Evidence of meeting #9 for Finance in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was transport.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Joe Volpe Liberal Eglinton—Lawrence, ON
If those other four agencies do not agree with the proposal on the table and issue a licence that alters the use of any property adjacent to those waters, how does that take away the right of a Canadian to enjoy something that was being enjoyed before those assessments went into place?
For the lawyers present around the table, if there is a due process that is undergone and it protects the interests of everybody along the way, why is that a taking away of rights?
Staff Counsel and Part-time Professor, Ecojustice Environmental Law Clinic, University of Ottawa
Simply put, because the processes that will remain, that may, for instance, stop a given project—say a bridge—whether or not they have approved or not approved of that given infrastructure project, will not have considered navigation. So there may be environmental assessment processes or approval processes that do consider matters other than navigation, and they may approve a project, not having considered navigation.
This is the critical point to understand with the proposed amendments. There are provisions for ministerial exemptions of works and waterways. Pursuant to these amendments, if the transport minister decides at his or her discretion, without any parliamentary oversight, without any prior consultation with other Canadians, that certain works—call it a small dam or a small culvert or certain waterways, a stream, five to ten metres wide—or waterways are to be exempted, there will be no approval process under the Navigable Waters Protection Act and there will be no environmental assessment process. That means navigation will not be considered.
Liberal
Joe Volpe Liberal Eglinton—Lawrence, ON
Well, Mr. Amos, there were other lawyers who came before the committee in the spring who disagreed with that assessment, but that's okay. That's the reason we go through these.
Conservative
Liberal
Joe Volpe Liberal Eglinton—Lawrence, ON
Sure, and it goes to Mr. Mattson actually, because under this concept of rights being protected in stages, the Minister of Transport, as we were advised, doesn't make decisions for the Minister of the Environment and doesn't make decisions for the jurisdictions at the provincial level, which must also provide their consent before a layer of any right might be altered.
So do you still hold that the Minister of Transport, by extension from your argument, in Canada will dictate all rights that flow from the authority of the Minister of the Environment, various ministers of the environment, and Fisheries and Oceans?
President, Lake Ontario Waterkeeper
I wouldn't be here tonight and wouldn't have come up on such short notice if I didn't think that if the changes go ahead, they would take away something so valuable in Canada.
What Mr. Amos says is 100% right. You know, when you change something with the Navigable Waters Protection Act, which really wasn't giving Canadians the right to navigate their waters; it was just putting into words, into statute, that which Canadians had in common law.... So to take that away because government doesn't want to do the work any longer, or because they want to move faster and they don't have the resources--that's wrong. This is something where the decision should not be made in Ottawa or by the Minister of Transport. The tool is that every single time you go to block a river, put a dam or a causeway in, you need to go to the people who are affected and seek their consent and you need to do the research to provide to those people first.
To do otherwise would leave us with two-tier environmentalism. It wouldn't trigger environmental assessments under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act anymore, and ultimately it would leave protection of our waters to the people who are most powerful, who have the most money or the most influence. And those...it may be one or two people in the middle of a 200 or 300 square kilometre empty space, and they'll be lost. And those waters might be what really makes them feel Canadian and might make them really feel they're part of a special country.
That's why this act is so important, and that move from a right to a discretionary right is probably one of the most serious and fundamental shifts in law you can have.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative James Rajotte
Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Volpe.
We'll go to Monsieur Laforest.
Bloc
Jean-Yves Laforest Bloc Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good evening to all of the witnesses.
I too listened very attentively to Mr. Osbaldeston's opening remarks.
Mr. Osbaldeston, you used a word that bothers me quite a bit. You referred to this as a “modernized“ act by way of justifying your support for this bill. To my mind, something modernized is the opposite of something old, something archaic. What's archaic is that there were no consultations held in the past, and no Department of the Environment. But mainly, lobby groups did not voice overly strong objections. There were no ecotourism organizations like we have today. People did not use the environment or our navigable waterways like they do today. There were no canoe-kayak federations. They did not exist. That was in the past. People used nature anyway they liked. Today, in a contemporary, modern world, people have found very different ways to use nature. These people represent modern times.
However, it is entirely inappropriate, in my estimation to use the word “modernized“ in connection with a bill that disregards certain realities and places important discretionary authority in the hands of one minister, of one individual, who could eventually disregard major environmental problems for the sake of building infrastructures. I truly regret that you have taken a stand in favour of this bill that...Earlier, my colleague Mr. Carrier referred to it as a “joke”.
I have a question for you, sir. Do you often have occasion to testify before the Finance Committee in support of a bill that falls within the purview of the Department of Transport? Has this happened often?
Manager, Navigable Waters Protection Program, Department of Transport
No, sir.
Bloc
Jean-Yves Laforest Bloc Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC
So then, it's never happened to you before. You'll agree that this is a first for you. This is the first time that the Conservative government has decided, with the Liberals' support precisely because of its minority standing, to rely on this support to include in a budget bills that have nothing whatsoever to do with the budget process and that, in some respects, go against the process already initiated at the Department of Transport. It is all quite improper.
I have no further comments. Is there anything more you would like to say? When you say this is a first for you, I find that worrisome. Thank you.
Manager, Navigable Waters Protection Program, Department of Transport
No, sir, I don't have any comments. I am following the process that's put before me.
Bloc
Jean-Yves Laforest Bloc Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have nothing further to add.
Conservative
Conservative
Cheryl Gallant Conservative Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON
This is through you, Mr. Chair, to Mr. MacLaren.
How old were you when you dug that ditch by hand?
Conservative
Conservative
Cheryl Gallant Conservative Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON
That's almost the lifetime of a person. Maybe to a young person, an inspector coming by, for all purposes that would look like a natural creek.
As an Individual
For someone, yes, it would look like a creek. But it was dug out to this mudhole, shall we say, so that they could crop the land.
Conservative
Cheryl Gallant Conservative Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON
How many kilometres or miles is it from your farm in Renfrew to Prescott, where the inspector came from?
Conservative
Cheryl Gallant Conservative Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON
First of all, how many canoes or kayakers have used your ditch for that sport?
As an Individual
We haven't had any that I could see. They would probably be very little.
Conservative
Cheryl Gallant Conservative Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON
In Ontario, the definition of a navigable waterway, in practice, is extrapolated to include any collection of water. That's what we're seeing here. So as a consequence of this holdup, your production, your apple orchard, has been held up.