Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
It is indeed an honour and a privilege for us to be here today. I want to thank the committee for giving us this time on the agenda.
My name is David Marit, and I am the president of the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities. With me today is my colleague Don Johnson, who is the president of the Alberta Association of Municipal Districts and Counties. In addition to our regular duties as presidents of these associations, both Don and I are also active on the FCM board of directors. In particular, Don is currently the chair of FCM's rural forum.
I want to thank you very much for inviting the FCM to appear before this committee. We are pleased this committee appreciates the impact of the Navigable Waters Protection Act, or NWPA, on municipalities across Canada and understands the need to amend this 1882 legislation.
The provincial transportation departments and municipalities are jointly responsible for the construction and maintenance of highway and road networks as well as water management infrastructure. For these departments and municipalities, the NWPA is the most problematic of all regulatory legislation. It is the most time-consuming, and in our opinion, the approval process does not often result in substantive positive changes.
We are encouraged that Transport Canada recognizes the burdens of this outdated legislation and has proposed changes to the act. While we are supportive of the intent and much of the content of the amendments proposed, our recommendations go somewhat further.
Representing municipalities, we would like to express our support for the recommendations that Alberta Transportation has established. In particular, Alberta Transportation has indicated several concerns with the NWPA.
First, the current process is lengthy, with approvals regularly taking one year but sometimes extending beyond two years.
Second, the act is applied very broadly to extremely small watercourses that are not used by boaters and have no prospect of being used as such.
Third, Transport Canada often requires accommodation for boat passage, and alternative methods such as portages are regularly rejected. We can give you many examples during the question and answer period. I hope we can discuss it there.
Finally, despite past interpretations of the act, there are no grandfathering mechanisms. To be more specific, for many decades the NWPA was only applied to watercourses having commercial navigation, thus rarely in prairie provinces. However, many of these works in the Prairies are now considered unlawful and are required to go through the application process to become lawful before any repairs are made.
All these points, as made by Alberta Transportation, are relevant to municipalities, as infrastructure ages and works require improvements and repairs. The application of the act is, in our opinion, too expensive and involves lengthy processes that do not benefit water navigation.
I'll now turn it over to my colleague.