Evidence of meeting #116 for Fisheries and Oceans in the 44th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was owner.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Director, Compliance and Enforcement, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
I can't answer that question.
Liberal
Serge Cormier Liberal Acadie—Bathurst, NB
Don't you think that this type of tracking should be done to determine what costs the owners cover, as opposed to what the government and taxpayers pay to have abandoned vessels removed? It seems like a good idea, unless I'm mistaken.
Director, Operations and Regulatory Development, Department of Transport
I might be able to provide some.... We do track. We have provided warnings or orders to over 95 boat owners. We are looking at compiling the numbers of those who have taken action to remove their own vessels.
As my colleagues were saying, we track the ones that we remove ourselves. We can look to see if we can get that data out of our database to see whether those we have provided orders or warnings to have taken the action that's required to address their vessels.
Liberal
Serge Cormier Liberal Acadie—Bathurst, NB
Can you provide an example of how much it costs to remove a small boat, as opposed to a large boat? I want to know the approximate cost of this type of operation. Perhaps you already have a record of expenses incurred in recent years that shows the lowest cost paid and the highest cost.
Director, Marine Environmental and Hazards Response, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
Thank you very much for the question.
As mentioned earlier, there's a very large range in cost when you're talking about the removal of a wrecked, abandoned or hazardous vessel. It very much depends on the location in the country. As you can appreciate, Canada has the longest coastline in the world and some very remote areas.
In cases where it is remote, that can increase the cost even for a small vessel. Removing a 30-foot vessel in Haida Gwaii is likely to cost significantly more than in the port of Vancouver, for example, given local capacity.
In general, I can say that we have seen cases that range as low as $5,000 to $10,000 to remove a vessel when it's a simple case where we can just attach a crane, remove the vessel onto a barge and take it away to a recycling facility. In other cases, it does require in situ deconstruction with long times and multiple crews on site.
Liberal
Serge Cormier Liberal Acadie—Bathurst, NB
Are those vessels owned by local Canadians or more international people, corporations or whatever? What's the ratio? Maybe it was asked before, but just for clarification.... Sometimes I'm not listening.
Director, Marine Environmental and Hazards Response, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
I do not have facts and figures in front of me to break down the proportion of vessels owned by Canadians versus non-Canadians.
Liberal
Serge Cormier Liberal Acadie—Bathurst, NB
Ms. Hopper, if I'm not mistaken, you're the director general of the small craft harbours program. Is it for the Atlantic side only, or for all of Canada?
Director General, Small Craft Harbours Program, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
It's for Canada.
Liberal
Serge Cormier Liberal Acadie—Bathurst, NB
Okay.
Do you know how many vessels are abandoned on the Atlantic side, compared with the situation on the Pacific coast, for example?
Director General, Small Craft Harbours Program, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
Are you talking about the current situation?
Liberal
Serge Cormier Liberal Acadie—Bathurst, NB
I'm talking about the current number of vessels or boats that haven't yet been removed from our waters. Are there any on the Atlantic side right now?
Director General, Small Craft Harbours Program, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
I'll refer the question to my colleague, Ms. Nghiem. On our end, the program concerns only small craft harbours.
Liberal
Serge Cormier Liberal Acadie—Bathurst, NB
I'm sorry, the question may have been asked earlier about the number of vessels on the Atlantic coast compared with the situation on the Pacific coast.
Director, Marine Environmental and Hazards Response, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
Thank you very much for the question.
What I can say is this: For the Atlantic coast, since 2016, 459 vessels have been added to the national inventory. In that same time period, 194 vessels in that inventory have been removed from the Atlantic coast.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken McDonald
Thank you, Mr. Cormier.
We'll now start our last round of questioning.
We'll start off with Mr. Small for five minutes or less.
Conservative
Clifford Small Conservative Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
In 2019, the current government passed the Wrecked, Abandoned or Hazardous Vessels Act. Last year in July, CTV reported that only two fines have been issued since the passing of the law.
Why is the Coast Guard taking so long on the issuing of fines when it comes to abandoned vessels? In relation to the number of vessels that have been cleaned up, there seems to be a very small ratio of charges. There must be a lot more negligence than what is being reflected in those charges, obviously, Mr. Brooks.
Director, Compliance and Enforcement, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
I'll answer the question.
The Canadian Coast Guard created its compliance and enforcement program in April 2023. To date, we have issued five administrative monetary penalties to owners who failed to comply with a Canadian Coast Guard order to address the issues with their hazardous vessels.
I want to give the floor to my colleague, Joanne Weiss‑Reid, who can elaborate on what Transport Canada has done in its area of activity.
Director, Operations and Regulatory Development, Department of Transport
I'm going to speak about the intent of the act. It is to hold vessel owners accountable for the duration of the life cycle of the vessel. In order to do this, we do education, we work with owners of vessels and we have a graduated approach to enforcement.
First and foremost, understanding who the owner of the vessel is—as we talked about—is a challenge. We're doing some work to increase the ability to identify owners of vessels. When it comes to compliance for abandoned vessels, we need to know who the vessel owner is in order to apply an administrative monetary fine.
Conservative
Clifford Small Conservative Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL
I have one more little thing on that.
Does that 2019 act go back retroactively, or does it just cut off right there at the date when the act was passed?
Director, Compliance and Enforcement, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
Under the Wrecked, Abandoned or Hazardous Vessels Act, owners have had to meet their obligations since July 2019, meaning since the effective date of the act. It isn't retroactive.
Conservative
Director, Operations and Regulatory Development, Department of Transport
Okay. We have a graduated approach to enforcement.
First and foremost, we have to find out who the owner is. Sometimes it takes some time to do that. In cases where we find the owner and apply the AMP, the intent is to hold the owner accountable and have them take action to remove the vessel. We have several warnings. We've issued 95 to date. We're working with the owners to find a way to remove the vessels. We issued two AMPs on the Transport Canada side. In those cases, the intent there is also to bring the owner into compliance and ensure they take appropriate action to address their vessel.
Conservative
Clifford Small Conservative Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL
This is about bringing owners into compliance, not to deter others from breaking the law. Is that correct? You'd think that you'd be issuing these fines, where possible, as a deterrent, because it seems like the derelict vessels are just piling up for some reason. If the federal government says they're going to come in and take my trash out, I'm going to let them come in and take it out instead of taking it out myself.
Is that what's happening on the waters?
Director, Marine Environmental and Hazards Response, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
It's important to understand that, when we look at the national inventory, many of those vessels are legacy vessels and have been abandoned or derelict perhaps for some time. Therefore, there are no owners. In other cases, we've been aware of instances where the owner may have left Canada, in which case the powers do not extend outside of our borders. In other cases, the owner may be deceased.
What we are seeing is an increase in fines and administrative monetary penalties being assessed to non-compliant owners, and when we do have new cases, this is very much the direction we take. We respond to stabilize and prevent pollution. Then we work, as we can, with owners to ensure a good result. Where there is non-compliance, we do have the tools in the legislation to hold them accountable now.