I grew up in Oshawa, Ontario, which is on Lake Ontario just outside of Toronto. It's a fairly industrial city. I grew up in an environment where we assumed that Lake Ontario was supposed to be dirty. We assumed that the Oshawa Creek was not supposed to be something that we would ever go out on in a canoe or take our fishing rods out on.
Through my work at Waterkeeper, what I'm seeing in the community in maybe the last 10 years is that people's expectations are changing for what Canadian waterways should look like. People are starting to think that our waterways really should be clean, that there's technology available, that there's expertise and wisdom available to restore some of what we've lost. So while we have seen a lot of devastation, a loss of fish habitat, a loss of navigability, we are also seeing a renewed hope and a renewed enthusiasm and an understanding of how important these waterways are to the culture and to the businesses in our community.
As an example, the Oshawa River is the reason the city is there. It was a very important natural harbour area. It was a very important navigable water area and over the years, through development, it's dried up so much it's no longer called the Oshawa River, it's now called the Oshawa Creek. Through a simple name change, people have forgotten what that river was supposed to be like.
Through the work of the City of Oshawa, the Oshawa Marina Users Group, and other organizations, we're seeing this idea that Oshawa could be restored and the memory of what it could be is coming back to communities. That's really important. We're seeing that in Toronto as well. We see that in Hamilton. Again, we see it in pretty much every industrial area and urban centre on the Great Lakes. We're seeing it in some of the maritime communities, definitely in Moncton.
So the Navigable Waters Protection Act is not bad, but it's old. It's great that it's old, it's a reminder of what Canada is supposed to be and what rights and privileges and opportunities the public is supposed to have. I think those kinds of works.... I could probably go for an hour through every community in the country that has some kind of restoration project going on right now.