Farmers have welcomed proposed changes to the federal Fisheries Act as a step toward ending harassment of farmers by fisheries officers when drainage and irrigation ditches become inadvertent fish habitat.
“This has been a real irritant for many farmers,” said Keystone Agricultural Producers president Dough Chorney.
“They have found DFO (Department of Fisheries and Oceans) officers telling them when or if they could drain ditches if there were fish, even though the Fisheries Act should be protecting the habitat of commercial fishery areas and not farm ditches.”
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He said the threat of DFO intervention in their water management was “just another level of bureaucracy to deal with, and one that did not make sense. Many producers felt targeting them as fish habitat managers was an unrealistic expectation to put on them.”
Canadian Federation of Agriculture president Ron Bonnett said the change would encourage farmers to work with government to preserve real fish habitat rather than targeting farmers.
However, opposition MPs and environmental critics said it was an attempt by the Conservatives to weaken environmental and fish habitat protection by allowing the fisheries minister to decide what are fish habitats worth protecting.
In the House of Commons, British Columbia New Democrat Fin Donnelly accused fisheries minister Keith Ashfield of proposing the changes to make it easier for large industry, including pipeline companies, to destroy fish habitat.
“The minister’s claim that his sweeping changes to the Fisheries Act are all about farmers’ ditches smelled rotten from the start,” he said.
The proposed changes to the Fisheries Act were included in a massive budget implementation bill tabled in the Commons April 26.
The government said current legislation does not differentiate between potential damage to legitimate fish habitat and “low risk” activities such as farm irrigation ditches, building a dock at the cottage or municipal efforts to clean drains.
Agriculture minister Gerry Ritz quickly came to Ashfield’s defence during a conference call with reporters from a trade mission to North Africa.
“We have heard from Canadians across the country that the current rules protecting fish and fish habitat go well beyond their intended conservation goals, bordering sometimes on the bizarre,” he said.
For example, he said DFO officers suggested stopping a large country music festival at Craven, Sask., last year because surrounding fields were flooded and had become fish habitat that could be damaged by the thousands who attend the festival and park their cars.
“We want to move DFO out of the business of reviewing every activity on every body of water regardless of potential impact to focus on activities that pose a significant threat,” said Ritz.
“For routine and low-impact projects, we will set clear standards and regulations to guide you in your projects without harming fish and fish habitat.”
Critics vowed to fight the proposals as another Conservative sellout to anti-environmental big business.
For Chorney, it just represents common sense.
For years, farm organizations have complained to the Commons agriculture committee about what they considered the absurdity of farm water management canals and ditches being subject to DFO regulation.
“There may be fish there, but it’s not a traditional natural habitat,” he said.
“I just think the government is trying to inject some common sense and I applaud that.”
The recently formed Saskatchewan Farm Stewardship Association, which deals with water issues, agreed.
Executive director Warren Kaeding said farmers could accept DFO in a consultative role but not as an enforcement authority.
He used the example of ditches in Manitoba, not far from his east-central Saskatchewan farm, which have been in place for 80 years.
“It’s perceived that 100 years ago there might have been a fish there and fisheries and oceans wanted these guys to close up these old ditches,” Kaeding said. “That’s an issue. We’ve kind of evolved so that these ditches are in place and they’ve served a purpose and everybody can accept that.”
On the other hand, when the Keadings wanted to clear a channel running through three rural municipalities toward the Qu’Appelle Valley, DFO had to sign off on the project to make sure fish habitat wasn’t affected in the Qu’Appelle lakes and river system.
“I can understand that,” he said.
The Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities also applauded the changes. For years the organization has asked for change to distinguish between water bodies that provide fish habitat and those that don’t.
President David Marit said the legislation has held up projects and added costs to routine municipal road work. Larger culverts had to be installed to accommodate fish whether fish were present or not.
“Saskatchewan rural municipalities have been paying inflated costs to accommodate the provisions of this act for over 10 years,” he said in a news release.
Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan president Norm Hall is also pleased about proposed changes.
“It’s about time there was some common sense brought into DFO,” he said. “Trying to treat creeks that normally run six weeks a year as navigable waters …was ridiculous. Nobody’s sad to see them go.”
