Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you very much. Good morning, Mr. Chair. Good morning, members of the committee. On behalf of the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters, our 100,000 members and our 740 member clubs across Ontario, thank you for affording us the opportunity to appear before you today t

Transport committee  I'll be happy to do so. Thank you, Mr. Hardie, for your comments. I'll put aside the political gymnastics in my response. Look, there are always two sides to every equation, as there are in this case. Are we here suggesting that the entire NPA be thrown out? Absolutely not. T

Transport committee  Any follow-up comments will go to all members of the committee, quite clearly, through the clerk.

Transport committee  Thank you, Mr. Hardie, for the question. I'm not a legislator. It's easy for us to sit here and say that all of this stuff should be included, but it's not always necessarily the easiest thing to put into effect. I go back to the balancing issue again. I agree that without a do

Transport committee  We have not, but I think that's a very interesting suggestion. As a follow-up to the discussions here today, I will certainly go back to the office and talk to our fish and wildlife management team. We could probably come up with a list of waterways that we would suggest be added

Transport committee  For our part, I'm not aware of any litigation that has occurred because of that. I can't speak to that. I'm sorry.

Transport committee  What would be the one thing? Certainly restoration of the protection of the water bodies that were covered in the previous legislation would be a good step forward, but again I must stress, I know some of the motivation behind the changes, and have to concede that in some cases t

Transport committee  In terms of the economic implications, I'll speak to our members' immediate concerns, which are hunting and fishing. Obviously, recreational fishing quite clearly requires waterways for the most part, unless you're shore fishing. There's also a huge number of duck hunters in this

Transport committee  Like my colleague here, I think I'd prefer to reflect on that, and certainly I would be happy to get back to you with any suggestions. I would say, going back to Mr. Hardie's statements earlier and those of the first questioner as well, it's interesting that there's nothing befor

Transport committee  The only other pertinent example that I could cite for you, and it is one that is.... Zip lines are an occasional thing that pop up. What we do find quite often on smaller waterways—and there are two or three that I passed driving between our head office in Peterborough and here—

Transport committee  Again, I'm not a litigator. Unlike you, I'm not a lawyer, but for instance, I'll use the Skootamatta River, or the Black River, or any of the rivers in Ontario that people frequently use for both recreational fishing and also for recreational canoeing and paddling. If a farmer—an

Transport committee  I'm not sure if this particular act is where it belongs, but I do think that federal oversight is lacking here because of the changes that were made. I think it's important not just because of the jurisdictional issues, but also because of the lead the federal government provides

Transport committee  That's an interesting concept. To answer the first part of your question, no, I can't give you an example of a court case that has occurred under that circumstance. To answer the second part of your question, I do believe that in large part it is probably because it is costly.

Transport committee  The only thing I would add to that, perhaps, is to agree with your comment that, at any time we have an opportunity to come before a committee such as this, although the previous member referred to the fact that there is nothing before the committee in terms of a piece of legisla

Transport committee  Thank you.