Fisheries Committee on Oct. 2nd, 2024

[Jacob Banting]

Compared to the vessel remediation fund, where it's every five years, in Washington state it is every year. I can't remember the exact number that you'd pay, on top, into their boat disposal, but Washington state has boat turn-in programs every year. We don't have as many here—not that I'm aware of—or we may have had them in the past. I think that John or Benjamin could answer that a little better than I could.

Implementing that and enforcing that.... Right now, who's patrolling the waters daily and checking registration on vessels? I've been on boats for many years, and I was never actually checked for registration. I know many people who have second and third boats that aren't registered. They're there just as a backup boat.

Benjamin mentioned before that boating is vital in many communities, so it's hard to check. I've had vessels come in that are from the States, with no numbers on them or anything. When you ask for the registration, they can just say, “I'm not giving that to you.” There's no name on the boat, no way to identify it. You can call the RCMP—

[Lisa Marie Barron, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Thank you so much.

I'll move to Mr. Boulton.

Mr. Boulton, you gave us some really great examples of some of the compounding issues of individuals being economically challenged and being vessel owners and what that looks like. This may be a bit of a challenging question for me to ask you, but I'm wondering whether you have any thoughts around what would be a best practice. It shouldn't be easier for vessel owners to abandon their vessel than to clean it up properly. What are your thoughts around what could be put into place to avoid this continuing to happen, taking into account boat owners' unique circumstances?

[Benjamin Boulton]

It's incentivizing disposal, and creating disposal for remote communities specifically, and at the federal level looking at the implementation of legislation with those small communities in mind, with proper consultation. I'll leave it at that: funding for removals, funding for disposal, with a focus on small communities.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you for that, Ms. Barron. You're right on time.

We'll now go to Mr. Arnold for five minutes or less, and I understand he's sharing his time with Mr. Stewart.

I'll leave that up to you, Mr. Arnold.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for providing your information today.

I asked this question of a previous panellist, and I'll ask it again of all three of you. I'll start out with—I'll do a reverse order here—Mr. Boulton first.

What could be done to incentivize vessel owners to take their vessels for disposal rather than abandoning them somewhere else so that someone else has to deal with the disposal?

Mr. Boulton.

[Benjamin Boulton]

It would be a well-known program in a community. If folks are aware.... Whenever we're working in a community, we get a lot of questions, and oftentimes, people say, I have a boat, and we can sign it over to you guys if you can do the removals. That tends to work out.

If there's a federally backed program where folks can sign their vessels over to certified contractors to remove the vessels before they become abandoned, that would be of great aid to these communities and these individuals.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Thank you.

Mr. Banting.

[Jacob Banting]

I agree, it would be higher incentives for boaters to want to. Especially with the cost of living here in B.C., it's not easy to go and recycle your own boat when you hear those costs. Yes, I agree with Mr. Boulton that there needs to be more funding for programs like that.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Mr. Roe.

[John Roe]

I can share with you a document that I wrote for Jean Chrétien, Mr. Harper and now our current Prime Minister, Justin. We need a program in B.C. to where.... We had a very similar program here back in the eighties, for the disposal of cars. I happened to be in Ontario at the time. I got appointed from the company I was working with to come out and work here, so it was interesting.

You had an abandoned car program that still continues on in B.C. We need the same sort of program for boats in B.C., where we'll come out and pick a particular port and say, come out on the May 24 weekend. Our barge and crane and everything will be there. You pre-register your vessel. We go through the proper paperwork, and then we dispose of it correctly. You have to get rid of the.... You have to have source control. You have to stop it from going in before we can deal with what we have. We're not catching up to the game, as they say.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Thank you.

It sounds more like preventative work than after-the-fact work. If we can get the vessels contained or managed before they become abandoned, that would be a more efficient use of energy and resources and time. Is that correct?

[John Roe]

Exactly. We collect a huge amount of data. We have a Facebook page. We also have our website, and people file with it. They file with it before they file with government most of the time. We have a pretty large database of what's happening out there, and people continually contact us. We need to stop it.

What I've observed, because we do a lot of drone work, is that we're getting an increase of vessels because people see it as a freebie without going through any legal aspects, so they're just dropping their boats off in the water. In urban areas like Victoria, we kind of cured that, but where I live in Salt Spring, through the Gulf Islands, up towards Sechelt and all that, there are more boats being left just because there's this program here. Nobody knows who owns them, and people say, “It's not my problem,” you know?

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Okay, thank you.

I'll go back to Mr. Boulton now, if I can.

It looks like someone can purchase an almost dead vessel and use it as a home in a harbour somewhere with relatively low moorage fees compared to purchasing a typical home on land. There are no taxes to pay and so on.

With the cost of living increases that we've seen and the difficulty in home ownership or even home rental, I can see where people are maybe choosing a vessel as their home, and as they continue to move deeper into poverty and are not able to maintain it, they have to abandon that vessel or it becomes derelict.

Identifying an owner may be effective for an owner who is solvent, who has assets, but what happens when an owner has no assets to go after when they've abandoned a vessel?

Describe that situation, Mr. Boulton.

[Benjamin Boulton]

We have not encountered that situation. That would be more in Mr. Roe's jurisdiction, with the proximity of his organization to the southern Gulf Islands. We do see a lot of people who are financially disabled in terms of owning old industry boats and disposing of them. I can only speak to that.

Perhaps Mr. Roe can speak to that a bit further.

[John Roe]

Thank you. I will—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

I'm sorry, Mr. Roe. Mr. Arnold's time has run out. If you have anything on that particular question, please submit it to the clerk and we'll include it in our testimony.

We'll now go to Mr. Weiler for five minutes or less, please.

[Patrick Weiler, Liberal, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

I want to thank the witnesses for the work they do and for their advocacy on an issue that's a really, really important one locally.

I'll do one better than to give Mr. Roe the opportunity to submit something in writing. I'd be very interested to hear the answer to that question.

What do you do in those cases where the owner of a vessel doesn't have those types of assets or the wherewithal? What do you do in those kinds of situations?

[John Roe]

We deal a lot with live-aboards. Our policy is that we don't really ask questions. Really, the highest percentage of the live-aboards who actually abandon their stuff is maybe 2% or 3% of the total volume of boats. We have a standard, and we have for the last 30 years. We offer them services. If you're in a struggling time, we will find the monies to help you get rid of your garbage, dispose of your boats, get rid of your docks and things like that.

It's just the general concept of people leaving their boats. I know that the government and everybody says to make the owner pay. Well, the problem is that we can't find the owners. We need to take that initial money, and if it's 2,000 boats or 2,500 boats or 3,000 boats, we need to spend the resources to get rid of those and then deal with licensing the newer boats so that we can make people accountable for what they own.

Does that make sense?

[Patrick Weiler, Liberal, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Very much so, Mr. Roe. It kind of gets to my next point, because I think as much as possible, we want to make sure that we can prevent the boats from sinking in the first place.

I know that a big frustration I have, or that many folks in my riding have, is that we have these programs for once the boat actually sinks, but it's extremely expensive. It also has a major cost to the environment. I think we need to do as much as we can to prevent that.

I have a couple of questions, maybe first to you, Mr. Banting. You mentioned the interest in having better registration and licensing. Right now, Transport Canada is developing regulations to modernize pleasure craft licensing. I'm wondering if you might have feedback for this committee about that process and just more generally about how we can ensure through licensing, both through new vessels but also through existing vessels, so that we can hold boat owners accountable. In many cases, instead of disposing of those boats, they may find a way of selling them off in a way to not have that accountability.

I'm very curious about your thoughts on the registration and licensing as a way of mitigating that risk.

[Jacob Banting]

Yes, definitely for prevention I think it's.... Knowing right now how many fines have been handed out since 2019, it's not going to deter that many people from wanting to go ahead with it. I haven't seen the number of registered vessels annually, or how many people are actually going out and registering their boats, so it's hard for me to answer on whether there is a vast number of boaters. I'm not sure if any of the other witnesses has an answer to that.

As I said, looking at where it's working, such as Washington state, it's definitely vital. People don't want to pay more; that's the thing. It's about finding ways to give them the incentives to go out and register their boat. In terms of the chain of ownership, yes, there are those legacy vessels that don't have owners. That's a very hard one to touch on.

[Patrick Weiler, Liberal, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Absolutely. I think we have a fairly good system in B.C. with oil tanks that are left within residential properties and tying that back to the existing owner. I wonder if there might be something similar that we could look at in this regard as well, to ensure that we can tie it back to somebody who does have those resources.

I'll turn it over to Mr. Roe. I think he had an intervention he wanted to make.

[John Roe]

Again, it goes back to trying to register a boat now. It's almost impossible. I took a boat the society owns and donated it to another society. It was a six-month process to change that ownership. It was just insane.

Again, in B.C., we'd be farther ahead getting it as a pleasure craft and having ICBC take care of it for a yearly fee. For my whole life, I have been against insuring a vessel that was registered, but now I'm in this industry more. The only way to pay for it is through insurance. Get it done. I insist that, if you're going to get a boat on the water, you're going to need insurance on it. It's one of those things we have to rethink.

People are unaware that the enforcement of ownership of these vessels is not done by Transport Canada. It's the RCMP in B.C., but they do not have any funds. I deal with the RCMP. Because we're in a border area, I deal with customs, immigration and things like that. The RCMP are the ones who are supposed to come up to your boat and say, “Give me your ownership documents. Give me your licence. Give me your this and that.” They don't have the resources or the time. That's another thing that has to change. The RCMP has to get resources to get boats, then train people to go out and inspect them. I get pulled over because I have a big fishing boat, but that's about it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Weiler.

I want to take this opportunity to thank Mr. Roe, Mr. Banting and Mr. Boulton.

Thank you, everyone, for appearing—albeit by video conference—for our committee work today.

We will suspend for a moment now as we move in camera to do a bit of committee business like approving a couple of budgets.

Again, thank you, one and all, for your participation.

[Proceedings continue in camera]