Fishing Trip Cancelled: Access rights to navigable streams, rivers denied
The heritage rights of anglers, hunters, cottagers, and paddlers to access our waterways are under attack. Changes to the Navigable Waters Protection Act (NWPA) mean that countless streams, lakes, rivers, and other waterways have lost their protection under the law and can be permanently changed without any environmental review.
Amendments to the NWPA in the 2009 federal budget gave the Minister of Transport arbitrary power to exempt certain “works” from assessment or oversight – works like dams, bridges, booms and causeways. And that power is not to be balanced with any public consultation, transparent disclosure or review of any kind.
Changes allow the Minister to set up an arbitrary “class system” for waterways, and exempt them from the Act – meaning that no review or environmental assessment will be needed for development on or around them.
The effects of gutting the NWPA will be felt by everyone from grandparents taking kids fishing to friends going for a canoe trip on a local river. But it’s not just recreational and outdoors communities that will feel the sting: the traditional rights of our First Nations peoples and the public at large are being sacrificed as well.
Under the previous version of the NWPA, any body of water that was deemed navigable could be accessed to the high water mark without that being considered trespassing. Under the new version of the act, a natural body of water is considered Navigable only when the Minister of Transport deems it so. This is a dramatic change for a country that was explored, and largely defined, by traveling our waterways.
Stephen Harper’s Conservatives, supported by the Liberals, are abandoning the government’s responsibility to protect our public rights to navigation and our wilderness in favour of unchecked development. They say that the current environmental regulations are too much “red tape” for developers to bother with. They say that “minor waterways” should be excluded from this protection and from our traditional navigation rights. Canada’s hunters, anglers, paddlers, and First Nations feel differently. They see that it’s now open season on spawning grounds, on natural aquatic nurseries, on creeks and streams teeming with fish and other aquatic life. And open season on our historic rights to access our own natural heritage.
Join us in calling for a reversal of the changes made to the NWPA:
- Restore environmental assessments
- Remove the Minister’s new arbitrary discretionary powers
- Eliminate the “minor waterways” classification and exempted types of “works”
- Preserve our traditional access rights, and the right to enjoy our natural heritage
Sign the NWPA Petition: www.ispeakforcanadianrivers.ca
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