who navigate rivers in Canada, it is unfortunate that we were not invited to prepare a submission for your committee. I know that your members would have been informed by what we have to contribute.
As you know, among the changes to the NWPA the government is proposing are three critical elements that would eliminate the need for “troublesome” assessments of the environmental impacts on navigation for the following:
- minor waters
- minor works
- projects involving dams, bridges, causeways and booms
What is meant by “minor waters”?
Well as we understand it, Ms. Shirley Anne Scharf of Infrastructure Canada answered that question for the parliamentary committee March 11: “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.”
“Streamlining” the act so that it only catches some types of navigation, and not others? This puzzles us.
What is meant by “minor works”?
We don’t know. If you know, I would like you to tell us. It appears to us that the effect of excluding “minor works” would essentially allow developers and bureaucrats to decide what projects require an environmental assessment of impacts on navigation. And, I’m certain you will understand from reading further, that we do not believe that would be in the best interest of Canadians.
Why exempt dams, bridges, causeways and booms?
We don’t know. These are the very things that have the most potential for impacts on navigation. That is why they are specifically referenced in the act to begin with. Exempting these types of projects would render the NWPA irrelevant.
What is our experience?
The organization I represent, Les Amis de la Rivière Kipawa is currently locked in a very expensive legal case against Public Works and Government Services Canada.
Unfortunately, we can speak to what Canada would be like if the proposed changes to the NWPA are enacted.
We have a long, well-documented history of navigation on the Kipawa River. Our first record of modern recreational whitewater navigation on the river goes back to 1968. For over 20 years we have hosted an internationally renowned white water festival on the Kipawa River with participants coming from all over eastern Canada and from the northeast U.S.
If there is anywhere in Canada where navigation is a historical fact and a significant activity, it is on the Kipawa River.
However, when announcing a plan to re-construct an aging flood control dam on the Kipawa River in 2005, PWGSC refused to consider navigation rights in its environmental assessment for the project. We spent almost a year attempting to convince PWGSC and NWPA officials at Transport Canada that the environmental impact of their project on navigation needed to be considered. They refused to consult with us. They refused to consider loss of navigation as an environmental impact, even though as the NWPA is currently written, they are legally obligated to consider it.
Our case is currently in the Federal Court of Appeals.
So it is with some irony that as we attempt to have the federal court ask TC to live up to its legal obligations under the NWPA, the government is proposing to re-write the act.
Our assessment of the currently proposed changes to the NWPA, based on evidence presented to your committee on March 11, 2008, is that, if these changes had been in effect in 2005, when PWGSC proposed their dam reconstruction project on the Kipawa River, they would have said the following to us:
- we cannot consider your navigation rights because the Kipawa is a minor water
- we cannot consider your navigation rights because this is a minor work, we’re just replacing an existing structure
- we cannot consider your navigation rights because this is a dam, and dams are now exempt from the permitting provisions of the NWPA.
I ask you to consider, what does it mean if Canadians like us, who have been peacefully exercising our public right of navigation for 40 years or more, when we have a clear established record of that navigation history, including commercial navigation, when we are actively engaged in hosting a community festival and promoting tourism in an area of Quebec that needs economic development…are told that our navigation is not in fact navigation, and that it has no meaning under the NWPA.
I am a Canadian. I am proud to be a Canadian. And I believe we have a proud heritage and a bright future in a troubled world.
But I also believe that diminishing the common law right of public navigation, a right that predates confederation, is an attack on what it means to be Canadian.
This country was discovered, explored and developed through the act of navigation. Navigation is part of what it means to be Canadian. It is part of our heritage. It is part of who we are.
The NWPA was one of the first nationally significant pieces of legislation passed in this country. Sir John A. MacDonald was Prime Minister when the NWPA was enacted.
There are those who would argue that the NWPA is no longer relevant in a modern Canada. I would argue the opposite. Protecting navigation rights in Canada is as important today as it was 125 years ago.
If the federal government goes ahead with these proposed changes, the Navigable Waters Protection Act will in fact become the Dam Owners Protection Act. There will be nothing in it for the people who actually navigate our waterways.
I strongly urge you to turn this conversation around. Based on our frustrating and completely unnecessary experience trying to ensure that the federal government meets its obligations under the current act, our view is that the NWPA needs to be strengthened not weakened.
We note that the proposed changes are couched strategically in words like “minor” and “insignificant,” but I assure you the impact of these changes on Canadians will not be minor. They will not be insignificant. These changes will result in the erasure of a distinctly Canadian heritage.
Please take a stand and act to protect the heritage right of navigation in Canada. And please understand that this will not eliminate the potential for development or cause undue delays in infrastructure projects, as some in the government would have you believe. Navigation simply exists as one of many environmental impacts that must be considered when developing on a waterway.
Ensuring that navigation is considered in environmental assessments of developments on waterways is important. It is critical. It is Canadian.
We understand that your committee has set a deadline of today to accept submissions on the proposed changes to the NWPA. I also understand that no one involved in the paddling community across Canada and none of the extensive commercial interests in river navigation have been invited to contribute.
In our view, if you truly want to evaluate the impact of these proposed changes to the NWPA, then it is absolutely critical that you consult openly with the people who will be directly impacted. In fact we are shocked and dismayed that this was not automatically done.
I strongly urge you and your committee to extend the period for submissions on this topic. I urge you to talk to Canadians about these proposed changes to the NWPA.
Sincerely,
Wayne Donison
Vice President
Les Amis de la Rivière Kipawa
(519) 400-0858
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