I agree that there would be. I was mayor of a municipality, and I can tell you that DFO shows up at just about everything. That happens to lead, Ms. Flood, to another question following the one I had to Ms. Scharf in terms of the funding.
This legislation is about improving navigation of our waterways for transportation. What happens is that it may be over a creek or a stream that has water in it year round, but not a lot, and it could get brought in under terms of having some navigable waterways. We've had some where the discussion was that it sits dry for the greater part of the year, but it still had to go in judgment of whether it was actually a navigable stream or not.
That takes me to DFO a little, because we cannot get away from the tie-in. We have the DFO regulations that come in on a stream, and I don't have the wording, but it's where you can't harm or harass any species. There was talk earlier from my colleague about holding up projects. I'm wondering, Ms. Flood, where the balance actually is.
I've had a project where the waterway was filled with silt that had come off farmland and there was some species at risk in it. I could have taken you up the road two miles where they were plugging the intakes, as there were so many of them up and down the streams, but it stopped this project, quite honestly. If we harmed a species taking it out, then there would be a charge. Nobody was willing to take the risk.
I'm looking for an answer on how we get some balance here of what the benefit actually is, or if there's a benefit, so that these projects don't get held up, sometimes, quite honestly, inadvertently.