Fisheries Committee on Nov. 6th, 2024

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Mr. Lee, that question was for you.

[Leonard Lee]

I'm sorry. All I hear is the French version, and I only have high school French, so I couldn't follow it. I apologize.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

You can select French on your iPad or computer, whatever you're using. You can select the language of your choice. If you want to hear English when somebody else is speaking, hit English, and you'll hear English as Madame Desbiens is speaking French. You won't hear her French; you'll just hear somebody speaking in English in your earpiece.

[Leonard Lee]

Yes, I was looking at it. It says English and French, so if I click French—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

No, click English. You want to hear it in English.

I'm going to ask Madame Desbiens to repeat her question to you, and you let us know if you don't hear it in English.

[Caroline Desbiens, Bloc, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

No problem, Mr. Lee.

Can you hear me well? Can you understand me in your language?

[Leonard Lee]

Yes, I can. Thank you.

[Caroline Desbiens, Bloc, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

I was very interested in your description of your region, which sounds a lot like mine. I'm an islander, too. I'm from Isle-aux-Coudres, in the middle of the St. Lawrence, and people get there by ferry.

It occurred to me that tourism is an important economic driver in both our regions.

As I understand it, abandoned vessels along the shoreline in your area are a bit of a blight on the seascape. It sounds like your community doesn't know how to manage these kinds of vessels that serve no purpose, that are anchored at sea and that deteriorate over time.

Here's my question.

Abandoned vessels in the St. Lawrence don't stay abandoned for very long. For one thing, if a vessel is anchored somewhere, sooner or later a powerful northern storm comes along, and the vessel is gone. It's a very unpredictable and violent river, and the winds in the St. Lawrence estuary are very violent, too.

From what I understand, you also have storms where you are, but vessels weather them and sometimes even cause collisions. There are a lot of abandoned boats at anchor.

What can the municipal, provincial and federal governments do? Does the Canadian Coast Guard help you in some way?

[Leonard Lee]

Yes, thank you.

I should speak French. On my mother's side, I was all French, but living in B.C., we didn't have that option. You have my apologies. My brother sent his kids to French immersion to correct that, which I thought was very nice of him. It's too bad we didn't have it when I was younger.

Yes, we need stronger winds. It would take better care of our problem. We do get some pretty good winds, but our harbours are very well protected. Some boats do break loose, usually when they tie up two boats to one anchor. They'll wander around, and they'll hit other anchored boats, but then they'll hit boats that are properly moored to a dock. At that point, the owners will get kind of excited with these things bouncing off of them, and they will generally phone the local search and rescue, who will tow them back out and anchor them.

However, there's very little we can do about those boats before they sink. We do try to get an owner to give up ownership and let us crunch them, but owners are very reluctant. They're treasures to them, and until they sink.... That's really about the only viable option right now. We just wait until they sink, and then we crunch them. That's not good. It's not a very viable option. It should be taken care of before it gets to that point.

[Caroline Desbiens, Bloc, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

Can the Canadian Coast Guard intervene when that happens? Does it have jurisdiction? The Coast Guard isn't getting involved, is it?

[Leonard Lee]

No, they don't become involved. Yes, it's a pretty tough situation.

[Caroline Desbiens, Bloc, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

What would help you deal with this issue? What do you need?

[Leonard Lee]

It would be very helpful if the boats weren't there, anchored, in the first place. If they simply weren't allowed to anchor over two or three days and had to move on, that would be the most helpful thing.

We have had instances where a local not-for-profit has gotten involved and managed to obtain ownership, and then through grants, we've been able to get money to dispose of them. That does work, if we get excited enough, but the local not-for-profits are—

[Caroline Desbiens, Bloc, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

Sorry, I have to interrupt you.

Do you know if those are federal grants? Or is it provincial support?

[Leonard Lee]

It's been provincial grants that we've had. I'll have to go back and check with the not-for-profits. I could be wrong.

[Caroline Desbiens, Bloc, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

My understanding is that the federal government doesn't help you very much.

[Leonard Lee]

They have been very helpful in a lot of ways through the boats that have been tied up at the harbour association facilities and are derelict. The federal government has a program that assists the harbour authorities to actually get rid of those boats, and that has been a very good program. I can't think of any derelict boats that we have now at our actual small craft harbour facilities. Those have all been taken care of.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Madame Desbiens.

We'll now go to Ms. Barron for six minutes or less, please.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses who are here today. It's always great to be able to hear different perspectives on what's happening on the west coast and on the east coast. It's good to have all of you here.

My first question is for you, Mr. Winn. You talked about the vessels that are being launched and set adrift. I know that I've said this in every meeting so far, I think, but this comes up over and over again. It's the fact that, right now, for many who own vessels and boats, it is easier for them to abandon a vessel than it is for them to dispose of it properly, which is not at all where we should be at this point in time.

I'm wondering if you could let me know if you know of any turn-in programs or recycling initiatives for wrecked and abandoned vessels in your area. Do vessel owners know what they can do with their vessel when it has reached the end of its life?

[Ian Winn]

Thank you for the question.

Yes, I think there are programs available, but the communication to the vessel owner isn't there. Especially if it's a small boat, they look at it more like an automobile or a vehicle that they can just push off into the woods and will disappear.

The programs are there, to some extent, and there is some funding available, mostly at the provincial level or through organizations where funds are raised, like at our biosphere region, where it's a marine debris fund and people give money to it. The programs do exist, but the communication to the public and the small craft owners might not be there. That could definitely be improved.

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

Thank you very much.

Just to clarify, then, would it be your feeling that what's currently in place is not adequate? Is that the sense you're getting?

[Ian Winn]

That's true, yes. There's a lot more opportunity, and it would require a lot more money. It does cost a lot of money to recover a vessel if it's on the bottom, or even to take it off the beach and dispose of it properly.

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

Thank you, Mr. Winn.

Mr. Lee, welcome and happy belated birthday. I would sing happy birthday to you, but I'll leave that to Madame Desbiens if she'd like to.

I wanted to ask you a question, Mr. Lee. You talked about vessels—I'm trying to remember your exact words now—floating and just being abandoned and left. I'm wondering about one thing that has been brought to my attention. It's that the bar is set too high for the vessels to be cleaned up. What happens is that they'll come and review it and say, “Okay, you know what? It's not polluting to the level that we need it to be polluting in order to clean it up.” Then it sits there and continues to pollute and becomes a big compounding problem.

I'm wondering if you have seen anything like this, where vessels that are already polluting are left because they don't reach that threshold to be cleaned up.

[Leonard Lee]

The pollution that is probably the most harmful is a boat that sinks and has some diesel left in it when it sinks.

Yes, that happens. We don't deal with them until they sink. You can have a look at them and you can say, yep, it's going to go down—that it was close last week and this week it's probably its turn—but typically we don't deal with it until it has gone down.

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

Thank you, Mr. Lee.

I apologize. I don't mean to interrupt you. Perhaps, you could finish your response along with clarifying the.... I've had a very full day today. My brain is very full. Around the.... Maybe I'll just let you finish and then I'll remember the next part. I'm sorry about that. You can continue.