Environment committee  This is a really important element of the new Canadian navigable waters legislation. I'm happy to explain. There are two components to the new definition. One, as you've mentioned, is the use for travel or transportation, including for the exercise of indigenous rights, but also

Environment committee  Temporary waterways such as ditches and irrigation channels are not intended to be captured by the definition, because they would not be for the purposes of travel.

Environment committee  There would need to be a test of reasonable likelihood of use for travel and transportation or exercise of indigenous rights. If it's a minor ditch or crevice that fills with water temporarily, that would not, in my opinion, fall under that definition. This is not the canoe test.

Environment committee  Perhaps I could spend a moment to talk about the linkages that do exist within the bill, the first one being that in the early planning stages the regulatory experts from the Department of Transport will form part of that phase and will be informing the regulatory plan and inform

Environment committee  I would just conclude by saying that at the back end of the process, there would not, for example, be an approval issued under the navigation legislation for a project that was on the project list and was requiring an impact assessment. That impact assessment would need to be com

Public Accounts committee  It's a good question. I think I would start by saying that we fully agree with and appreciate the recommendation of the Auditor General with respect to developing the outcome and the ultimate outcome benefits for Canadians from the projects. It will in fact inform the path forwar

Public Accounts committee  Madam Chair and committee members, good afternoon. I am pleased to be here today to speak about the Beyond the Border Action Plan and what we are doing at Transport Canada to address concerns raised in the Auditor General's report. In 2011, Canada and the United States issued t

Transport committee  No.

Transport committee  There was at the time a duplicate authority. There was authority under the Navigation Protection Act for the minister to regulate pipelines and there was also a duplicate authority to regulate pipelines under section 108 of the National Energy Board Act. The changes streamlined a

Transport committee  The National Energy Board regulates interprovincial and international pipelines. Where a pipeline remains within the boundaries of a province, it falls under the Navigation Protection Act.

Transport committee  Yes. Following the 2009 amendments, there were improvements in the timeliness of the NPA approvals. There was a significant reduction in applications, but then they began to increase again, so the demand for navigation protection approvals as a result of infrastructure projects a

Transport committee  No, I don't believe there was any desire to delay the projects. I believe it was an increase in workload because all 17,000 named waterways in Canada were subject to the act, so the workload.... In fact, streamlining the projects was an important process improvement, but there wa

Transport committee  I would say the tool that was introduced in 2014 was a move to a risk-based framework, which is consistent with other safety legislation where you assess the risks of different waterways and focus resources on the types of works and the types of waters that pose the greatest risk

Transport committee  Applications have reduced, obviously because of the narrowed focus of the legislation. The timeliness has increased. We don't have a backlog currently, and we are able to meet the timelines that we've committed to as part of the broad government review process, so there have been

Transport committee  I'm not aware of specific initiatives that have been undertaken to gather up that feedback at the time.