Policy & Positions Manual
Provincial Issues - Office of the Premier
Creating a Responsive Mechanism to Protect Communities’ Shared Use of River Waters (2009)
Jurisdiction for BC’s rivers is currently shared by a number of departments and agencies. While this is understandable given the multiplicity of opportunities and threats to which our rivers are subject, the overlap of responsibility has produced a labyrinthine process for enabling communities to create or modify legislation pertaining to the shared use of our rivers. As a result, it is nearly impossible for communities to ensure that river use balances and respects the competing needs of private enterprise, public infrastructure, ecological stewardship, and recreational use.
There is a need for increased collaboration among the responsible agencies, leading to the creation of a streamlined mechanism responsive to community needs. In the absence of this coordination, our rivers will continue to be managed by multiple agencies such that there is no single, effective, and efficient means for communities to ensure that shared river use occurs on the basis of mutual respect for competing needs. A “single window service” akin to FrontCounter BC or BizPal, which would enable municipalities to address local concerns regarding public waterways, would provide a suitable model for emulation.
Moreover, the amendments to the Navigable Waters Protection Act (NWPA), passed as part of the last Budget Implementation Act, will threaten the public right to navigation and the principle of shared use of public waters, particularly for recreational users. The amendments empower the Transport Minister to exclude certain classes of projects and bodies of water from environmental assessment; “minor works” and “minor waters,” respectively. While the Chamber supports the principle of reducing government redundancy, and acknowledges that the amendments purport not to disrupt existing inter-departmental assessment triggers, the public right to navigation, which is central to the principle of shared use of our waterways, is a federal responsibility which does not fall within the purview of the other inter-departmental assessment triggers. The Federal Government’s authority to conduct environmental reviews includes, within its scope, unique functions and the protection of a principle which cannot be reassigned, let alone abrogated.
THE CHAMBER RECOMMENDS
That the Provincial Government authorize its Intergovernmental Relations Secretariat to lead negotiations on the inter-jurisdictional control of BC’s rivers, with the goal of developing a responsive “single window service” mechanism to enable communities to create and modify regulations on the shared use of public waterways effectively and efficiently.
