Thank you for having me.
I am Jacob Banting. I'm with the Georgia Strait Alliance where I'm the program coordinator for Clean Marine BC.
I'll give you a little background. For nearly 35 years, Georgia Strait Alliance has stood as a leading advocate for environmental protection in the Salish Sea region. As Clean Marine BC's coordinator, I specialize in boater outreach, mostly recreational boaters. We connect with thousands of boaters per year, and we also run an eco-certification program for boatyards, marinas, yacht clubs—any boating facility on the coast here. We provide training and education, distribute resources, try to mobilize around the issues that are impacting communities, listen to folks who are reaching out to us, and ensure that our work is relevant and impactful for the health of the region.
I come from a background of managing a harbour authority where I'm from on the traditional territories of the Tla'amin people in qathet on the beautiful upper Sunshine Coast in B.C. In the harbour I was managing, I got to see, first-hand, vessel abandonment. It wasn't too often, but sometimes it was sinking due to negligence or accidental, which does happen.
However, you also see community involvement, as well as the delays and restrictions caused by the system in place. There is also the juggling of jurisdiction on vessels when there is such a gap, when a vessel could be removed and kept afloat as opposed to letting it sit for six months and then having its hull crack. The next thing you know it is chopped up and ends up in a landfill. One thing we've heard from calling around to the different groups that are actually removing these vessels is just the different insights regarding jurisdictions. A lot of municipalities don't want to take these vessels. There are so many ways to address this issue.
In B.C. alone, protecting marine biodiversity.... Where I was from, the harbour authority that I was managing was right next to a shellfish bed, so food security is on the table and safeguarding human health, knowing that shellfish are absorbing all these toxins. One day it's red tide and pretty soon we'll be testing for plastics in bivalves. That chain of toxicity is making its way up the food chain to larger fish and to marine mammals and then up to whales and seabirds. The list goes on with the detrimental effects to ecosystems and communities, and the economic impacts that can be had. The risks associated with food contamination affect us all, but it's central to indigenous food sovereignty, marine governance and even reconciliation.
Having seen it first-hand, from reporting it and then, as I mentioned, the juggling around, there is a lack of transparency and statistics. I feel like there's a lot of “we've taken out x number of vessels” from, say, Transport Canada, but there are not enough numbers on.... In our program, I always look for continual improvement with facilities and boaters, but I think part of that is seeing what's not working, giving those numbers out and then working with the groups that are actually doing the removals, as well as the local first nations, to try to find the solutions.
If we look at different states, we see that Washington state is a great example for registration. Seeing what's not working is a huge part in improving, and I don't know if enough of that is being done right now.
We're supporting Bill C-344 through our supporters, who have sent out nearly 1,600 signatures and letters to local MPs. We're reinforcing more work, and I feel like the list could go on. I think that, for me, prevention is....
I think the number that's been going out is that, for every vessel in B.C., five are added, so preventing more through better registration, licensing.... More boats are ending up in the water and then being turned away, so there is something wrong with our system there. Advocating for it, getting community support, first nations'...and more input are definitely vital to that.
