Steven Fletcher, the minister of state for transport, couldn’t have been more emphatic earlier this week when he asserted in the House that the Navigable Waters Protection Act “has always been and remains about navigation and navigation only.” What the act isn’t about, and has never been about, Fletcher insisted, is “environmental protection.”

He was responding with exasperation to a question on Monday from the NDP’s Peggy Nash about why the government is amending the act in a way that means tens of thousands of lakes and rivers will no longer be covered by it. In Nash’s view, that means weakening environmental protection for those bodies of water. Fletcher suggested she just doesn’t get what the law is about.

Continue…