Evidence of meeting #91 for Transport, Infrastructure and Communities in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was vessel.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Council-Chief Administrative Officer, Town of Shelburne
That's the unrecouped portion.
Mayor, Town of Shelburne
Oh, I'm sorry, that's the unrecouped part. That's right. It was close to $200,000. What we received from the ship-source pollution fund was $43,000 of the $46,000.
Council-Chief Administrative Officer, Town of Shelburne
And that's not for legal costs.
Mayor, Town of Shelburne
That's right. It didn't cover the legal costs. We're still out almost $150,000.
Liberal
Bernadette Jordan Liberal South Shore—St. Margarets, NS
When the Farley Mowat was there, it took up about a quarter of the wharf space in Shelburne. Is that correct?
Liberal
Bernadette Jordan Liberal South Shore—St. Margarets, NS
For the three years that it was there, a quarter of that wharf space could not be used, so you lost revenue from that as well.
Mayor, Town of Shelburne
Yes, we certainly did lose revenue from the fact that it was sitting there. We didn't only lose the unpaid wharfage fees that the owner wasn't paying us; we certainly lost revenue from ships that couldn't use that space.
Liberal
Bernadette Jordan Liberal South Shore—St. Margarets, NS
Mayor Mitchell, I just want to thank you for bringing those pictures. I've been talking about the size of the ships that we have problems with, because on the west coast they have a lot of problems with smaller recreational vessels. I've been trying to say that here on the east coast, it's a different problem. I appreciate your bringing the pictures of the Fraser and the Cormorant and all of the other ones.
Liberal
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Judy Sgro
Next on the list, the clerk has inserted Ms. Malcolmson's name.
Would you like us to give you a few minutes and go to Mr. Fraser and then come back to you?
NDP
Sheila Malcolmson NDP Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC
Sure, that would probably improve the quality of my remarks, with thanks to the chair, and apologies. I couldn't leave my colleague's speech.
Liberal
Liberal
Sean Fraser Liberal Central Nova, NS
Thanks very much to our witnesses for being here. It's hard to follow on from my colleague Ms. Jordan, because we come from very similar communities with a lot of similar concerns.
I want to just build on the issue of the small municipalities. I represent an area where it's common for a municipality to have a few thousand people in a coastal community. They don't have a lot of financial capacity to deal with this. The bill includes a lot of measures aimed at prevention of new vessels arriving and being abandoned. Separate from that, there are some federal government programs, like the abandoned boats program, designed to deal with existing vessels.
I'm wondering if you could perhaps, particularly from Bridgewater and Shelburne, discuss how the federal programs could best be shaped to help municipalities that don't have the financial capacity to deal with abandoned vessels that exist within their communities today.
Perhaps, Mr. Mitchell, you can start off.
Mayor, Town of Bridgewater
You're absolutely correct. We don't have the financial capacity to deal with these ships. In my opening remarks, you heard me say that just with the Cormorant listing to the side—it didn't even sink to the bottom—it took over $1 million that had to come from the federal government.
Liberal
Mayor, Town of Bridgewater
Fifteen million dollars. We're pretty lean.
We can't absorb this if it's an emergency. If we had to bear the cost of removing these ships or even bringing one back up to the surface, we couldn't do it.
Liberal
Sean Fraser Liberal Central Nova, NS
To our guests in Shelburne, I assume the story is quite similar for you. Is that correct?
Mayor, Town of Shelburne
It certainly is. I guess a point, too, that always concerned us was that when the Farley Mowat did sink at our wharf, it cost I think close to $500,000 to refloat that. That was a bill that the taxpayers of Canada had to foot unnecessarily.
Liberal
Sean Fraser Liberal Central Nova, NS
Mr. Mitchell, I think you made an interesting suggestion that maybe there could be something done to prevent a wharf owner from accepting a boat that's already in derelict condition. When I think of the next step, it seems to me that if everyone is prohibited from accepting it, the owner would have to abandon it out at sea, which I don't think is the right answer either.
Is there a way that you think that consequence could be avoided?
Mayor, Town of Bridgewater
I don't know.
I understand where Shelburne was coming from in their answer, in response to my answer about punishing the wharf owner. I was specifically talking about how in this case, our case, it's a privately owned wharf. I wouldn't want Shelburne to have to bear that.
There are things in the bill that do deal with this, such as not allowing a vessel to remain in the same place for 60 days. That would help.
I think there should be monetary provisions put in place to punish the wharf owner. If I go back to the original ship that arrived, the Fraser, it had a whole bunch of plans. The wharf owner was going to first sink it. Then they were going to make it a hotel, and then a museum. If I start a business, I have to have a business plan, or the bank's not going to give me any money. If you're going to bring a giant Canadian naval frigate up the river and park it, I would hope that you have a better business plan than, “hey, I'd like to sink it in the Atlantic ocean, where I'm not allowed to sink ships to make artificial reefs.”
Liberal
Sean Fraser Liberal Central Nova, NS
I'm dealing with a very similar issue with a Coast Guard vessel that was going to be used for scrap metal and then the price fell on the global market. It's still sitting there years later.
To our guest Mr. Wellstood, I missed something at the very end of your remarks. You suggested there was something specific that could be included in the regulations. Would you mind just repeating what that was?