Proposed Changes to the NWPA

In January, Transport Canada asked a parliamentary committee to get public input for changes to the Navigable Waters Protection Act (NWPA). More than 70 “stakeholders” made presentations to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities. There was only one conservation group included among the stakeholders (Lake Ontario Waterkeeper).

The committee did not hear from any paddling, fishing or outdoors groups during three months of hearings.

The stakeholders told the committee that the NWPA placed too many restrictions on developers. They complained of an approval process that was backlogged with permit applications. The committee recommended the following changes to the NWPA:

• That the definition of “navigable waters” explicitly exclude “minor waters.” Various definitions of “minor waters” were proposed, all of which would exclude the best canoeing, kayaking and fishing rivers.

• That the act remove specific reference to “dams, bridges, causeways and booms.” Stakeholders told the committee these works were once significant obstacles to navigation, but that this is not the case today and that the naming of these works in the act slows down the permit process.

The committee’s report is now with Transport Canada. The changes could be tabled as new legislation in Parliament in the fall of 2008. If accepted by Parliament, these changes would dispose of the long-standing and effective protection the NWPA has provided to rivers.

If passed your default right to paddle rivers would be a thing of the past, and thousands of waterways would lose the central pillar of environmental protection that has helped keep them in a natural state.

Before any new law is passed the committee would need to undertake further consultations on the government’s final proposal.

The question, therefore, is will paddlers have their voices heard before and during the next round of consultations and before MPs from all parties in the minority Parliament have voted on it?