Water flow is a hot topic in my riding of Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke. The spring of 2019 now has the dubious distinction of being the worst in recent memory for flooding along the Ottawa River. Constituents are skeptical when the Prime Minister and the member from Ottawa blame every significant weather event on climate change.
They do not believe the Liberal Party leader when he claims a new tax on Canadians, the Liberal carbon tax, will stop the Ottawa River from flooding. The residents of the Ottawa Valley have a suspicion that recent flooding has been caused by either government policy or human error, or some combination of both. They want answers.
The Liberal Party has brought forward legislation like Bill C-68, that would place limitations on one of the cleanest, most renewable and most reliable sources of power, hydro-electricity. It produces almost no greenhouse gases. Canadian hydroelectricity is the envy of the world. Why would Canadians want to throw away that advantage?
A representative from Quebec, who is the president of WaterPower Canada, an organization that represents more than 60% of all hydro electricity produced in Canada, stated:
If Bill C-68 is passed in its current form, its impact on our industry’s ability to operate its current stations and build new ones will be catastrophic.
What caught my attention on Bill C-68 was the addition in committee of a new concept in Canadian law, the concept of “water flow” or, as it is referred to in other documents, “environmental flow”. It was added in subsection 2(2) to amend the Act.
The concept of water flows, or environmental flows, comes from the 2007 globalist document, the Brisbane Declaration. Like many globalist documents, the words written do not match with reality. While it is next to impossible to build any new hydroelectric power dams with this new legal concept, as identified by the president of WaterPower Canada, the declaration envisages the eventual removal of existing dams in favour of flood plain restoration and the return of free-flowing rivers.
The question now being asked is whether the federal government caused the flooding. Were the dam operators instructed to hold back water in anticipation of Bill C-68 when they should have been releasing water to meet the federal government’s new definitions of fish habitat? These are questions my constituents feel can only be answered by an independent inquiry.