|
A navigable water is a water body designated by a government authority as a navigable water for the purposes of managing development over, under, and adjacent to it in a manner that will reasonably protect the navigable water for transportation, commercial, or recreational uses.
For further clarity, a navigable water:
(a) must be, for at least three consecutive months of the year, capable of supporting typical transportation, commercial, or recreational type floating vessels that draw a draft of at least one metre;
(b) must be at least two kilometres in length and contain no fixed and permanent restrictions for floating vessels referred to earlier, and may include a single body of water, or only a specific section of a water body—for example, a continuous two-kilometre stretch of a stream—which is in total five kilometres long, or a two-kilometre continuous stretch of connected water bodies—for example, a lake plus a river plus another lake;
(c) may be a man-made or naturally occurring water body—in Saskatchewan and Alberta in particular, because of irrigation, we have a number of man-made reservoirs that are fairly extensive in length and width and require bridges across them.
In addition, a water body meeting all these criteria may be nominated for designation as a navigable water by one level of government only, either municipal, provincial, or federal.
A nominated water body must be designated as a navigable water body through a process of public review and provincial approval. A joint federal-provincial approval process would apply for nominations in which there are interprovincial or international navigational issues associated with a designation or a non-designation of a nomination. Once a water body is designated as a navigable water, it may be de-designated by following a process similar to that which led to the designation in the first place.
Pretty ridiculous definition, and in direct opposition to the current understanding of navigable waterways in Canada at present. There are heaps of rivers here that would not meet this description.
|
|
The definition of "navigable". New 
BoaterTalk 
