Transport Committee on April 29th, 2008

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

As with most things, the devil's in the details, and it would be very helpful to us as a committee as well as probably to the minister to have from your organization, the FCM, a proposed definition for minor works.

You may already have one, Ms. Irwin. You're the senior policy person here, and I don't know if you have something you can provide us with.

[Susan Irwin]

Not at this point, no.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Okay, I will follow that up with a question regarding the number of applications. As far as you know, what percentage of applications for what you might classify as minor works are actually rejected under the NWPA?

[David Marit]

I guess I'll comment.

I don't know offhand what the number is as far as rejections go, but I think the number as far as delays are concerned would be significant, especially when it comes to the process when you're dealing with navigable waters. In a lot of cases we're dealing with federally funded dollars also to apportion whether it's a disaster or any other type of mechanism. So it really does delay the process.

Perhaps we could have a definition of minor works, and an agency that has moved a long way on that is the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. They have moved a long way on what they deem minor works. In our province in the spring we have significant flooding, and a lot of provinces do. We have roads washed and culverts washed. The approval process with them is, put it back the way it was and that's all we require.

At some time you have to put the faith into your public works people to be doing the work that they're doing and into your local governments to be doing it also. If I have a culvert washout and there are three six-foot culverts there, I'm not going to try to replace them with two six-footers, because I know it's going to be back the next year doing the same thing. That's, I think, where the term “minor works” has to be defined, to replacement, if it's a replacement issue.

Where we have a problem in our province--Don has alluded to Alberta also--is that we are in a huge infrastructure deficit with bridges also. We don't have nearly as many as Alberta, but we have in the neighbourhood of 2,500 or 2,600 bridges in rural Saskatchewan that were built in the fifties and sixties. The way the agriculture community is changing in Canada--not just in Saskatchewan but in Canada--with increased weights and increased distances and everything being hauled, our bridges can't take it. Our municipalities can't afford to replace bridge structures when you start talking about $250,000 to $300,000 for a 20-foot span bridge, where steel culverts can do the same thing at virtually a third of the cost--and they can. We comply with DFO in burying them 20% into the waterbed and that type of thing. So it works that way. We just have this issue with the navigable waters people, where they want the ability to portage through it.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

It has been suggested by some that changes to the NWPA are an attempt to circumvent environmental monitoring and supervision. It's my understanding that there are many other triggers beside the NWPA that would trigger environmental assessments. Is that your understanding?

[Don Johnson]

Yes, both federally and provincially.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Even at the municipal level?

[Don Johnson]

Even municipally, yes.

[David Marit]

To me, the NWPA is more of a navigational issue, and I think if the committee can make a recommendation on that definition similar to what we have made here today to you on the definition of that waterway, it'll go a long way toward making things a lot easier to do in rural Canada. This isn't just an issue in western Canada; this is an issue right across Canada.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you.

[Don Johnson]

Mr. Chairman, perhaps I could respond.

Mr. Fast, in response to that as well, I want to emphasize this again--I said it earlier. It would be a mistake to think that municipalities are trying to encourage a change for any other reason than what David has really done quite a good job in outlining. There's been no discussion whatsoever around our table about the environmental issue and trying to skirt around that. It's strictly a timeliness and a cost issue, and there needs to be a greater degree of coordination between navigable waters folks and the environmental folks.

I understand there is some discussion going on, and we've had those same conversations within our own provincial jurisdictions, with our respective departments of environment to make sure they're on side. So to us, I don't believe that's an issue at all.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Mr. Zed.

[Paul Zed, Liberal, Saint John, NB]

Ms. Findlay and I are going to share. We both have short questions, but I'll let her go first.

[Martha Hall Findlay, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Thank you very much.

I have to say, Mr. Marit and Mr. Johnson, having been out in Saskatchewan and Alberta the last few days, and the fact that it was gorgeous weather here last week and it's now freezing cold.... I think we have the two of you to blame, because I'm pretty sure it was snowing out there.

[David Marit]

We've been told that quite a bit already in the last few days.

[Martha Hall Findlay, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

I'm sure, and justifiably.

In a prior life I was actually head of a ratepayers association for a municipality that was primarily water based, so much of what you talk about hits home, needless to say.

I have a small question on the definition of navigable waters that you're proposing. Not having the full description in front of me, I wasn't quite clear on something. You mentioned the metre draft, to accommodate boats with a metre draft. That is actually quite a lot, so for an awful lot of smaller craft that's way more than enough.

[David Marit]

Yes.

[Martha Hall Findlay, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

But I wasn't sure if you then added a discretionary piece and then at the end, as long as something met those other criteria, it then needed to be termed officially by a level of government a navigable water, or whether there was discretion in the ability of whatever government level was the right one to make that determination that the draft was the important part.

To clarify, it's not so much that I'm fussed about whether you have a metre draft or not. There are lots of situations, I suspect, where you have more than that, and that shouldn't in a discretionary environment be regarded as a navigable water, and many in the other direction. I was only curious about whether there was an opportunity at the municipal level for some discretion there.

[Don Johnson]

This came from Saskatchewan, so I don't know, Dave, if you want to comment. That was added as part of our discussions.

[David Marit]

We felt we had to have the draft in there because, if you have that draft, to us that meant that water is flowing more than three months of the year. That's why we came up with that. We even wanted to put a width in there. We really felt there should have been a width in there too. That's something you may want to discuss: if you have draft and width, you can deem it as a navigable waterway.

To give you an example, in Saskatchewan and in many parts of this country, we have streams that run all year round and we call them streams. They're maybe five feet wide and maybe a foot deep and they're fed by springs, or whatever, but they flow a lot. There is a process through the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the Department of the Environment to deal with those. We don't need navigable waters there too. That's where we're going here.

There is a place for navigable waters, but it's not there. And if you change the definition of what is a navigable waterway, you'll go a long way to help rural Canada.

[Don Johnson]

We support what Saskatchewan was getting at there, because if you have that one-metre draft, which I agree is fairly deep...I mean, you can have a cabin cruiser that wouldn't draw a metre. You've got more of them in Ontario than we have in Alberta. We truck them out to B.C., to the Shuswap or some other areas. The neat thing about Canada is that we get to go across this country and see a lot of the beauty that's there.

We've tried to balance this off. One of the things that we didn't put into the thing that we had discussed at home in my province with our membership was different ways of approaching navigable waters. There's five of them here, and I'll simply throw them out as an example.

First is waterways used for commerce and the transport of goods or commercial fishing. Then you get into a little bit of a different approach there.

Second is waterways that can be reliably navigated by vessels with a draft of one metre. They're saying the same thing there.

Third is waterways of a minimum width of five metres--which is what Dave was talking about--and an average depth greater than half a metre at mean annual flow. So you have to have more water. In other words, you can't have a four-inch stream, so you'd have to use a Zodiac with a jet outboard propulsion system on the back.

Fourth, excludes waterways used exclusively for recreation purposes. Does it make sense for navigable waters if it's recreational?

There is another one you could use as well: excludes waterways not regularly used for navigation. And that's what you get mostly in the Prairies. I would suspect that you get a lot of that in Ontario, in more recreational areas, and that's why the recreational thing.

So those are, I think, a little bit more common-sense approaches to that. And if you used that commercial definition, it seems to me it makes a little bit more sense. But if you use that draft, then that really eliminates all those small intermittent streams.

Maybe that's an exaggeration, but it makes the point.

[Martha Hall Findlay, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

It was more just the discretion to say, even if it's bigger and deeper, an irrigation channel may actually be deeper than that and technically fit that one, but if there's no navigation on it at all....

[David Marit]

Right.

[Martha Hall Findlay, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

I guess we're going to see more detail in terms of what you were reading—

[David Marit]

Yes.