Transport committee  Yes, that's definitely what we would recommend. As I've said, the issues of navigation and navigability change dramatically from community to community. So I would never, from Lake Ontario, want to recommend or suggest that I represent a maritime community on an ocean waterfront

Transport committee  In Ontario the federal legislation is key. For the most part the provincial environmental assessment requirements only apply to provincial undertakings. A private proponent, a corporation, for example, that wished to build a bridge or put in a causeway, might not necessarily trig

Transport committee  No. We found out about this from the letter from your chair. We do read the Canada Gazette, but no government department has ever reached out to us to consult on this issue. I don't doubt that there may be an administrative problem with the way this act is being administered. I

Transport committee  I think that's fair. For the most part, we don't find that our communities are divided between environmentalists and non-environmentalists. We find that, for the most part, everybody cares about where they live. Whether they consider themselves environmentalists or not, clean wat

Transport committee  I'll answer your second question first. To my knowledge, none of the Waterkeeper programs has ever been consulted on this, and certainly none of the volunteer organizations that I spoke to in the Lake Ontario watershed has been consulted on this. We were up on the Abitibi River

Transport committee  Tools are available under the Environmental Assessment Act--the screening report, as I mentioned--so you don't have to do every environmental assessment from scratch. For anything that falls into the class screening, you could have class screenings for small bridges, those kinds

Transport committee  First, I don't think I've explicitly said that I think the Navigable Waters Protection Act is an environmental statute. I think it's exactly what it says it is. It's there to protect navigability and navigation and the public's right to navigate. That said, it triggers the envir

Transport committee  I can't speak to the administrative burden that I know you have been briefed on, that some people in the transport department, for example, may be experiencing . I would say that I would be extremely hesitant to suggest that such things as the Magna Carta, old as they may be, are

Transport committee  Lake Ontario Waterkeeper is a registered Canadian charity. We're based in Toronto. Our membership program is not a paid membership program in the way that you would think of an organization. We represent thousands of individuals and grassroots organizations on Lake Ontario. We al

Transport committee  We do have paid members. We have people who do give us $30 or $50 annually. We host fundraising events that hundreds of people attend.

Transport committee  These are people who would call themselves members of Lake Ontario Waterkeeper either because they have paid us a $30 annual membership fee or because they work with our staff on a regular basis. We don't do the kind of cold-call direct mail that you may be implying. We would nev

Transport committee  Our mandate is to restore and protect Lake Ontario and the Great Lakes watershed. We work on a legal approach so we are involved with federal and provincial laws, commenting on certificates of approval and teaching law students. We've mentored about 100 law students in the last s

Transport committee  That's correct.

Transport committee  I think it depends on how you define infrastructure. We've seen how important these waterways are. They are fundamentally the natural infrastructure for Canadian communities. You cannot win back waterways across Canada if you don't make sure that environmental laws are respected.

Transport committee  They're the foundation of the community. Are you talking about man-made infrastructure or are you talking about the wealth and assets our communities are built on?