I had the experience of seeing the Farley Mowat in your community with you last summer. If you ever need a reminder of why this is a problem in so many communities, that is one of the gruesome ones that Shelburne is facing.
I share and understand your passion and I salute your work in Parliament on this issue. I know my colleague, the Minister of Transport, shares my view that your interventions and your work have been hugely constructive. They, frankly, convinced us, in the oceans protection plan that the Prime Minister announced last fall, to really try and up our game with respect to this scourge that affects so many communities and represents such an environmental and in some cases navigational concern.
The oceans protection plan will allocate some funding. We have not yet had the actual Treasury Board approval for the specific amounts of money. Once that is completed—and it's coming soon; it's not months way—we'll be in a position to offer much more precise information. Suffice to say that we will be taking our responsibility within the funding that we have to deal with the most critical issues.
More importantly, and perhaps in terms of looking ahead, Minister Garneau and I will be looking at legislative changes. If we all say and believe the polluter pays principle is fundamental to many of these conversations, it does seem strange that you can't abandon your car on a four-lane highway in New Brunswick, take the licence plates off, and just say, “Look, I don't need that car anymore” or “It doesn't have any value and it's too expensive to tow it”, and just ditch it on some shoulder on a highway, yet people get away with doing that in rivers, lakes, and marine ecosystems to the extent they do.
It's a global problem, but we think the owners of these vessels have to be held to account and have to pay the bill. Canadian taxpayers can't fund every single one of these, which in many cases have been existing for decades. This is a horrible problem that we have arrived at after many years of abusive practices by the owners of these vessels.
We're going to be doing two things. We're going to be dealing with the most urgent ones the best way we can, recognizing that public funds can be part of that solution. I'd be happy to provide details as we have them. More importantly, we're looking at changing both the legislation and the authority of Transport Canada and the Canadian Coast Guard to hold people to account at the time these horrible incidents are created, and not 10, 20, or 30 years out, when we say, “Oh, geez, that's a problem, isn't it?” Taxpayers are then on the hook for a huge amount of money. That is unsustainable.
Jeff, do you want to add something specific on that point?