Put Peel on navigable waters protection list

The Peel River deserves to be protected under the new navigable waters law that kicks in next year, the federal NDP say.

The Yukon-N.W.T river is one of hundreds of Canadian rivers, streams and lakes that are going to lose federal oversight once the Navigable Waters Protection Act turns into the Navigation Protection Act in April.

The act was gutted by the Harper government, along with other environmental legislation, in the 2012 omnibus budget bill.

The current act regulates any “works constructed or placed in, on, over, under, through or across” any navigable water in Canada.

Right now a proposed bridge, pipeline or hydro dam on the Peel would fall under this act, requiring federal approval to interfere with a waterway. 

Come April, that will no longer be the case.

In fact only 62 rivers and 97 lakes in the whole country will still be governed by the navigable waters law.

This week the federal NDP continued its push to rectify that.

N.W.T. MP Dennis Bevington tabled a bill in the House of Commons, calling on the Harper government to include the Peel River on its list of important navigable waterways.

“After consulting this summer with people in the Mackenzie Delta and those in the Yukon, there was a great deal of support for this river’s protection,” Bevington told the House of Commons in Ottawa Oct. 23.

“This is one step in making an attempt to return this river to a status of some measure of protection, which means that in the case of a development on the river, the federal government would have a responsibility to ensure that the development was following good practices,” he said.

“This is a river that has great tourism and wilderness value and it is a river that has enormous significance to the Gwich’in people of the Northwest Territories and the Yukon.”

Bevington tabled a similar bill last spring asking that Canadian Heritage Rivers in the north – including the Peel’s Bonnet Plume – also get a place on its preferential list.

As it stands, only two rivers in the two territories made the cut - the Yukon and Mackenzie. There are also two N.W.T. lakes, Great Bear and Great Slave.

Yukoners are being urged to write Yukon Conservative MP Ryan Leef (ryan.leef@parl.gc.ca) and ask him to support Bevington’s bill.

Letter writers are encouraged to copy the Yukon Conservation Society (ycs@ycs.yk.ca) and Bevington (dennis.bevington@parl.gc.ca) so there’s a clear record of how many letters of support Leef receives.

You can track the status of Bill 543 at the Open Parliament website.