I can certainly speak to it, because I remember writing about this 20 years ago, and it had never been used then. Part II of the Canada Water Act has never been used.
The Canada Water Act was introduced in 1970, at a time when there was a different tone to what the federal government wanted to accomplish in environmental areas generally. There was a fair bit of literature at that time speculating on the constitutionality of it. That might be one of the reasons it has never been invoked. The other reason is what I've already described as general retrenchment, on the part of the federal government in the last two decades, in being willing to get engaged in some of these issues.
We probably wouldn't go with part II today. It's there and is probably dated. Do we need something like it? That might very well be the case, but now I think a lot of the language and the tone of it, which hasn't been amended, are probably somewhat outdated. Certainly at the time it generated a lot of hope.
On one final point, if you look at subsequent jurisprudence in constitutional law, I think the concerns about the constitutionality of part II have probably been alleviated by a number of other cases, such as Crown Zellerbach.