trent-severn waterway speech

Private Members’ Business

October 04- 2006

Mr. Barry Devolin (Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes-Brock, CPC)

Mr. Speaker, it is also an honour for me to rise this evening and take part in this debate.  The Trent-Severn Waterway cuts right across the middle of my riding,  It is a big issue to many people in my riding, both along the waterway and north of that. 

I am not going to go into the description of the waterway.  My colleagues have done that very ably already both in the first hour of debate and as well this evening.  The member for Don Valley West talked about some of the characteristics of the waterway, how large it is, how important it is and the importance of some of the heritage. 

My colleague, the member for Barnaby-Douglas has also touched on several of those issues.  I did not know that he was originally from Ontario and had actually spent time along the Trent-Severn probably in my riding.

It also would appear that if the Liberal and NDP parties are supporting this motion that it will probably pass. I sincerely hope that it does and I hope that the government and the minister will proceed with it and I am optimistic in that regard.

I believe that it is time to conduct a comprehensive review of the Trent-Severn Waterway.  There are really two parts of this system.  There is the waterway itself which is the part that everyone thinks about, and that is the recreational canal that stretches from Georgian Bay at Port Severn through central Ontario down to Trenton and into Lake Ontario.

However there is also a second part of this waterway this is very important and that is what is referred to as the reservoir lakes.  Most of these are in Haliburton County which is my home.  These are the lakes that over the course of the summer water is drawn down from them to maintain a static or constant level in the waterway.

For those who actually live on the Trent-Severn Waterway itself, their water level does not change at all but the reason it does not change is because the system draws water from Haliburton.  As a resident of Haliburton, as a resident on the system and as a former realtor in that area who sold cottages to people, I am very aware of water level issues and how that affect recreational users in Haliburton County.

First, I want to say I support the need for this review and I look forward to it taking place.  I would like to offer my advice to the minister and the government if they go ahead with this on how they ought to conduct or structure this review.  I would argue that there are two principles that need to be put forward. The first is that we need to ensure environmental sustainability.  There are a wide range of environmental issues that arise when we talk about the Trent-Severn.

I think it is important for  people to realize that more than 100 years ago nature in central Ontario was altered when this canal system was created.  The reality that exists today is not natural to what was there 200 years ago but it is the new reality.  I think we need to recognize that the water system of the Trent-Severn exists.  It is there.  It must continue to be operated and maintained.  Abandoning it is not an option even in a theoretical sense.  This waterway must stay in operation, must be maintained and we must deal with the environmental issues that arise, some of them as a direct consequence of the fact that the waterway is there.

The second principle that I would like to put forward, and this follows up on the point that the member for Don Valley West made is that we must also protect heritage values.  Some of those heritage values are natural.  Some of them are from our aboriginal history.  I know there are places along the waterway where there are paintings that date back hundreds or thousands of years on the rock and that is very important.  There is also heritage in terms of more recent history.  In fact many of the locks themselves are historic sites.

It is quite amazing that something built over 100 years ago still works.  This is and operating system.  My colleague mentioned the two hydraulic lift locks.  The famous one is in Peterborough but the equally impressive and only a slightly smaller one is in Kirkfield that most people do not know about.  Those are tourist attractions.  People come to see them,  but not only tourists in terms of families, but actually engineers come to look at them and marvel at how a system that basically just uses the weight of the water to push the hydraulic lift locks up and down works so well.

I would also like to set out three what I would call priorities for the study and I encourage the government to consider these carefully.  The first is public safety.  There are 160 dams on this system.

Some of these dams do not look very impressive when one stops the car to look at them.  They only become impressive when one realizes that if the lake level has been raised by six feet, eight feet or ten feet and we multiply that by how many acres of water are behind it, we realize that if the dam ever let go what the  consequences would be downstream.

During the first hour of debate one of the members from the Bloc suggested that the member for Simcoe North, the sponsor, may have a conflict because his family operates a business on the system.  I must declare that I may also have a conflict in this regard because I actually live below one of these dams.  I have stood in my own backyard, looked at the river and tried to decide that if the Drag Lake dam let go, I am pretty sure I would lose my whole backyard but I think the house would be safe because it is on the side of a hill.

I believe that public safety is the first priority.  I believe that each of those dams should be inspected for structural integrity.

I have no reason to believe that there is anything wrong with these dams.  I think the staff do and excellent job.  They visually inspect them on a regular basis but I also know that there is modern technology akin to an x-ray that can actually look at these dams and determine whether they are structurally sound.

Infrastructure failure is never a story until it happens and unfortunately this past weekend we had a tragic example of that in Montreal.  All I can say is that if one of these dams ever let go, the consequences would be far greater.

My second priority that I would like to lay out is to look at the interests of the communities and the property owners along the system.  There are many towns and villages.  There are literally thousands of property owners.  Property in this are has become very expensive and I can say that people moving into the area, retiring in the area or buying cottages, when they are paying $300,000, $400,000, $500,000 and $600,000 for waterfront property, they want water there.  When something happens downstream and they draw the lakes down by six feet or eight feet, and all of a sudden the beach disappears, and the dock is high and dry, I can say that those people are not very happy.

I think it is really important that the communities and the property owners along the system, and I am saying in particular those who live on the reservoir lakes and who have to deal with these dramatic changes in water level, that their interests are carefully considered and are put near the top of the priorities.

The third priority that I would identify is that of visitors and other users.  As has been mentioned, this is a common and popular tourist destination for people in the GTA and southern Ontario, whether they are boat owners and they are actually boating on the system or whether families are going up to use public beaches or the parks along where these locks exist.

Visitors and the way that they impact the tourism economy is very important.  An example is the town of Bobcaygeon, which is on the Trent-Severn.  It is very popular site for tourists to go to stop, to eat lunch, to shop.  Bigley’s shoe store there is famous.  Every woman in Ontario knows where Bigley’s shoe store is because most of them have visited it a time or two.

Last year when there was an interruption in the operation of the locks that had an immediate and detrimental impact on a lot of merchants and businesses along the system.  I think that how we develop this, how we market this diamond in the rough as I have heard it referred to, is really important in that we let people know that it is there and we encourage people to visit.

Other users is a broad category and I probably do not have time to get into all this tonight but as has been mentioned already, hydro electric power is something that is generated at many places along the system.  There is much evidence that with improved technology we could probably generate more power from the same facilities.  There is new technology such as run-of-the-river that can generate green power but I think it is important for people to realize that if we  augment the power generating capacity, and that draws more water, we are actually exacerbating the problems that the property owners have with lack of water in front of their properties.