More questions and criticisms are surfacing about the Conservative government's apparent move to rewrite the Fisheries Act.
On Wednesday, New Westminster MP Fin Donnelly raised the issue again in the House of Commons, following a Burnaby NOW story on information leaked to retired biologist Otto Langer.
The "Langer leak" suggests the Tories are quietly rewriting the rules on protecting fish by removing the word "habitat" from the Fisheries Act.
"Mr. Speaker, a leaked document has revealed a new Conservative plan to attack the Fisheries Act. It shines light on the government's plan to gut important environmental protections," Donnelly said Wednesday. "Eliminating habitat protection will set us back decades, making it easier to ram through big industrial projects, like the Enbridge pipeline, which we know will have a devastating impact on the environment."
Donnelly asked Fisheries Minister Keith Ashfield if the government is "to gut the habitat fisheries."
Ashfield replied that current fisheries policies go well beyond what is required to protect fish and fish habitat.
"I can give some examples of that. Last year in Saskatchewan, a long-running country jamboree was nearly cancelled after newly flooded fields were deemed fish habitat by fisheries officials. In Richelieu, the applications of rules blocked a farmer from draining his flooded field."
Ashfield said the government is looking at policies but no decision has been made.
"I can tell the member across that we have not made any policy changes. We are currently looking at the policies that are in place and how we can improve them to make it better for fish habitat and the fisheries," he said.
Ashfield's Saskatchewan example of the Fisheries Act gone awry was ridiculous, according to Langer.
"It would be like an RCMP officer abusing his power and stopping an old lady for doing something wrong, and then (Prime Minister Stephen) Harper standing up and saying we have to get rid of the Criminal Code of Canada," he said.
Langer said the Fisheries Act changes were unbelievable and that he and others were still in shock.
"Basically you're totally disabling the pillars of environmental protection in Canada," he said.
"I think they are doing it because Harper never understood and really cared about the environment. And coming from Calgary doesn't help much at all, with all the pressure from the oil industry to just develop and not have any environmental hurdles."
Langer worked for more than three decades for the federal government and said the pipeline industry complained for years about B.C.
"They just couldn't run dredges through streams to run pipelines through it, but in Alberta they could. We'd hear that constantly, so this is a 15-year battle to water down the Fisheries Act and have minimal protection across Canada."
Ashfield's office sent a statement to the NOW saying government has not made any decision, but that "federal fisheries policies designed to protect fish are outdated and unfocused in terms of balancing environmental and economic realities."
Langer suggested the proposed change would unravel habitat protection that took years to establish.
"When we look at the Fraser Estuary, people like myself worked hard to get the red, yellow and green colour-coding in to protect shorelines. That's all based on habitat. In a sense, you lose a basis of protection in the Fraser Estuary to Arctic lakes. If a mining company wants to use an Arctic lake for a tailings pond, there's almost nothing there to stop them."
To read the full Langer leak, go to Jennifer Moreau's blog at www.burnabynow.com and click on the Opinion tab.
