Good morning, Madam Chair, and members of the committee.
On behalf of the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters, our 100,000 members, and the 740 member clubs across Ontario, thank you for the courtesy of inviting us here this morning to address our concerns with the Navigation Protection Act.
Maintaining safe and navigable waters is critically important for providing access to angling and hunting opportunities. Despite Transport Canada's insistence that the impacts to these activities would be minimal when changes were made to the former legislation, the OFAH remains concerned that the reduced scope of this act as it now appears could negatively impact on accessibility.
The previous act applied much more broadly to all bodies of water capable of being navigated by any type of floating vessel for transportation, recreation, or commerce, whereas the current act only applies to 162 of Canada's waters, oceans, lakes, and rivers, that are listed under schedule 2 of the act. In essence, this means that the right of navigation on all waters not listed in schedule 2 is no longer protected under the current statute.
The Canadian public right of navigation on waters not listed under the act is only protected under common law, meaning that infringements on navigation rights, for example, a private or public nuisance complaint, would have to be addressed through the courts, which are already backlogged.
We live in a society that is increasingly litigious, but for most individuals, using the courts to ensure navigation is cost and time prohibitive. Whether intentional or not, the common law provision in the NPA may in fact prove to be even more cumbersome and inaccessible for the majority of Canadians than the system it replaced.
Having to seek remedy through the courts will do nothing to prevent obstructions to navigation from occurring, and it put the onus on the angler, hunter, canoeist, or paddler to identify and challenge infringements on their right to navigation, which means that the infringement has already occurred. Having to resort to the common law is an adversarial, cumbersome, and ineffective means of protecting navigation rights in unlisted waters.
In the past, there was considerable discussion regarding the removal of environmental protection for unlisted waters in the NPA. In our experience, the former act was not entirely intended to be used as a primary legislative tool for environmental protection. There are other federal, provincial, and municipal statutes that are specifically designed to provide protection for aquatic ecosystems, such as the Fisheries Act, the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Act, and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, among others.
Another agency will have the resources to effectively deal with navigation concerns, so expecting them to address the shortfalls in the act is moot.