Fighting the man, whatever way possible

The Rideau Canal's bid to get UNESCO world heritage site designation seems to be getting towards the final stages, with inspectors coming to evaluate the site in the coming months and other interested groups using the bid as a spectre to fight other ills. From the Citizen:

Wendy Hassard of the Citizens' Mining Advisory Group points to UNESCO's concern about possible threats to Nahanni and Rocky Mountain national parks caused by "various mining, mineral, oil and gas exploration activities." Those activities "could have major adverse cumulative impacts on the integrity of the property," a recently released summary from UNESCO stated. (...)

The Citizens' Mining Advisory Group says graphite exploration threatens thousands of rural properties. Ms. Hassard said the graphite search has already damaged the landscape and cut some property values by 50 per cent.

"Mineral exploration could completely close down Canada's bid for World Heritage designation for the Rideau Canal," she said. "We have been waiting for three years for the Ontario government to do something about mineral exploration in this area, but it has done nothing.

"If there is a problem with Canada's bid, Premier Dalton McGuinty should do something about it. The government could give us back the mineral rights, which would protect our rights and the Rideau Lakes themselves."

Many people who found mining claims on their properties have discovered that their mineral rights reverted to the Crown during the 1950s because previous owners had failed to pay mineral taxes.

It's important to note that the Federal government owns both the land and the mineral rights for the canal, so Parks Canada spokespeople have said that alot of this is speculation. What is pretty clear, at least to me, is that this is not so much about being worried about the Canal not getting UNESCO heritage status (which it may not anyway), but to make sure that property owners on pricey peices of real estate don't have to deal with invasive mineral exploration.

Now, I really like the canal, and I really like No. 2 HB pencils, but it is pretty ridiculous that the system allows such disregard for people's property above ground, especially given that there was probably little communication with the then-owners when the mineral rights went up for sale. To be clear, this is also a problem elsewhere in the country. These are all reasonable issues that we should be talking about, and indeed it would be pretty tragic if one of the nicest parts of the country was ruined by an unsightly pencil-lead mine, but do we really need to cloud the issue with the UNESCO designation worries?