By way of illustration, I'll give you the story that Mr. Kennedy tells about the founding of the Hudson Riverkeeper, which was the first public interest Riverkeeper organization on the planet. In the 1960s the Hudson River was completely destroyed. The fish were inedible. The plants were spewing toxins into the river. You can look at old videotapes of cars, garbage, waste, and oil floating down the river. The community was extremely concerned about it.
There's a story about a meeting in an old legion hall, where a bunch of old military army guys got together--the grassroots, the community fishermen--talking about their options for restoring the river. They were really angry because the fishery had been wiped out. The local businesses had been wiped out. They were talking about doing things like setting an oil slick on fire or shoving mattresses up the intake pipes of the industry.
There was an old fisherman, Bob Boyle, who pulled out an ancient statute, called the Rivers and Harbours Act, which said that actually what they were doing was illegal: “They're not allowed to put contaminants into our river. We shouldn't be talking about breaking the law, we should be talking about enforcing the law.” At that moment, the concept of the riverkeeper was born. These grassroots organizations spend time on the river. They see for themselves what the issues are. They become the voice of the river and then they use the existing laws, rules, policies, and commitments of government, working with government, wherever possible, to win back those lost rivers and protect rivers from being lost in the future.
That spread; there are now 177 Waterkeeper programs around the world. We're in the United States, Canada, Latin America, India, Russia, Africa, and Australia.
There are nine programs in Canada. The Petitcodiac Riverkeeper was the first. The Lake Ontario Waterkeeper was the second. The only way we can do our job is with important statutes like the Fisheries Act, the Navigable Waters Protection Act, and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, all of which are threatened by the proposals that are on the table here today.
If you want to see grassroots groups protecting waterways in Canada, doing it legally, doing it without protests, being able to work with government, we need these kinds of tools and the ability to create public input to get out there to hear what the community has to say, to learn from the wisdom they have, and to make the best possible decisions in the future. If you take away every right that the community has and hand over our waterways to a few private interests, I believe those are decisions that we will truly regret in the future, not just due to the environmental consequences but because of the cultural, social, and economic consequences of making those short-term sacrifices.