Evidence of meeting #46 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was vessel.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Director, Marine Environmental Policy, Department of Transport
That's right, but the—
September 22nd, 2026 / 4:30 p.m.
Conservative
Ellis Ross Conservative Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
As a seller, you can't know everything about a boat, even if you owned it for years. Electrolysis in aluminum, for example, is very hard to pick out, but you can tell how long it's been around, so even in that case....
Let's say you sell a wooden boat. You can't tell that the keel is spongy because you have such thick marine paint over it. You can't tell. That doesn't come back after a year when they find out that this sponginess occurred over the course of maybe two years prior. That doesn't come back to the seller.
Director, Marine Environmental Policy, Department of Transport
The requirement is to disclose that information about the vessel. That could only be with the information—
Director, Marine Environmental Policy, Department of Transport
—that the seller has and knows.
Conservative
Ellis Ross Conservative Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
I'm talking about something that you couldn't determine at the time.
Conservative
Ellis Ross Conservative Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Even a marine survey misses this stuff. If in all honesty and with good intentions I thought I was selling a good wooden boat but couldn't tell you whether or not the keel was spongy because the paint was so thick, in the investigation into a disposal, if it turns out that this was the case and it was there before the sale was made, does any of that liability go back to me as a seller even though I did everything I could and I wasn't aware of it?
Director, Marine Environmental Policy, Department of Transport
The requirement is to disclose information about the condition of the vessel. The department would provide some guidance on what the best practice is for disclosing that information on the part of the seller and the buyer, but that is what is reasonable that the seller knows to convey. If the seller doesn't know something, then obviously they wouldn't share the information that they don't know, but they would share the information relating to the condition of the vessel that they do have.
Conservative
Ellis Ross Conservative Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Okay, but that goes back to the original point. At the point of sale, given all these conditions that have been fulfilled, the seller has no more liability. It's already agreed upon on those signatures.
Director, Marine Environmental Policy, Department of Transport
That's right. It's a condition of the transfer of the vessel. It's not a provision that relates to liability of the owner. It's a provision that says you can't transfer a vessel from me to you unless we've done this exchange of information procedure.
Director, Marine Environmental Policy, Department of Transport
It does not address the situation down the road where the vessel sinks. The new owner is still responsible for that when it comes to the Wrecked, Abandoned or Hazardous Vessels Act.
Conservative
Conservative
Ellis Ross Conservative Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Okay. That answers a lot of my questions, actually.
To follow up on one of the first points, I understand what “resources” means in order to maintain a boat. I know what that means. Apart from money, will there be a checklist from Environment Canada showing the resources that are needed to maintain a boat, or will that be entirely up to the seller to talk about, depending on whether I'm selling an aluminum boat, a steel boat, a fibreglass boat or a wooden boat?
Will that be entirely up to me to talk about the resources? The resources are different depending on which materials you're using.
Director, Marine Environmental Policy, Department of Transport
The approach is really to set standards in the marketplace to make sure that there are informed decisions taken on the part of the buyer and that the seller has made some validation. It's not to have the department and the government involved in every transaction.
In terms of getting into advising buyers on boat ownership, that's something that can always be looked at in terms of providing general education and best practices as we start to inform people about what their obligations are under this amendment. However, I think it is ultimately incumbent on the parties to the transaction to inform themselves and be aware of what it takes to buy a boat and maintain it.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Shannon Miedema
Thank you very much, Mr. Ross.
Mr. Bexte, do you still want to speak?
Conservative
David Bexte Conservative Bow River, AB
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Truthfully, most of my questions are because I'm a terrestrial MP. I know nothing about marine life and nothing about boats. Listening to this exchange and this discussion, the comparisons to automobile sales, for example, are extraordinary in how differently these transactions are treated. They're just night and day. They're completely different.
What strikes me the most about this is.... I understand the intent. If, in general, the intent of the private member's bill is to reduce the number of derelict vessels, reduce the consequences of bad things happening, reduce the number of wrecks and reduce the number of disingenuous transactions, I'm really not sure that this does that because it's just inviting pencil-whipped transactions.
From what this looks like, if a seller can say, hand on heart, they trusted that the buyer had the resources, that's good enough, even if that transaction and that attestation by the buyer are written in pencil on a napkin. If he believes it, that's good enough. The truth or the veracity of it doesn't matter, and there's no verification and no standard. There's nothing at all embodied by this legislation to protect either party—the seller or the buyer.
Does that strike you as being possible in this?