Transport Committee on Feb. 12th, 2018

[Kyle Murphy]

We do deal with larger vessels ourselves in Washington State. Just a couple of years ago we removed a 170-footer that was previously a military tug. We've done old scientific research vessels. We've actually done a couple of old Canadian Coast Guard vessels that were purchased by someone in Washington several years ago. We do have a lot of experience with larger vessels.

In terms of the numbers, they make up fewer of the vessels we deal with, but in terms of the costs, it's much more the cost of our program. It's much more costly to deal with vessels of that size.

[Bernadette Jordan, Liberal, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

You said you have about a million-dollar budget to remove vessels. I know, for example, in the area that I serve, just removing one of them was close to that. How does it compare when you were removing these large vessels? Did you pay for it out of this fund you have with the $3 fee?

[Kyle Murphy]

We've done some of the less complex, larger vessels with the $3 fee, with the $2-million biennium money that we get, but we did receive, I think about four or five years ago, a large $5-million appropriation from our state legislature to specifically focus on larger previously commercial vessels. Because of our funding, we hadn't been able to address a lot of those, and it was becoming that more and more of them needed to be dealt with. That was a special allotment that we received. I think it lasted about three or four years, and we were able to remove a dozen or so vessels.

[Bernadette Jordan, Liberal, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Your time is up.

Thank you so much to all our witnesses. Mr. Weston, it's always wonderful to see you back with us.

We're going to suspend momentarily for the other witnesses to come to the table. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

From the Atlantic Policy Congress of First Nations Chiefs Secretariat, we have with us Ken Paul, the director of fisheries and integrated resources, and Chief Terrance Paul, Membertou First Nation, who are with us by video conference from Sydney, Nova Scotia. As well, we have Peter Luckham, chair, Islands Trust Council, and Anna Johnston, staff counsel, West Coast Environmental Law Association.

Welcome to you all. We're very pleased to have you here.

Mr. Paul, would you like to start first for five minutes, please?

[Chief Terrance Paul, Membertou First Nation, Atlantic Policy Congress of First Nations Chiefs Secretariat]

Which Mr. Paul, Ken Paul or Chief Paul?

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Chief Paul.

[Chief Terrance Paul]

Thank you for inviting me to take part in today's discussion. I am pleased to be here on behalf of both the Atlantic Policy Congress and my community of Membertou to speak to Bill C-64.

As the original caretakers of our lands and waters, we, the Mi'kmaq, know that we have both rights and expertise to share that take into account the appropriate methods and the impacts that decommissioning and removal have on our environment.

For your information, according to our treaties, the Mi'kmaq have first rights to salvage operations. However, over time that has not been the process that has taken place in many cases.

This is why meeting with you today is so important for us and the Mi'kmaq population of more than 22,000 people across Nova Scotia and the indigenous people across Canada. We recognize the great opportunity in economic development for first nations regarding the decommissioned, abandoned, and hazardous vessels in our waters. Because the Nova Scotia Mi'kmaq have extensive experience and history in the fisheries, we see working with you, our government, as an open and ongoing dialogue about the advancement of Bill C-64 and an opportunity to learn how we can be instrumental in gaining this opportunity.

The economic and employment opportunities that it would and could provide for us would be incredibly beneficial.

I would recommend a serious consideration of the tendering process itself. While I am not suggesting that we would always have the capacity to take on these large-scale projects all on our own, I do ask that you put forth requirements for indigenous participation and partnerships. Here in Cape Breton, for example, the Nova Scotia Mi'kmaq and Membertou have land on the Sydney waterfront. Recently we've seen organizations come in under massive contracts to facilitate these operations, and we haven't even been consulted, let alone been a part of the project. This cannot continue.

I ask today that you take away from our conversations the consideration of creating an inclusive procurement process and of ensuring that indigenous people are involved in the tendering process through Bill C-64. We recognize the importance of this bill, which will further provide guidance and protection for the future.

We want to make recommendations to you to move this bill forward. We would welcome the opportunity to be a part of your further discussions, but also to play a pivotal role in helping to achieve the goals of the bill in a safe and efficient manner, all while being included from the beginning.

Our people have long since used these waters for survival and to make a living for our families. I encourage you to consider having us at the table for further discussions, and when the time comes to properly take care of these operations, I hope you will consider having indigenous people working to protect our waters as we've done since time immemorial.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much, Chief Paul.

Mr. Ken Paul is next.

[Ken Paul, Director, Fisheries and Integrated Resources, Atlantic Policy Congress of First Nations Chiefs Secretariat]

First, I'd like to acknowledge that we are on Algonquin traditional lands, and that we want to respect their sovereignty.

I also want to mention that I'm replacing Chief Bob Gloade, who had a medical emergency yesterday. He was supposed to appear on our behalf as one of our co-chairs, and I hope that we can send prayers for a speedy recovery to him and his family.

Chief Terry mentioned our treaties. I would like to read an excerpt from the treaty of 1752, the Peace and Friendship Treaty, between His Majesty the King and Jean Baptiste Cope. Article 7 specifically says:

That the Indians shall use their best Endeavours to save the lives and goods of any People Shipwrecked on this Coast, where they resort, and shall Conduct the People saved to Halifax with their Goods, & a Reward adequate to the Salvadge shall be given them.

This actual treaty and this passage itself can be found on the Indigenous and Northern Affairs website.

We understand that with Bill C-64, an act respecting wrecks, abandoned, dilapidated or hazardous vessels and salvage operations, the Government of Canada seeks to strengthen liabilities of owners, prohibit abandonment, enhance federal powers to undertake assessments, introduce compliance and enforcement regimes, and clarify the roles of Transport Canada, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, and the Coast Guard.

The Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities must consider the points that follow.

The Mi'kmaq and Maliseet are signatories of the treaties of peace and friendship with the crown. The treaties are pre-Confederation nation-to-nation agreements, and Canada has officially recognized the treaties of 1752 and 1760-1761 through court cases.

The Mi'kmaq and Maliseet have never ceded any territorial lands or waters to the crown or Canada. As original inhabitants of territory spanning Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, P.E.I., Newfoundland, and Quebec, Mi'kmaq and Maliseet enjoy aboriginal treaty rights that originate from our inherent rights.

According to Canadian law, the crown has the fiduciary duty to consult with first nations chiefs on any legislation that may impact aboriginal and treaty rights, and this includes Bill C-64.

The treaty of 1752 identifies and acknowledges a critical role of Mi'kmaq people in rescue and salvage operations of shipwrecks on the Atlantic coast.

Bill C-64 proposes new authorities to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard with respect to wrecks and abandoned vessels for salvage and environmental damage. This includes fees and penalties. These authorities and the roles of first nations must be discussed in full consultation with Mi'kmaq and Maliseet.

Bill C-64 proposes new registries for vessel owners, along with associated fees. Any new regulations, policies, administration, or costs must be discussed in full consultation with Mi'kmaq and Maliseet.

Economic opportunities to perform vessel deconstruction, recovery, salvage, and transport must give special consideration and preference to Mi'kmaq and Maliseet enterprises.

Environmental and economic impacts of shipwrecks and abandoned vessels in unceded traditional territories must also take into consideration the social and cultural impacts to Mi'kmaq and Maliseet people. This must include, but not be limited to, indigenous traditional knowledge, which has been expressed in Canada's proposed Bill C-69, the impact assessment act.

Thank you for your consideration.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much, Mr. Paul.

We'll move on to Mr. Luckham from the Islands Trust.

You have five minutes, sir.

[Peter Luckham, Chair, Islands Trust Council, Islands Trust]

Thank you, Madam Chair and committee members, for the important work you are doing for Canada.

I would like to acknowledge our meeting on Algonquin Anishinabe territory, and also recognize the Coast Salish territory where I live and which I am mandated by the Province of British Columbia to preserve and protect.

I represent the 26 elected trustees of the Islands Trust, who represent 35,000 residents and property owners of British Columbia's Gulf Islands. The Islands Trust is a federation of 13 special-purpose local government bodies, established in 1974 by the Province of British Columbia through the Islands Trust Act.

Through the act, we are mandated to preserve and protect the trust area and its unique amenities and environment, in co-operation with others, for all British Columbians.

The Gulf Islands are an ecologically rich and internationally renowned tourism destination. As a professional scuba diver and a mariner, I have seen many a sunken or scuttled boat, as well as numerous derelict or abandoned vessels along our shores.

I would like to acknowledge member of Parliament Sheila Malcolmson for her years of tireless work on this issue, and would like to thank this government for creating Bill C-64.

Three and a half million people live in the area surrounding the Islands Trust. There are hundreds of thousands of pleasure craft in the region. Many of them are lovingly maintained older vessels, but others are beyond hope.

A 2014 Transport Canada study identified our region as a hot spot in Canada for abandoned vessels. We are very concerned about small fibreglass and concrete boats that are reaching the end of their service life.

What is the underlying cause for abandoned and derelict vessels? I would suggest the lure of the sea. This powerful attraction for adventure and exploration draws the bold and the foolhardy. All too often, many of those drawn to the siren's song seem to not have the awareness, the skills, the experience, and the resources to properly care for an old boat. A lack of clear regulation does not help.

It is a regular occurrence in the bays and harbours of our islands to witness a known at-risk vessel sink at its moorings after the winter storms, leaking fuel and oil and taking batteries, garbage, paint, and other toxins to the nurseries of our sensitive marine environment.

One of the 450 islands within the Islands Trust federation, the municipality of Bowen Island, has dedicated 400 hours of staff time and more than $75,000 since 2014 to removing more than four tonnes of debris related to boats, wrecks, and mooring buoys. This is a significant and unsustainable cost to a small local government.

These vessels have little or no value and are readily transferred to those drawn to the sea. Circumstances force these vessels to go to a mooring or to set anchor. Ultimately, they are abandoned or blown onto a beach in a storm, or worse, scuttled in the dead of night.

The lack of vessel registration and mooring buoy management promotes abandonment. We need to put an end to this lack of accountability of irresponsible boat owners.

The Islands Trust has been advocating for long-term solutions to abandoned vessels since 2010. We and others have suggested the following strategies: create a funding mechanism, such as a fee on vessel registration; enhance licensing and registration for all vessels and validate the existing data; create a vessel turn-in program; establish public education programs and vessel product stewardship programs; and confirm the responsibilities of the agencies having authority over derelict and abandoned vessels.

I ask you to strengthen Bill C-64 with actions that focus on preventing abandonment. For example, establish a program of review and approval under the Navigable Waters Protection Act for private mooring buoy registration, and actively conduct enforcement; perform regular mooring buoy sweeps with other agencies; inventory and monitor vessels at risk; provide opportunities for appropriate disposal of old boats; and establish a permanent program beyond the 2017-2022 funding.

We appreciate the intent of the work behind Bill C-64. This is a big step in the right direction and responds to many of our concerns. We're glad to see that charges have been laid recently in British Columbia against offenders who deliberately scuttled their vessels. Successfully getting the message out that the government is serious about penalizing offenders and helping those who ask for help will, I believe, reduce the occurrence of abandonment.

Transport Canada's plans for improving pleasure boat registration and developing an ongoing revenue stream for removals is crucial to long-term success in preventing abandonment, just as the Washington State derelict vessel removal program has greatly assisted San Juan County in managing abandoned boats.

Thank you for your leadership on this issue, and thank you for inviting me here today.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much, Mr. Luckham.

We'll go on to Ms. Johnston, staff counsel for West Coast Environmental Law.

[Anna Johnston, Staff Counsel, West Coast Environmental Law Association]

Thank you very much, and thank you for this invitation to appear before you on unceded Algonquin territory.

My name is Anna Johnston. I'm a staff lawyer at West Coast Environmental Law.

West Coast has been a non-profit for 40 years now, helping British Columbians protect their environment through law. We work with coastal communities, local governments, and first nations to strengthen environmental laws protecting their lands and waters, and I am truly honoured to be before you today.

I'd like to commend this government for taking action on the issue of wrecked, abandoned, dilapidated vessels, and for all of you, it's really been great to see the parties come together to move this bill forward and strengthen it together.

Abandoned vessels cause significant environmental, safety, economic, and aesthetic concern to coastal communities in British Columbia. I believe the same 2014 inventory that my friend here just referred to identified 245 vessels of concern in British Columbia, and those are only the ones that were reported by local governments. Of these, 165 were pleasure craft or sailboats, so the majority of the problem that is faced in British Columbia is not from large commercial vessels. They tend to be smaller pleasure craft spilling fuel and decaying in local harbours and waters.

Bill C-64 is a good start toward helping with this issue. I have a few suggestions that, if implemented, I believe will help strengthen the bill and allow it to fulfill the government's goal of more effectively dealing with derelict, abandoned, and wrecked vessels.

My first suggestion is to better ensure that the goal of dealing with these vessels is met by strengthening the discretionary nature of the act and actually requiring ministers and receivers of wreck to take action.

The second recommendation I have is related to the first. To the degree that discretion remains under the act, in my experience, when the government doesn't take action on an issue, the public wants to see why. Therefore, I would recommend that there be an amendment to explicitly enable the public to request ministers or receivers of wreck to deal with, or authorize them to deal with, abandoned, derelict, and wrecked vessels, and to combine that ability to request with a mandatory response that is made publicly available within a prescribed period of time.

My third recommendation is to better enable the tracking down of vessel owners, as has been mentioned here before, by requiring registration of pleasure craft.

Do I have a couple of minutes? Can I elaborate on those points?

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Yes, you do. You have two more minutes, Ms. Johnston.

[Anna Johnston]

With regard to the discretionary nature of the act, most of the powers of the minister and receivers of wreck under the act to deal with wrecked, abandoned, and dilapidated vessels are discretionary in nature, calling into question whether or not these decision-makers will actually take the necessary actions to address the backlog of wrecked, abandoned, and dilapidated vessels in Canadian waters.

For example, subclause 30(3) states that if an owner of a dilapidated vessel leaves it stranded, grounded, anchored, or moored for at least 60 days contrary to subclause 30(1), the minister may take measures or monitor the situation or order that measures be taken. I would recommend that these kinds of provisions be strengthened to require the minister and also the receivers of wreck to take action within a prescribed period of time or else to justify why action is not being taken.

Combined with this, my second recommendation is that, to the degree the discretion remains in the act, the bill include specific provisions that would allow any person to request ministers or a receiver of wreck to deal with abandoned, derelict, or wrecked vessels, or to authorize them to do so.

Some provisions to this degree do exist in the bill. For example, there's a requirement in subclause 58(1) to report a wreck. However, when I looked through the bill, I didn't see, with regard to many of the other provisions enabling ministers to take action with regard to these vessels, an ability for the public to explicitly request that it happen.

Of course, the public would always be able to make this request, but the reason you want to put it in legislation is that you want to pair it with the requirement that the minister or the receiver of wreck provide a public response to that request in order to retain a little public accountability.

I was going to talk about the registration of pleasure craft, but I think that topic has been amply covered.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much, Ms. Johnston.

We'll go on to Ms. Block for six minutes.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I'd like to welcome all of our witnesses here. Thank you so much for joining us.

It is interesting to note that this is not the first bill tabled in the House and then referred to this committee on which first nations witnesses have indicated that they have not been consulted.

I guess I would pose my first question to you, Mr. Ken Paul, and I only say Ken Paul because we have Chief Paul sitting at the table as well.

In other bills, there are provisions that require that when making a decision under an act, the minister must consider “any adverse effects that the decision may have on the rights of the Indigenous peoples of Canada”. Can you tell me if you are aware of any such provision in Bill C-64? If not, what might be your recommendation with regard to this bill, and what might be any amendments that need to be made to this bill in order to satisfy some of the concerns that you raised in your testimony?

[Ken Paul]

I'm not really aware of any of the provisions that you mentioned, but in general, if there's going to be any act of law that may have an impact on aboriginal treaty rights, that really triggers a duty to consult. It's just part of Canadian law, out of the Haida court case of 2004, I believe.

We have processes in Atlantic Canada. Our first nation chiefs are our legislative leaders, and they can delegate. However, full consultation hasn't actually happened in the past little while. It seems that things go to the gazetting process, and then we're asked whether or not we want to consult, while the process has already begun. The clock has already been ticking once it goes to the gazetting process. Full engagement needs to be done at the beginning to avoid any particular problems.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

In follow-up to that, do you have any amendments that you would like to see considered for this bill?

[Ken Paul]

I don't have the authority to recommend amendments. That has to go back to our consultation tables that are delegated by our chiefs.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Okay. Thank you very much.

I will ask a question of Chief Paul. Can you tell me how many abandoned vessels are currently in your harbour?

[Chief Terrance Paul]

I don't know the exact number, but I'm aware that there are quite a few. I don't have that number, but I know that there are almost 700 decommissioned ships, abandoned ships, nationally.

On the other side of it, with regard to the ships that are decommissioned, the usual practice has been, I guess, to go to the point of the cheapest labour, and that is to go overseas, which I feel is not right at all, even for those people who are doing the work, because of the protections that are required.

A lot of those ships have asbestos, and from what I've seen, there's absolutely no protection on that side. It may cost more here, but.... Here we are in Cape Breton. We've seen a lot of these decommissioned ships here in the harbour, waiting for the contractor to take them overseas. We're asked to look after those through our security measures, and that's about it. There's really no discussion, no consultation, which is very.... I mean, it's the law. That's required, even if we think, even if we feel, that it's affecting us, and we certainly feel that.

It's not just a check-off in a box that you consulted us, that you just spoke to us. It has to be meaningful consultation, and there has to be meaningful accommodation to that.

I know that's a long answer to your question about how many abandoned ships, but I needed to put that in.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Yes. That's okay. I just noted that you did recommend that a serious tendering process needs to be put in place to address the removal of abandoned vessels.

Currently, what is the process for removing an abandoned vessel? You may have already said something about it happening from other countries, but can you tell me how they are dealt with right now?