I'll just note that the legislation does allow the minister to make regulations to require vessels under 300 tonnes to have insurance, but it's not mandated in the bill. In other words, the bill gives the minister the authority to do that, but the minister doesn't necessarily have to do that. So it's a bit of a question mark about who's going to pay for all of this cleanup. In Washington state, I think they've cleaned up some 750 boats in the last 15 years. It seems to me that across Canada, there are going to be thousands of these boats that need to be cleaned up. The big question I have is if a lot of these boats are small recreational craft vessels, who's going to pay for all this? The abandoned boats program certainly doesn't seem to have sufficient funds to do it, and at some level, I believe that boaters themselves should be paying for the cleanup of these vessels rather than taxpayers in general.
On February 14th, 2018. See this statement in context.