Mr. Speaker, we will protect all of Canada's lakes and rivers. The Navigable Waters Protection Act was never actually an environmental law.
The hon. member should read the act to learn more. If she does, she will see that words like “environment“, “nature”, “fishing” and so forth are not even in it. Why? Because it is not an environmental law and never was.
It is a law about navigation. It provides a framework for construction and transportation on navigable waters. For example, it regulates the construction of bridges in such a way as to enable a ship or boat to navigate the waters to which the act applies.
Given that it is not an environmental law, the changes we have made cannot have consequences for the environment.
The hon. member asked whether all lakes and rivers will be protected. I said yes. How can I say that? Because environmental laws will continue to apply. Changes to the Navigable Waters Protection Act will have no impact on the seven or eight environmental laws that protect bodies of water. The Fisheries Act and the Canadian Environmental Protection Act will remain in force.
If we have the Fisheries Act, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act and all the other acts related to the protection of wildlife habitat and the environment that are untouched by the amendments, those acts will continue to protect all of the waters of Canada.
The changes we have proposed are to limit the application of navigation laws to bodies of water that actually have navigation. In other words, if there are small bodies of water on which boats do not or rarely travel, we do not need to protect their right to travel. We do not need to protect the right of a ship to travel down a small stream because that right is taken away by the shallowness of the water. In other words, that ship was never meant to travel there in the first place. Therefore, the application of the law is currently misplaced on areas where it does not belong. The amendments stipulated in the budget legislation fix that problem.