Clear Lake boat ban result of legal threat: Parks Canada

WASAGAMING — A legal threat convinced Parks Canada that its promise to reintroduce motorized boats on Clear Lake this season would not be viable, a Parks Canada spokesperson told a crowd of 600 people at a town hall Tuesday night in Wasagaming.

Andrew Campbell, senior vice-president of operations at Parks Canada, told the crowd that the agency found out with a two-week window before the May long weekend that it was going to face a judicial review for the planned “one-boat, one-lake” policy on the lake.

The review would have caused the plan to be paused, he said, and so there would have been no boats on the lake whether Parks Canada instituted a ban or the judicial review was filed.

“We made decisions based on, would the one-boat one-lake (policy) be able to survive a judicial review?” he said.

Campbell did not identify the party that made the legal threat.

Parks Canada announced at the beginning of the May long weekend that it would ban motorized boats from the lake. It came as a reversal to the agency’s decision in January, when it officially told the public that boats would be allowed on the water again.

At the time, the agency said the reversal was intended to curb the spread of zebra mussels in the lake.

Campbell said Tuesday the federal election disrupted consultations, which resumed once the election was over.

Also during the town hall, a scientist told the crowd that zebra mussels are going to spread through Clear Lake regardless of whether boats are banned from the park. Mark Lowdon, a fisheries biologist and owner of AEE Tech Services Inc., was contracted by advocacy group Fairness for Clear Lake to study the spread of zebra mussels.

“Ecologically, those mussels are still going to move around the lake with or without boats,” said Lowdon, who has also been hired by Manitoba Hydro to study zebra-mussel spread. He said boats are a big factor in introducing zebra mussels to water bodies, but not for speeding spread once they’re there.

In fact, he said, it was “probably better” to have boats on Clear Lake. Under a one-boat, one-lake policy, he said, having boats on the lake could help prevent boaters from spreading zebra mussels among other water bodies.

Fairness for Clear Lake hosted the town hall to provide an update on what the organization had done so far with more than $115,000 it has crowdfunded.

Trevor Boquist, a spokesperson for the group, said about $35,000 has been spent on a legal filing asking for a review of the boat ban, as well as public relations and contracting Lowdon.

cmcdowell@brandonsun.com