Transport Committee on Feb. 5th, 2018

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC]

It does apply to our exclusive economic zone waters, and it will apply.... As you know, we're working on making amendments to the Navigation Protection Act, and—

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Does it also apply to vessels using innocent right of passage?

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC]

It applies to all vessels in our internal waters or coastal waters.

To finish what I was saying, because the Navigation Protection Act deals with free and unfettered navigation, when a vessel is abandoned, it represents a potential obstruction. That is one aspect we're looking at in the Navigation Protection Act amendments. We might transfer it to this legislation to cover it.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

So it does apply to our internal waters.

You mentioned that it applies to the waters of our exclusive economic zone. Does it apply to vessels traversing these waters—not going to port, but using right of innocent passage within the waters of our exclusive economic zone?

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC]

Yes, it applies in Canadian waters, whether it's transiting through or in our exclusive zone.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Could you speak to the committee about how this is going to be applied with respect to American-flagged vessels? I ask because the United States is not a party to either the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea or the Nairobi convention. The U.S. has explicitly stated its concerns with respect to both of these UN treaties, and they do not believe the treaty can be applied to American-flagged vessels in territorial waters. Maybe you could speak a bit to the Canadian government's position if this bill in front of us should become law.

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC]

I recognize that the United States has not ratified the Nairobi convention. From our point of view, if a vessel becomes derelict or abandoned or a wreck in our Canadian waters, Bill C-64 will apply regardless of the country the vessel comes from. We will have to make other countries aware that these rules will apply even though they may just be transiting.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

I don't have any further questions. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

We'll to on to Mr. Badawey.

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Minister, for attending this afternoon.

I do want to express my appreciation to members opposite, especially with respect to supporting motion M-40 when it was brought forward by my colleague and having that kick-start this process for the most part.

With that, Madam Chair, I do want to dig a bit deeper into this legislation as it relates to what happens when.

When a vessel is abandoned and contaminants of concern are established, based on the condition of the vessel, there will be obvious effects on the surrounding area, whether they be in water, on water, or on the surrounding land areas, and not just within the specific area but leaching out to further areas downstream.

My question to the minister is this: when would an environmental assessment and/or a site-specific risk assessment take place? Who would then be responsible for that, and what partnerships or protocols would be established through this legislation that would help instigate as well as solidify a process to take care of the challenges that would arise from a derelict vessel?

[Gregory Lick]

The minister has asked me to take the question, but I'll just clarify a couple of points.

If there is an abandoned vessel or derelict vessel currently that poses an environmental risk from oil pollution or from pollutants aboard or whatever, we will take action right now. Captain Wootton has dealt with many of those vessels on the west coast, and I will ask him to speak on a couple of examples.

During prosecuting the incident, we've dealt with the pollution, but then we have to deal with impacts of the pollution after the fact. That's where we've started to get into handling environmental assessments—handling, in our case, particularly with our department, fisheries impacts such as impacts upon the clam beds or oyster beds or whatever it might be.

If you don't mind, maybe I'll ask Captain Wootton to talk about one or two incidents.

[Brian Wootton, Regional Director, Incident Management, Western Region, Department of Fisheries and Oceans]

As my colleague suggests, the process for an abandoned vessel, whether it's just happened or whether it's a wreck that's been on the beach for some time, is that as soon as it starts to present, through the environmental response program and using our current authorities, we'll size up the scene and the extent of the damage and use our ER assets, our environmental response assets, to mitigate it.

In some cases, this turns into a full-blown remediation of the wreck. For example, in Ladysmith over the last 18 months, there have been seven full vessel removals. These were vessels that were alongside and had been for some time, and the Coast Guard didn't have the authority to take immediate action because the pollution threat wasn't imminent.

The new legislation will allow us to reach in sooner, without waiting for the vessel to sink, for example. The Anapaya is one that comes to mind in Ladysmith. This is an old converted fish packer that sank alongside the dock. Our program responded to that. Canada funded the response. Now, post incident, we're pursuing ownership to look for cost recovery.

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

If I may, Madam Chair, in terms of cost recovery and responsibilities, are both the cost and protocols fully the responsibility of the federal government, or are other partners utilized as well, such as the provincial ministry of environment, local municipalities, or other partners?

[Brian Wootton]

In the case of the Anapaya, the Coast Guard was the sole responder. For the contractors we used, the Coast Guard absorbed those expenses and is now pursuing the owner. We have the ship-source oil pollution fund while we're looking for ownership.

In some of the bigger cases, when there is a known polluter, it will be a co-operative incident command framework. The incident action plan is approved by the known owner, and we work with the province and local government to develop the action plan. Those that are part of the incident command structure would have their expenses funded through the owner during the actual incident. If the owner is unknown, then the Coast Guard will get the job done, and we pursue the cost recovery after the operation is over.

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC]

Madam Chair, may I take just a second to correct something I said to Mr. Chong?

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Yes, please do.

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC]

Thank you.

My answer was perhaps a little too simplistic.

In the case of a U.S. vessel, if it is in Canadian waters, it will come under this legislation, but it will not in the economic zone, because they are not a signatory to the Nairobi convention. However, for countries that are, such as France and Germany, the legislation will apply in the economic zone for them as well.

Does that answer your question?

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Go ahead, Ms. Malcolmson.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Thank you, Chair, and I want to take the opportunity to give a big thanks to the Coast Guard. Ladysmith harbour has had a huge concentration of abandoned vessels through no fault of its own. Bylaw enforcement by bigger port authorities pushed the boats into our harbour, and the Coast Guard has really gone above and beyond.

The Viki Lyne II is a poster child example. After the marine survey said that the vessel was an imminent risk to sink and it might only be held together by corrosion on the hull, it still took us four years to have the previous fisheries minister order removal, which we are very grateful for.

When I got into local government, one of the pieces about abandoned vessels was the runaround, and here's an old chart of what to do if you find an abandoned vessel. I think I've got a copy of this for you, Minister, and for the other committee members. Some ratepayers' groups, for 10 years, got the runaround, being told there wasn't a hazard to navigation, or it's provincial or it's federal....

This flow chart is not tenable, and I know that you know this. Is this the new flow chart? Can you assure me that this legislation really ends the runaround? That's one of the prime pieces that I was trying to achieve in my Bill C-352.

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC]

Yes, I think that we certainly approached it from that point of view. We want to stop the runaround and in fact we want to have rules and regulations in place, because the reality was that in the past, if there was an abandoned vessel and we knew about it, all we could do was address the problem of environmental pollution or navigation, but we couldn't do much more. We couldn't hold the owners accountable. There were no clear rules. If somebody reported to us that they had found an abandoned vessel, what were we going to do? There was no clearly established legislative means for us to take action.

Therefore our intention is to try to make this as clear as possible and to have accountability. We think that this will be the case. We're want to build on the issue of public reporting, so if there's a public reporting of a problem vessel, it will be made to the Canadian Coast Guard operations centre.

Now we have to get the information out that they are the people you have to go to, not necessarily—

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

This is in your briefing book, your enormous briefing book. You do say a single federal point of contact. That is the question, but it doesn't exactly answer it. Does this mean that any local government, any first nation—

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC]

Anybody.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

—any citizen group can phone the Coast Guard and tell them they've got a problem vessel, and then it's the Coast Guard that sorts out which federal ministry should be the lead on it, or what the mechanism is?

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC]

Yes.

That gets it into identification, first of all, adding it to the inventory, assessing the risk, and then deciding on the action, trying to locate the owner—which hopefully in the future will be a more straightforward process—and then taking the necessary action to deal with it, hopefully at the owner's expense.