The Liberals have promised to review, restore and improve the NPA but it seems the emphasis is on environmental protection rather than navigability... here is the actual quote from the platform statement, notice that navigability is not the term being used. And what does "more modern safeguards" actually mean?
Quote:
Stephen Harper’s changes to the Fisheries Act, and his elimination of the Navigable Waters Protection Act, have weakened environmental protections. We will review these changes, restore lost protections, and incorporate more modern safeguards.
Maybe not a real difference on the ground but we'll see. Something that could really conflict with paddler's interests is the promise to provide $2 billion for the Low Carbon Economy Trust, which will be applied to reducing CO2 emissions. This could mean more money to fund hydroelectric projects on lakes and rivers and that could be argued as being good for the environment since this will displace CO2-emitting fossil fuel based electrical generation.
The Liberals have also promised to make environmental assessments more effective in ensuring environmental protection, including consideration of climate change, so if after the Liberals' review the NPA can again trigger an environmental assessment, the EA may in fact see environmental protection differently than it did in the past, depending on what changes actually are made (again possibly seeing the need to reduce CO2 being the main issue affecting law and policy here, and what happens on the ground).
Trudeau is pro-pipeline, being for both Keystone and Energy East, and most likely any other new ones being planned... that could affect rivers and lakes.
Politicians seem to overpromise and underdeliver regularly, so I'm sure that many will be watching with a great deal of interest on how all this will play out.