“They’re saying there’s going to be an exclusive club for environmental protection and the rest of Canadians, well, you know, you boat users, you lake users, well, you can just buzz off,” said NDP MP Charlie Angus on Tuesday.
A Citizen investigation, published Monday, found that 90 per cent of all the lakes that are earmarked for continuing federal waterways protection have shoreline in Conservative ridings. Just 27 per cent of the lakes are contiguous with NDP or Liberal ridings. (The totals add up to more than 100 per cent because some lakes overlap more than one riding.)
Among the protected lakes are twelve in the Ontario riding held by Treasury Board President Tony Clement, including several with expensive property frequented by Hollywood celebrities and NHL players.
“Are you telling me that 12 lakes in the small riding of Muskoka are worthy of that much protection when the rest of Canada is getting nothing?” Angus said.
In Question Period, Angus accused the government of creating a “Goldie Hawn Property Protection Act,” a reference to the American actress who lives on one of the designated Muskoka lakes.
Clement told reporters that he has 8,000 lakes in his riding and said he had no role in choosing which would be protected.
The Conservatives contend their changes to the Navigable Waters Protection Act will free communities from the red tape that is required for federal approval for even minor projects such as bridges and docks.
“The act has created a bureaucratic black hole, holding up simple projects that do not impede navigation,” Transport Minister Denis Lebel told the House of Commons
The government’s second omnibus budget bill, introduced earlier this month, would strip back the requirement for federal approval for development on most of the thousands of lakes and rivers across the country.
Instead, the renamed Navigation Protection Act specifies a much shorter list of 97 lakes, 62 rivers and three oceans that would retain the protection.
While the ocean and river shorelines are adjacent to many ridings and provinces across the country, the protected lakes are unevenly distributed, with most falling in Ontario cottage country and the B.C interior — areas of mostly Conservative representation.
The budget bill names 68 protected lakes in Ontario but only four in Quebec.
Lebel read out statements from various groups supportive of the revised law, such as the Canadian Construction Association, which said it would help builders predict requirements for new projects.
He also cited statements of support from Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities.
In a letter sent to the Citizen on Tuesday, Lebel said that the selection of lakes and other bodies of water was based on an analysis of Canadian Hydrographic Service nautical charts and Statistics Canada freight data.
“A new streamlined approach to navigation law will cut red tape while resources are focused on Canada’s busiest waterways,” he wrote.
But Lebel’s department also said it did a “qualitative analysis” that considered the historical importance of each waterway, its proximity to heavily-populated areas and other unexplained factors.
Lebel also claimed the data used in the Citizen story was “cherry picked” because it looked only at lakes and not the oceans and rivers which will also be protected, such as the St. Lawrence Seaway, which cuts through dozens ridings.
“Any analysis that deliberately excludes these waters can only be used to create a dramatic headline and concoct a conspiracy theory,” he wrote.
Lebel did not explain the disproportionate number of lakes designated for protection in Ontario compared to other provinces, or why Conservative ridings seem to be the big winners.
NDP leader Thomas Mulcair said the distribution was totally absurd and said the government appeared to have no objective criterion to justify the choice of the lakes they will protect.
Original Article
Source: ottawa citizen
Author: GLEN MCGREGOR
No comments:
Post a Comment