Transport Committee on Feb. 12th, 2008

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you. I think there is some agreement at this table.

Mr. Maloney.

[John Maloney, Liberal, Welland, ON]

We have a lot of shared boundary waters with the United States. Do changes need to be coordinated with state or federal jurisdictions on the U.S. side? Do we have to consult them and make sure that what we're doing is not in conflict with their practices?

[David Osbaldeston]

That would need to be done. You're right, we have the St. Lawrence Seaway, the Great Lakes, common boundaries going through these areas. We have crossings going over the waterways, which are regulated.

There is a new International Bridges and Tunnels Act in place that's relevant to this point. That would have to be reviewed, and they would have to be informed of what we're doing.

[John Maloney, Liberal, Welland, ON]

What if there is a conflict?

[David Osbaldeston]

I doubt if there would be conflict, but if there was one, we would have to deal with it. That's what we need to know for any proposed change to legislation. We need to bring these things to light.

[John Maloney, Liberal, Welland, ON]

I'm interested in definitions and your inclusion and exclusion lists. You have an exemption for “minor works”. Is there a definitive way to determine what a “minor work” or a “waterway” is?

[David Osbaldeston]

The proposal would be to include all Canadian waters in this legislation. There is a reason for that. The reason right now is that it takes time to determine what navigable water is. You have to do a navigability assessment, and the criteria for navigability have never been clearly identified.

Right now, in accordance with what the courts have determined, if you can float a canoe or a kayak, regardless of how long or how far, it's navigable. And if it's man-made, it's navigable.

So if I closed the door to this room and we filled it halfway with water and put a canoe in here and floated it, I would by rights, under this law, be regulating this room, which is ridiculous.

[Marc Grégoire]

Let's do it.

[David Osbaldeston]

So for “navigable”, I don't have a good definition. The one we have now, provided by the courts, is not working. Indeed, it is creating much of this backlog, because it's dealing with waters that need to be determined to be navigable. It's also dealing with a lot of waters we know aren't navigable. But we have to prove it in order to say, “You don't need to come”.

I'm sorry, what was your second piece? It was a definition and it's slipped my mind.

[John Maloney, Liberal, Welland, ON]

How would you determine whether something was a minor work, which would be exempted?

[David Osbaldeston]

We would define “minor work”. It would be defined under a specific set of criteria. “Minor work” right now is pretty much defined as something that already has a predetermined fate—work that will be approved as long as you build it in a specific way in a specific type of water.

[John Maloney, Liberal, Welland, ON]

You're going to include all Canadian waterways. But how does that get us away from the situation where you have a little creek and you do your little canoe trip up there?

[David Osbaldeston]

Then you start to pull things off with exclusion lists. In other words, I know Red Tail Creek, say, in Saskatchewan only trickles during a large rain, and yes, during that rain it could probably support a canoe, but nobody is going to travel 600 miles to get to Red Tail Creek to float the canoe for the two hours it trickles enough water to float it. Very specifically, on the exclusion list, there's no need to apply Red Tail Creek, and that's your “no need to apply” list.

You could also put “no need to apply” on that list with certain portions of waterways. I don't think anybody is going to build a dock in the middle of the Deschênes Rapids out here or have a swim raft out there, but we can very specifically say “no need to apply” because there's no navigation on the Deschênes Rapids. I'm using that as an example.

[John Maloney, Liberal, Welland, ON]

Isn't that a monumental task, to specifically exclude specific creeks, rivers, rapids, or whatever across this country?

[David Osbaldeston]

Not if you have a workable set of criteria to do it with, and indeed we're working on a minor works policy right now that would do that. It sets up a number of criteria: sinuosity, how quickly it turns, depth, width, and the number of deadfall going over.

We're talking very small waterways to start to pull this stuff off, waterways that right now require the forestry industry, for example, which goes into an area it wants to cut every spring, to build 3,000 temporary bridges over these little creeks that nobody has ever taken a canoe or a kayak into and would never ever want to because it takes so long to get into them. By our law, every single one of those requires a dedicated application and approval, which takes time.

As long as you get your criteria right up front, and we've been working with the Forest Products Association of Canada, the Transportation Association of Canada, and other associations to try to work on criteria whereby we could define those types of very minor waterways to start such a list—waterways that do not support navigation, that nobody wants to navigate down and forseeably never will.

[John Maloney, Liberal, Welland, ON]

Why are we going to exempt port authorities?

[David Osbaldeston]

First of all, the port authorities are already exempted from our act in accordance with their own legislation when they're building the work themselves. Where we currently get involved is if they have a tenant who decides he wants to build a wharf, and all of a sudden the tenant inside the port authority boundary must come to us for approval. Our current thought on this is that the port authority is there to look after the business of navigation and economics in and out of that particular port. The port authority will not do anything to hinder that navigation because in so doing they would be hindering their own business and objectives; therefore, let the port authority look after all their interests inside their own port boundary, including their tenants.

[John Maloney, Liberal, Welland, ON]

You referenced a jurisdictional problem when referring to derelict hulks in waters. By our establishing a fund from fees, are we assuming that jurisdiction, or where do we stand there? Do we have that jurisdiction, or is it just the cost you balk at in removing these hulks?

[David Osbaldeston]

We claim--for financial reasons right now, I think--that we don't have that jurisdiction. Again, the age of the act...it doesn't define it.

The other jurisdictions come at us and say, “You're responsible for removal of obstacles and hazards.” When we claim that it's not an obstacle, it's not a hazard, it's not in the navigational channel, they reply, “It is an obstacle to me, an eye obstacle, and it's a hazard to our enjoyment of the beach, so come and clean it up.” The argument continues in that grey area.

What we're saying is let's stop the arguments. Especially when we start to have threats and to have experience with these things being dragged off the beach and sunk out in the waterways, to become navigational hazards that we have to come out and clean up, let's stop the arguments. It's not getting anybody anywhere.

So let's go out and start to clean these things up. We recognize that indeed they can become hazards--much like the Canima in Shediac Bay, and I can name a number of other ones across this country--so let's clean them up. We are in the navigational safety business, and as long as we have the finances to do it....

It's not that we're against doing it, but nobody has ever been funded nor clearly, within legislation, had the responsibility to do it.

I'm not speaking here, by the way, of just the stuff that's on the shoreline or sitting at docks, left abandoned and sinking, blocking the small east coast docks—or wharves, as they call them there. I'm talking as well of accidents that occur. In the Ottawa River here, at the mouth of the Richelieu, we had a tanker that cut a concrete sailboat in half, and the two halves of the sailboat went down. Unfortunately there were souls lost. But it costs money to go and pull those things up, and they were blocking the mouth of the Richelieu River and could have posed a very serious threat to navigation.

Well, we don't have any funding aside to go and do that right now. The argument that always comes around is where are we going to get the funds if we do it? If we had an obstacle removal fund, we could say let's contract it immediately and get those halves lifted and out of here. Truthfully, navigational safety is our number one priority.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you.

It does remind me a little bit of the abandoned gas stations where the tanks are in the ground. I understand that the environment...went after the original owners for a lot of that cost.

Are you proposing that we absorb that cost as a government?

[David Osbaldeston]

Absolutely not. Our very first approach is always to the ownership. Even if things had to be removed on an urgent basis, such as the two halves of the ship I just mentioned, we would be dealing with the insurer subsequently. If we couldn't deal with them immediately, we would deal with them subsequently to recover costs.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Monsieur Carrier.

[Robert Carrier, Bloc, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Good day, Mr. Grégoire. Good day to you also, Mr. Osbaldeston. We have not had the pleasure of meeting before today.

I would like to discuss a particular case with you which has been a point of contention for my constituents, namely the construction of a bridge on Autoroute 25 across the Milles-Îles River. This major infrastructure project has been under discussion for many years in Quebec.

Public consultations were conducted by Quebec's Bureau d'audiences publiques sur l'environnement. I heard through the grapevine that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans was also concerned about whether or not this project would be approved, mainly because of concerns over fish habitats. There was some question of relocating a sturgeon spawning ground. I was informed by the department that an environmental assessment was required and that one had yet to be completed because the project developer had not yet supplied all of the information.

I found out only yesterday about this legislation, through a Transport Canada public notice issued on December 14, 2007. Quebec's Department of Transport was seeking your approval to move forward with this venture. I would imagine this type of project is one not listed in your table and one that will surely be examined. You mention applications filed in the 11th month of the year, but this particular one was filed in December.

[Marc Grégoire]

That must be...

[Robert Carrier, Bloc, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

It must be...