Evidence of meeting #124 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 vessels.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Chair, Friends of Shoal Harbour Society
No one. My understanding is that you could go into a harbour and dump an old motor, hook up to an old motor and just attach your boat to it.
Conservative
Clifford Small Conservative Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL
Who has jurisdiction over the waters where these private mooring buoys are in place?
October 28th, 2024 / 12:20 p.m.
Chair, Friends of Shoal Harbour Society
It depends. Mostly it's federal. In British Columbia, the private mooring boys sit on B.C. Crown land, and if you're within 300 metres of the shore, the municipality has some jurisdiction. It's very complex. It's very confusing, but the whole thing centres around private mooring buoys—and this situation did not exist prior to 2004.
Conservative
Clifford Small Conservative Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL
Basically, they're all inside the jaws of the land, which is B.C. provincial government jurisdiction. Why don't they just go out and remove them all, get rid of them? If they removed those mooring buoys, do you think that would solve any part of the problem, or would vessels still be abandoned and just throw out their own anchors?
Chair, Friends of Shoal Harbour Society
That's exactly what they do, sir. They just throw out their own anchors. You know, Eric has as much experience around this as I do. It isn't clear for the province to go out and clear it because there's overlapping federal jurisdiction. The private mooring buoy regulations right now are the responsibility of Transport Canada, and the regulations aren't being enforced.
Conservative
Clifford Small Conservative Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL
If there weren't a single private mooring buoy in place, would we still have the problem?
Conservative
Clifford Small Conservative Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL
It seems that the private mooring buoys are getting a lot of blame for vessels being abandoned, but wouldn't folks still tend to abandon their vessels even if there were no private mooring buoys in place?
Chair, Friends of Shoal Harbour Society
Yes, sure. They'd put them next to a beach or a dock, but the private mooring buoying situation makes it so much easier and facilitates the problem. The enforcement of the private mooring buoys is with Transport Canada, and they're not being enforced.
Conservative
Clifford Small Conservative Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL
Thank you very much.
In terms of the hazard to the coastal environment and the ecosystem, how would you rank these abandoned and derelict vessels and the buoys? How would you rank that against open net-pen salmon farms?
Chair, Friends of Shoal Harbour Society
I don't think it's an apt comparison. Our harbours are small. Our harbours have these boats in them. Many of them don't have storage tanks. Some of them are scraping the bottom. Some of them have hazardous waste. This is being left in our harbours and bays. It's a very serious problem. The enforcement rests with Transport Canada, and Transport Canada isn't enforcing the private mooring buoy regulations.
Conservative
Clifford Small Conservative Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL
DFO has jurisdiction over salmon farming, and we hear in the media everywhere every day how bad salmon farming is for the ocean ecosystem. However, I never hear anything about abandoned vessels and the effort to try to get those vessels and moorings out of it.
Chair, Friends of Shoal Harbour Society
If you lived in British Columbia and if you lived in, certainly, the bottom part of Vancouver Island and Salt Spring Island, you'd be hearing a lot about it, sir. The folks here are pretty fed up. The Coast Guard has numbers, and the numbers are anywhere from 1,500 to 6,000 abandoned vessels. It's a very serious problem.
Conservative
Clifford Small Conservative Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL
There are lot more abandoned vessels than those in the registry. Is that what you're saying?
Conservative
Clifford Small Conservative Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL
How do we go about getting that registry updated?
Chair, Friends of Shoal Harbour Society
There are two things I'm suggesting. One is that the responsibility for regulations for the private mooring buoys should come back to the Coast Guard, which is where they were before 2004.
The second thing we're recommending is that a registration system, perhaps similar to Washington state's, be put in place by the federal government. As one of your witnesses was saying earlier, it's the same as with a car. You register your car and you drive. You need to register your boats before you can move them.
Conservative
Clifford Small Conservative Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL
There's not enough time for another question.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken McDonald
Thank you for saying that, Mr. Small. I apologize for chastising you earlier.
We'll go to Mr. Hardie now for six minutes or less.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
You can go ahead and chastise him. That's okay. He chastised me too.
Mr. Peart, I wanted to ask the first question of you, but to do that, I have to give Mr. Dahli some credit.
Mr. Dahli, I picked up your submission to the committee today from the Cadboro Bay Dead Boats Society, and I wanted to quote something from that piece to Mr. Peart. It reads:
Despite entailing the use of provincial Crown Land (covered by water), BC Land Use Policy for Private Moorage does not apply to mooring buoys used for private moorage because the Provincial responsibility for regulating that use of Provincial lands has been relegated by policy edict to Transport Canada....
At one point, the province had the pen, or the hammer, if you want to use a curling term. You said it should go back to the Coast Guard from Transport Canada. Transport Canada is worried about navigation. That's all it really focuses on.
Sir, would you not suggest that it go back to the province, where it started out?
Chair, Friends of Shoal Harbour Society
You would have to talk to someone more knowledgeable than me. Maybe Eric knows.
However, the responsibility prior to 2004 rested with the Coast Guard, and private mooring buoys, as I understand it, have been a federal responsibility. Where the B.C. Land Act—
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
Because my time is limited, perhaps we can go to Mr. Dahli and suggest that the responsibility should go back to where it used to be, which is the province, which basically has the land use, including the seabed, of all of the interior ocean frontage we have in B.C.
Mr. Dahli.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
Excuse me, Mr. Peart. I need to ask a question of Mr. Dahli.
Go ahead, Mr. Dahli. That was for you. Do you think it should go back to the province, where it used to be?
Chair, Cadboro Bay Dead Boats Society
Thank you.
One of the things we are facing—and we are in a jurisdictional quagmire out here—as far as I understand it is that the seabed is the jurisdiction of the province. The water between the seabed and the surface is the jurisdiction of Fisheries and Oceans, and the surface is the jurisdiction of the Coast Guard. Therefore, when you come in and drop a mooring buoy in a bay, you are, in fact, touching on three different jurisdictions and would require—I would guess, if you did it properly—three licences.
However, people come into any bay, throw something overboard and attach a line to it, and it ends up drifting ashore, sadly.