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.
Bloc
Caroline Desbiens Bloc Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île dOrléans—Charlevoix, QC
Okay.
What would happen if, by chance, a diver were to discover a boat suspected of containing hazardous materials?
Director, Marine Environmental and Hazards Response, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
What would happen is that, in all cases where the Canadian Coast Guard receives a report of a vessel that's posing a concern, we have an assessment process that will be followed. The duty officer who receives that call will make the determination of whether or not an emergency response is required. If so, the Canadian Coast Guard will respond on an emergency basis 24-7, 365 days a year.
Bloc
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken McDonald
Thank you, Madame Desbiens. There are only eight seconds left, which is not enough to get a question and an answer in, so we'll go on now to Ms. Barron for two and a half minutes or less.
NDP
Lisa Marie Barron NDP Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC
Thank you, Chair.
My first question I believe would be best suited to Transport, to whoever's the best fit. As we've talked about already, this is a big issue. There's so much we could talk about around prevention, having the systems and mechanisms in place to avoid the vessels being abandoned in the first place. However, it is illegal to abandon a vessel, and I know one fine went to a vessel at southern Vancouver Island, where I live. There was another one on the east coast. I had information just recently that there were five fines across Canada totalling $55,500.
Now, when I looked on the same database this morning, that number had changed to two fines that had been given out to owners of vessels who had abandoned their vessels totalling $26,600. I don't know why we would see a discrepancy or, even worse, fewer fines from today than I saw just a few weeks ago. I'm wondering if somebody can provide some reflections on what's going on.
Director, Compliance and Enforcement, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
I can shed some light on this issue.
Transport Canada and the Canadian Coast Guard have separate powers to impose administrative monetary penalties. Right now, the Transport Canada registry contains two administrative monetary penalties under the Wrecked, Abandoned or Hazardous Vessels Act, while the Coast Guard registry contains five. Perhaps the existence of these two registries explains the confusion over the number of penalties.
NDP
Lisa Marie Barron NDP Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC
Thank you.
How much do we know about how much it costs to clean up a vessel? Does anybody have that information? I guess it depends on the size, but let's say it's an average-sized pleasure craft on the west coast.
Director, Marine Environmental and Hazards Response, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
Thank you very much for the question.
The range in cost to address hazardous, wrecked or abandoned vessels very much depends on a number of factors, including its location, the state of the vessel—if it's sunk, if it's partially sunk, if it's floating—its size as well as the construction of the hull and the material that it has, and the volume of pollutants on board. In our experience, what we can say is that, when the Canadian Coast Guard intervenes to address these vessels that require our attention, we see a range that could be as little as $5,000 to $10,000, but when you get into the commercial vessels that deal with significant pollutants and large sizes, you could be in the range of $25 million to $35 million to remove the vessel and dismantle it.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken McDonald
Thank you, Ms. Barron.
We'll now go to Mr. Bragdon.... No, he has given his time to Mr. Calkins. I apologize for that.
Mr. Calkins, go ahead for five minutes or less, please.
Conservative
Blaine Calkins Conservative Red Deer—Lacombe, AB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I do want to pursue that, Mr. Brooks.
Can you explain to the committee what we're actually responsible for when it comes to removing a derelict vessel from the water? Are we simply responsible for getting it on land or taking it to a landfill? Can you explain to me what the process is that's been set up and that the taxpayers are paying for?
It sounds to me like we have to dismantle and cut everything up. Surely to goodness there's scrap. If we're dealing with metal, we're going to get some money back. Can you explain to me what we're all responsible for?
Director, Marine Environmental and Hazards Response, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
Thank you for the question. I'll do my best.
Under the Coast Guard's mandate to address wrecked, abandoned and hazardous vessels, we maintain response officers across the country who are responsible for deploying to an incident site. They have the training required to undertake initial risk assessments to understand the nature and the risk of the vessel. They also have the training required to deploy any pollution countermeasures required during that initial incident stabilization and to protect the marine environment while plans are made. When we move to take action to deconstruct a vessel, that is not a skill set that is within the Canadian Coast Guard. Therefore, we work with our colleagues at PSPC for a contract to hire professional salvors to deal with the deconstruction.
Conservative
Blaine Calkins Conservative Red Deer—Lacombe, AB
You're saying that in some of these cases it's $25 million per vessel.
Director, Marine Environmental and Hazards Response, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
That's correct. We've had cases where we've remediated vessels in that range, including the Kathryn Spirit, which was in the Beauharnois region in Montreal. We've also had experience in remediating bulk oil out of the Manolis L, which is a vessel currently sunk off the Fogo Island, and we saw costs in that range as well. Previous to that, we had an estimated cost of $25 million to remove oil from the Zalinski, which is in the Grenville Channel.
Conservative
Blaine Calkins Conservative Red Deer—Lacombe, AB
Yes, but these are just a few. You said yourself that 25% of derelict vessel are sailboats. Is that right? I think that was the number. A 30-foot sailboat, on average, is a $100,000 to $150,000 as a brand new purchase. Of course, that vessel wouldn't be worth that. When you're doing a triage, there are environmental considerations and so on, but surely to goodness there's some low-hanging fruit and some easy things that are not that hard and not that expensive.
Is that a consideration when we're talking about removing some of these vessels?
Director, Marine Environmental and Hazards Response, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
Thank you for the question.
There's no question that, as the Canadian Coast Guard looks at our list of priorities, we follow our risk assessment process to ensure that we are allocating our money to the highest-risk vessels. That is the basis upon which we take action.
Conservative
Blaine Calkins Conservative Red Deer—Lacombe, AB
That's good to know.
The budget in 2015 for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans was $1.9 billion. That budget has gone up continuously since 2016, to the point where, had we continued with the $1.9 billion all the way through, the department has had an extra $13.3 billion in the last nine budgets. That would have been enough to probably rebuild every small craft harbour in the nation, and it certainly should have been enough to remove every derelict vessel that we have. I'm wondering, as a taxpayer, and as taxpayers are looking at this, what do we have to show for it?
On the derelict vessel file, we only have 791 vessels removed. What is the estimate of the number of vessels? Have you done a full count on all of Canada's coastal waters that we're responsible for, or are there still vast areas that still need to have an inventory taken?
Director, Marine Environmental and Hazards Response, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
Thank you very much for the question.
The national inventory is an evergreen inventory of vessels, so that number that's within the inventory can change quite often as vessels are reported to the Canadian Coast Guard. Not all vessels that are reported, which actually make their way into the inventory, end up being hazardous, wrecked or abandoned in terms of the definitions. As we move through that assessment to do that quality assurance check and to make sure we are identifying risk, there are some vessels that we do remove from the inventory because they do not meet the threshold.
Conservative
Blaine Calkins Conservative Red Deer—Lacombe, AB
Can you confirm how many more employees work for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans now in 2024 than were employed in 2015?
How many more staff are there, cumulatively? Does anybody know?
Director General, Response, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
I'll follow up in writing, Mr. Chair.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken McDonald
Thank you, Mr. Calkins. Your time is up.
We will now go to Mr. Cormier for five minutes or less, please.
September 18th, 2024 / 5:55 p.m.
Liberal
Serge Cormier Liberal Acadie—Bathurst, NB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to clarify something said earlier. We heard that owners were responsible for removing their abandoned vessels. I think that my question was already asked earlier, but I just want to be sure.
Do you have any data on the number of abandoned vessels removed at the owner's expense, as opposed to the number removed at the federal government's expense? Were these figures provided earlier? If you don't have these figures, is it because you don't collect them, or because you don't have them on hand right now?
Director, Compliance and Enforcement, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
The Canadian Coast Guard's priority is to work with owners to ensure that they take the necessary steps themselves. As a result, this type of data isn't collected when owners, once informed of their obligations under the legislation, take the necessary steps.
Liberal
Serge Cormier Liberal Acadie—Bathurst, NB
Here's an example. If, in a given year, 100 abandoned vessels are removed from the water, we don't know the proportion removed at the owner's expense or at the government's expense.
Director, Compliance and Enforcement, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
My colleague, Mr. Brooks, identified the number of abandoned vessels removed by the Canadian Coast Guard, Transport Canada or Fisheries and Oceans Canada as part of the small craft harbours program. However, the data isn't tracked when the owners themselves took action.