Sierra Club Canada

Save Our Waterways!

Tell the Senate not to leave us up the creek without a paddle.

The federal government has included drastic and harmful amendments to the Navigable Waters Protection Act (NWPA), in Part 7 of the Budget Implementation Act, Bill C-10.

The NWPA establishes that, if someone wants to build something in, on, around, under, over, or through a navigable waterway, such projects are subject to an assessment of the impacts on navigation (ability to canoe, kayak, go rafting, etc) and an environmental assessment before they can be approved. That's reasonable. But the government wants to change the act to leave all that to the discretion of the Minister instead.

These amendments to the NWPA jeopardize both public access to and environmental health of Canadian waterways.

On March 12th the Senate passed Bill C-10 in its entirety, despite having committed to full hearings on the Bill, and an emerging proposal to separate budgetary and non-budgetary items.

The changes to the NWPA have been referred to the Senate’s Energy, Environment and Natural Resources Committee.

Help us send a strong message to the Committee –lend your voice, speak for rivers!

We have made it easy - your email will be sent to all members of the Senate’s Energy, Environment and Natural Resources Committee, plus the Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Opposition Leader Michael Ignatieff.

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February 09, 2010

Subject:

Dear Hon. Senator

I am writing to urge you to reconsider the harmful amendments to the Navigable Waters Protection Act (NWPA) that were passed on March 12th as part of Bill C-10. These harmful amendments grant the Minister of Transport full authority to create “classes of works” and “classes of navigable waters”, and exempt them from all or part of the Act. They also remove prior reference to the four named works of the Act –bridge, causeway, dam, and boom, which by their very nature interfere with navigation— and grant the Minister the sole authority to determine what constitutes a “significant interference to navigation”. The NWPA –as it already existed—only applied to waterways that are navigable, and dealt with works that are obstructions to navigation. In so doing, it also protected the ecological health of Canada’s waterways. I recognize that the NWPA was implemented in 1882 and is over 100 years old, and as such, some parts may require revision; however, the Budget Implementation Act, Bill C-10, was not the place for such a massive revision of the NWPA. In fact, these hasty changes to the NWPA will have serious repercussions for the recreational navigation, ecotourism, fishing, and hunting sectors of our economy, none of whom were consulted about these amendments. I hope you will consider the harm that will be caused by certain amendments to the NWPA, and I encourage you to do everything in your power to undo those amendments. The public right of navigation pre-dates Confederation. It is a part of our history and our heritage. It also needs to be part of our future.
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