Changes coming to federal Fisheries regulations could mean that some property owners will be able to expand or build close to water that does not support aquatic life.
Last month, Federal Fisheries Minister Keith Ashfield announced the government's plans to amend the Fisheries Act and related policy that currently governs "all bodies of water where fish live -- or could live."
Currently, a 30-metre set back is required from any water, regardless of whether or not it has or has ever had any fish.
B.C. farmers who protested in front of the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) headquarters in downtown Vancouver in April, are among the voices that led to the change. At the protest, farmers told of digging ditches to drain their land, only to be told by the DFO that they can no longer farm within 30 metres of those ditches because they are regarded as potential fish habitat. Some were forbidden from dredging their own ditches, leading to floods on their property and hurting their ability to graze cattle and grow crops, farmers said.
Proximity to a dormant old irrigation channel can also mean that if the current property ever burnt down it can never be replaced if it is less than 30 metres from the ditch.
Under the current Federal Fisheries Act, no distinction is drawn between oceans, lakes, and rivers that support fish and small bodies of water. To prove a ditch does not contain fish can be a lengthy and costly affair. "In order to prove an absence of fish, the entire length must be sampled for fish since water flowing into fish habitat are also subject to [regulations]", according to the current standard.
A meandering, dormant ditch bisecting a building lot, therefore, can make the land nearly worthless because of setbacks totaling 60 metres.
"That does not make sense to us, and frankly we don't think it makes sense to the majority of Canadians," Ashfield said.
