Always navigation, never the environment

Opposition hammers transport minister about changes to Navigable Waters Protection Act.

by Samantha Bayard and Ish Theilheimer

OTTAWA, Straight Goods News, October 25, 2012 — the Harper government's newest omnibus bill includes changes to the Navigable Waters Protection Act that critics claim will help big corporate polluters by ignoring environmental concerns and tossing aside longstanding rules.

Today in the House, NDP environment critic Megan Leslie grilled transport minister Denis Lebel about changes to the Navigable Waters Protection Act that drop under the legislation. The act, Lebel told the House, "has always been about navigation, not the environment."

Later, Megan Leslie told Straight Goods News, "if you look at how [the act] was written, it would actually trigger environmental assessment when certain things happen. So that's being stripped out and the Conservatives won't talk about this because they don't want to talk about the environment."

Megan Leslie explains the changes to the Navigable Waters Protection Act.

Leslie said the legislation has been altered to suit the interests of industry. "As you scratch the surface, you realize, oh right, this is about making sure there's no environmental oversight for big energy projects. Well I guess we should have guessed that."

Leslie said the word "environment" had been removed from a departmental website on which it had previously appeared. "I'm almost reluctant to talk about the series of events where they're been changing the websites, because I'm worried in ten minutes it's going to be different, because I can hardly keep up with what they're doing.

"First we had the minister's website, under the FAQs and we looked and the word environment was there 23 or 26 times, talking about how this act is there to protect the environment. Then I think the second step, the site was taken down full stop. Now to the best of my knowledge, it's back up but the word 'environment' has been stripped out."

In the House, NDP MP Dennis Bevington (Western Artic) brought up the still-unanswered question which rivers are protected and which aren't. "The Conservatives have excluded from protection many northern rivers which northerners rely on for navigation, such as the Nahanni River, the Liard River, most of the Yukon River, the Bear River and even the Slave River, which drains 80 percent of the water leaving Alberta and has been used for barging for more than 100 years. It is now excluded from protection. This could be opened up for a major power dam. Is it the government's intent to remove any controls and development on the Slave and these other rivers?," he asked.

© Copyright 2012 Ish Theilheimer and Samantha Bayard, All rights Reserved. Written For: StraightGoods.ca