Many participants in the long, but ultimately successful, struggle to stop the Island Airport bridge will recall that the absence of an approval for the bridge under the Navigable Waters Protection Act  was the sole remaining barrier to the bridge being built before David Miller was elected. If it had not been there, the bridge may well have been underway prior to that election, and our work would be very different today. 
    
CommunityAIR argued that no compensation should flow  - to the TPA, or to Porter – since NWPA approval was not in place until after well after David Miller was elected and Council made its decision to cancel the bridge. In our view, that also meant that no damages, in law, were possible. While Transport Canada went ahead anyway, and gave away $35 million to the TPA and Porter,  the existence of that Act provided a useful tool for communities interested in protecting their waterways. 

    

Now the Tories have decided to amend that Act to grant the Minister of the Environment the sole authority to determine what constitutes a “significant interference to navigation”. to create “classes of works” and “classes of navigable waters”, and exempt them from all or part of the Act. They also removed prior reference to the four named works of the Act –bridge, causeway, dam, and boom, which by their very nature interfere with navigation. 
    
As Lake Ontario Waterkeeper says: With this change, decisions about Canada’s waterways will be based on politics and financial clout rather than science or long-term socio-economic needs. For more information , see http://www.waterkeeper.ca/2009/02/11/research-conclusions-regarding-the-amended-navigable-waters-protection-act-as-included-in-the-budget-implementation-act-bill-c-10/ and  

    
The amendments are already in the Senate – the Sierra Club has a handy way of letting Senators know that this change is wrongheaded: http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/5654/t/3791/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=1092THIS 
    
NOTE COMES FROM THE SIERRA CLUB OF CANADA

    Dear Supporter,    Save our Waterways!  Tell the Senate not to leave us up the creek without a paddle.The federal government has included drastic and harmful amendments to the Navigable Waters Protection Act (NWPA), in Part 7 of the Budget Implementation Act, Bill C-10. The bill is now going to the Senate.Please take a moment to take action at http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/5654/t/3791/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=1092  
    
The NWPA establishes that, if someone wants to build something in, on, around, under, over, or through a navigable waterway, such projects are subject to an assessment of the impacts on navigation (ability to canoe, kayak, go rafting, etc) and an environmental assessment before they can be approved. That's reasonable. But the government wants to change the act to leave all that to the discretion of the Minister instead.
    
These amendments to the NWPA jeopardize both public access to and environmental health of Canadian waterways.Our best hope now is for Canada's Senate (the Chamber of Sober Second Thought) to remove Part 7 on the NWPA from Bill C-10, so it can be dealt with in greater depth as a separate piece of legislation with full and adequate public stakeholder consultation.
    
Help us send a strong message to the Senate - lend your voice, speak for rivers!We have made it easy - please take a moment to take action at
    
http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/5654/t/3791/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=1092