Water Legislation Fails to Protect Every Lake, Every River
On February 8, 2018, the Liberal government introduced Bill C-69, a long-awaited bill that made sweeping changes to Canada’s water, environmental and energy legislation. In fact, Bill C-69 hands even more power to corporations in environmental, water, and energy decision making.
Bill C-69 includes three main new laws: the Impact Assessment Act (IAA), the Canadian Energy Regulator Act (CERA) and the Canadian Navigable Waters Act (CNWA). The new CNWA was supposed to restore the protections the Harper government removed from the 99% of lakes and rivers at the behest of Big Oil lobby groups. But Bill C-69 fails to restore protections and introduce modern safeguards, despite the Trudeau government’s repeated promises.
