Along with farm fields and highway ditches. Under Bill C-45;
...RMs won't have to seek Transport Canada's permission to replace old bridges with culverts (steel pipes).
The switch cuts the cost of construction by about two-thirds, saving hundreds of thousands of dollars on each project.
John Lawson was reeve of the RM of Meadow Lake when it rebuilt a crossing on Alcott Creek that served a prime logging area. A larger culvert was installed, and the road modified.
Lawson considers the approval process that was required for that project an unnecessary burden and delay.
"Unless you were into doing a whole bunch of canoeing in water that's less than a foot deep, and willing to cross about 125 beaver dams per kilometre you wouldn't be doing too much navigation in that creek," Lawson said.
Read the whole thing.
Busted link. Actual link here.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/story/2013/01/07/sk-rms-idle-movement.html
"Meanwhile, for the Idle No More movement it’s less about technical details and more about their view of the general direction environmental protection is headed.
"'It brings into question Creator’s Law,' said Bellegarde.
"'That’s our job as indigenous peoples is to respect Mother Earth because we are of the land and we are of the water. And once waterways are affected, that really affects that relationship to the Creator’s Law and our inherent rights.'"
The bill's relationship to the Creator's Law is about as relevant as a proclamation from the pope.
Another CBC link to a relevant unbiased factual story?...wow...interesting times.
One can assume that the Federal beaurocrats that filled Oceans and Fisheries offices, and loved to power trip over the RM's will now be looking for real work??
Perhaps they are walking with the Idle No more people as we speak.
Pun intended.
Its always about the money, or the obscene squandering of taxpayers money without transparent accountability. The creeks and waterways are the convenient diversion needed to keep the media away from following the money. I was the Reeve of a RM, and can confirm that the extra costs and delays we had to incur as a result of the DFO regulations, greatly stalled our maintenance and replacement program.
I don't think that the Fathers of Confederation would have dreamed that the word Fisheries in the constitution would ever be applied to non-commercial fish habitat of the fresh water variety. The term Oceans and Fisheries probably meant fisheries in the ocean.
The other federal jurisdiction of "Navigable Waters" would have referred to commercial navigation on the major rivers only. In the west, the only commercial navigation that I know of is from Winnipeg to Lake Winnipeg (minor) and from Fort McMurray to the Arctic. In the past, there were paddle wheelers on the Athabasca and Saskatchewan systems.
Reducing fisheries officers is a start to bringing the cost of fish management to less than a multiple of fisheries revenue.
bluetech, exactly.
Bo, I agree completely. I was on council for 34 years and Reeve for twelve, and so know what you are talking about. We had a number of midnight collapsed culvert repairs over the years.
DFO couldn't pour p*** out of a boot if the instructions were printed on the heel.
They did NOTHING when it mattered, with respect to protecting salmon producing streams in BC from logging companies running heavy machinery through them.
They fiddled while the East Coast cod collapsed.
But yet they have all kinds of resources to go after someone who throws a culvert into a drainage ditch or fine some farmer who clears the carp out of his flooded field!
Why do we need legislation like this? To protect us from clueless f***head bureaucrats!
Chip, chip, chip. The Conservatives slowly continue to chip away at the statist monolith built by decades of Liberal malfeasance. It took 50 years for the Libs to break this country; don't expect it to be fixed in one year, or five. But progress is being made.
Damn, this captcha sucks. Check out 2captcha, I think it's called. Instead of randomly-generated nonsense characters, it displays images of text scanned from old books, and actually works as a means of crowd-sourcing the digitizing of old texts. So it accomplished something useful besides verifying that it's a human behind the keyboard.
Fisheries and Oceans are no different than the cops who bully honest citizens while treating the career criminals with kid gloves. There was a guy I knew of in the interior who was fined $25,000 for digging a drainage ditch to prevent flooding,then when a few fish moved into it, was fined for attempting to close up the ditch.
A few years back,BCTV exposed Native Bands in the Fraser Valley were taking way more than their quota,even filmed it for the whole Province to see. There was a memorable shot of a warehouse with thousands of sockeye salmon on the tables,until a Native slammed the door and told the CTV crew to F*** off.
BCTV contacted F & O and their response was essentially,"no comment".
At the same time,they would bust and prosecute to the fullest extent of the law,any white person who dared to use a treble hook to catch the fish.
As Gord says, "chip,chip,chip". Before you know it,some semblance of sanity may return in this Country,provided we all work hard to make damned sure Harper gets elected next time around.
A few years ago we wanted to expand our volunteer fire hall. There was a small run off creek behind it that dried up every summer. Yup...you know the rest of the story. DFO felt very important that day and expansion with donated money never happened. Money is still there so maybe we can proceed now that we can tell them to F**k off. THANK YOU Mr. Harper.
But what about the poor DFO bueaufats that earn $100,000 a year driving around in $50,000 dollar brand new trucks filling out paperwork and being worse than useless all day long?
Oh the humanity!!!
I have to agree with gordinkneehill, the bureaucracy has been expanding since the late 60s. Now the CPC is slowly grinding it down by cutting funding to all departments using the shield of fiscal responsibility. This is making the mandarins focus on what absolutely has to be done and pare down the needless stuff.
I can't believe how many lefties think Harper is not smart, though I am grateful for their underestimation of him. He is playing a long game, slowly shifting the culture away from socialism.
captcha seems to work ok for me. Course I screwed up this time....
In Alberta, the Highway department( they keep changing names :( ) had a BRIDGE branch that seemed to know what they're doing.
Large >900 mm culverts, multi-plate etc. No I didn't work there.
I can tell you many stories where Oceans and fisheries cost RMs fortunes in delays cause some snot nosed official decided that culverts should be moved on dry creek beds because they thought they knew where the water should run for two weeks in spring with not a fish in sight.
Oceans and fisheries caused most RMs to do work on weekends. Their $87.00 a day meal allowance was not enough.
West of North Battleford they hired students for two summers to look for fish in the dry creek beds and made Highways build the roadway wider through ravines in winter so as not to harm the creek chubs that lived in small ponds during the summer. They also said fish would not navigate through culverts at the ski hill and made the RM build an expensive bridge to replace the old one. An extra $90,000 expense.
How will we survive without these high paid jobs!
Native concern about insignificant water courses is likely about zero; consultation over such watercourses & the opportunity for extortion coming about through such "consultation" is probably a different matter.
Well it's more humane than shooting them.
Not to worry, in Ontario at least the local conservation authority will step in and create obstacles.
Harper is doing his job. s ive said for years now bit by bit . He s cutting ut te urocracys flow of money. Plus alllowing more local autonomy. The days of Ottawa running everything are being blocked.
Now the CPC is slowly grinding it down by cutting funding to all departments using the shield of fiscal responsibility.
Lets wait until C-45 passes before celebrating. And this still doesn't make up for the hundreds of millions of dollars of corporate welfare and tens of billions of dollars of private sector debt guarantee. With Harper, it's one step forward and several back at best.
Tides Canada and the Agenda 21 crowd are not happy.
LAS...try to keep up, eh?
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/12/14/budget-bill-c-45/
Is this payback for all the meddling Oceans & Fisheries has done on the Prairies since the Chretien era began? It's no secret that the Saskatchewan government is unhappy with Fisheries & Oceans. It and SARM probably put the heat on the Conservative MPs over this and the Conservatives can't afford to lose the prairie vote like Mulroney did. I recall that Fisheries and Oceans had a cutback in staff back in August.
http://saskatoon.ctvnews.ca/two-federal-branches-to-close-in-sask-15-people-out-1.908947
Fishing Lake north of Foam Lake is a microcosm of the damage that can be inflicted on the citizens by an out of control bureaucracy like DOF. Fishing Lake naturally drains east into the Whitesand Lake which drains into the Whitesand river which finally drains into the Assiniboine River. When flooding first occurred at the lake it was decided that the channel between Fishing and Whitesand Lake should be cleared of brush to increase the flow rate out of the lake. Fish were spotted and because those fish might make their way into Manitoba DOF halted work on the project. Rather than allow the channel an earthen berm was built along the shore of the lake. Millions were spent on the berm and millions were spent by property owners to raise their cabins and homes. The lake continued to flood and when the adjacent Fishing Lake Indian Reserve started to be effected by the flooding the channel between Fishing and Whitesand Lake was allowed to be built. Fishing lake is a shadow of its former glory. Many home owners gave up and pulled out, the trees around the lake were killed by the excessive water and the lake water is now green with algae in the summer because of all the clay that was dumped into the water. All for what?
Harper is the worst thing to ever hit Canada, the environment who cares, dril dril dril lets frack those holes with the most toxic chemicals known to man, exon loves me.Lets Cut cut cut spending,(not really) without addressing the fiat economy. This approach makes things much worse.The banks robbing and steeling your money, with the government blessing; and of course those idiot westerners, that put these clowns in office cover their eyes, and say its all good.
"steeling your money"
I'm not familiar with that process but it must be kind of like tin foil hatting your head.
"steeling your money"
I'm not familiar with that process.
Obviously not, you probably don't even understand how money is created, basic economics.
or how the banks benefit from the fiat economy, at your expense.Simple concepts that can not be understood by a simple mind.
@ Peter
Did Liz May write that all down for you or did you come up with that on your own. Since you still can't spell the little words (drill) I can speculate you are in College and have never worked for a living. You should quit while you're ahead, do a little research and come back when you grow up. Or at least tell us why Westerners are idiots and how the banks are "steeling" our money , as well as which "clown" you feel should run our economy. This is after all a debate site. Give 'er your best shot.
dril dril dril lets frack those holes with the most toxic chemicals known to man...
Yeah, CO2, N2 and sand are really toxic...
@ Peter...Please get more education so that you learn to spell properly and form a lucid comment.
One of the biggest jokes regarding DOF was right in Ottawa's front yard. When the Ottawa Senators wanted to build their arena in Kanata the project was delayed for a fairly long time because the DOF had to do a review concerning the effects of the project on the Carp River. Now the Carp River was about 8 feed wide and a foot or two deep at the point where the arena was to be build. It was a ditch yet it was governed by the navigable waters act. I remember a columnist outlining the stupidity of this "overview" and wondering if a tall ship would sail up the Carp River as part of the arena's opening ceremonies. In the end millions of dollars were wasted by the taxpayer and developer over a ditch.
A great example of how gov't wastes money on insignificant issues when real problems continue to be swept under the rug (Attiwapiskat!!)
Navigable waters was expanded by the courts to include recreational craft quite some time ago. Basically if a canoe or kayak can use it, it's navigable.
The biggest problem of the Navigable Waters Protection Act (NWPA)was being linked to the Canadian environmental Assessment Act (CEAA)by the lawlist triggers, so an approval for a bridge, no matter how minor triggered a CEAA review, regardless if the officer wanted to or not and the officer could not issue until that was complete. Navigation is a Common law right and the purpose of the Act was to protect that right and to prevent hazards before they became one. The problem in anything infrastructure related is that if you do your job right nobody notices, because things don't go wrong. The NWPA had expanded and in fact it was regional NWPA officers who came up with various policies to reduce paperwork for proponents which eventually became the Minor Works and Waters Orders. Another issue is that a decision by the Crown often triggers the duty to consult, which ties the hands of the officer reviewing the project until the consultation is deemed (by others) to be complete.
With the new Act, when it comes into force all of the waterways remain potentially navigable and the liability falls upon the builder for any impacts on navigation or if someone gets injured on your work you are on the hook. So if someone or some group does not like the bridge you are building they can get a court injunction which will halt the work till it's settled or you may be ordered by the courts to rebuild it at different height or move it. As they say be careful what you wish for.
@ Colin
All anyone wished for is a bit of common sense. Bill 45 goes a small step in that direction. Navigable waterways are one thing. Fields ,ditches and run off creeks are another. It was out of control with too much power going to many a moron's head. I agree with the old adage "be careful what you wish for". This was a wish come true for anyone who has been abused by these power tripping idiots.