Transport Committee on Oct. 29th, 2024

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much.

The next speaker is Mr. Barsalou‑Duval, for six minutes.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks as well to the witnesses who are with us today. This is an important study for me.

I heard some witnesses complain about the time it takes to implement regulations in their municipality, whether it be Lac‑Simon or Lac Memphrémagog. At home in my riding, we started working on regulations in 2017 and they were ultimately implemented this year. It took seven years to establish regulations in response to applications from the municipalities.

Ms. Orjikh, do you think it's normal for the process to take that long?

[Ariane Orjikh]

Of course not. We have tens of thousands of lakes in Canada. If we have to go through this process every time we want to regulate practices on our lakes more effectively, it will be endless. We think national regulation would be more practical because it would mean that everyone, in their various municipalities, wouldn't have to go through the same process for their waterways.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

So you think there should be a kind of broadly applicable basic national framework. Currently, if a city or municipality doesn't apply for regulations, then there are simply no regulations. That's anarchy, the wild west. Failing an application from a municipality, there are no rules.

[Ariane Orjikh]

Exactly.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

In addition to the current types of applications, are there any applications that you would like to be able to make for tools that might be useful in certain regions?

[Ariane Orjikh]

That would be for tools that would help facilitate the process. The idea is for the municipalities to simplify the regulation process. The tool exists, but it's ill suited. You have to go through a highly bureaucratic and tedious procedure involving public consultations, in particular.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Perhaps I wasn't clear in asking my question.

Representatives from various cities have told me they would have liked to ban anchoring in certain areas. However, in the appendices to the tools that they may use, the ban on anchoring didn't seem to be one of the items that the cities could request.

Some have told us that the problem isn't boat speeds in certain places, if they're necessary, but rather the waves generated by boats proceeding at that speed. However, we can regulate speed but not waves. Do you think that kind of situation makes sense? Have you experienced similar situations at the local level?

[Ariane Orjikh]

It's definitely difficult to measure a wave. I think it's preferable, for example, to regulate practices such as sports that generate oversized waves or speed. So I think we have to rely on scientific studies in order to regulate based on existing information.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Should cities have to endure a long regulatory process in which they're somewhat coddled because they have to meet a burden of proof, or should elected municipal representatives instead be trusted to present the application and make decisions?

[Ariane Orjikh]

As I previously said, I think that standards based on scientific data could be applied everywhere without the municipalities even having to follow a procedure.

However, there are always cases specific to certain localities that have nothing to do with depth or distance from the shore. I'm thinking, for example, of the presence of an aquatic plant community. I really think the municipalities have to be trusted in such cases. In the case of an aquatic plant community, the evidence that the municipalities must provide doesn't have to be as strong as what Transport Canada asks of them. For example, the plant community in Fitch Bay is surrounded by wetlands. However, there are plant communities everywhere. Furthermore, the studies show that stirring up sediments in shallow areas damages the waterway. Consequently, the Fitch Bay study doesn't have to be redone, but Transport Canada requests evidence that boats are causing problems in that particular area of the bay.

So the procedure that the municipalities have to follow is too much.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Thank you. Sometimes, you feel you almost need a Ph.D. to implement regulations in a small municipality, when the municipalities wind up doing all the work and Transport Canada leaves them to their own devices.

Since I have some time left, I'd like to ask the representatives of the Municipalité de Lac‑Simon a question.

You've managed to implement restrictions. Some municipalities told me they were somewhat surprised because, after filing their application, they realized they were the ones who had to bear the costs of all facilities, buoys, publication of the regulations, awareness campaigns and so on. They also had to pay the people who were recruited to enforce the regulations.

Would it have been practical for you to have financial support in dealing with these kinds of significant expenses?

[Benjamin Furtado]

I'm sorry, but I wasn't working for the municipality at the time. However, our municipal councillors told us that financial support would have been welcome.

Today, if we filed a new application for restrictions, we would hope to receive support because, as you can see, this is no easy task. We also don't know if there have been any new procedures since that time because that procedure was used roughly 15 years ago and things may have changed since then.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Furtado and Mr. Barsalou-Duval.

Next we have Mr. Bachrach.

The floor is yours, sir. You have six minutes.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thanks to our witnesses for being here for this study.

I'll start with some questions for Ms. Orjikh.

You mentioned in your report the recommendation around potentially measuring the pleasure boat support capacity of Lake Memphremagog. I'm interested in this idea of the carrying capacity of the lake to support pleasure boats. How would you go about measuring that sort of thing or estimating the capacity of the lake for boat traffic?

[Ariane Orjikh]

That's a good question. Many studies have been done to measure the carrying capacity of a body of water. For example, since the number of boats on Lac Memphrémagog has increased 25%, can that percentage increase indefinitely? Could there one day be a limit on the number of watercraft, or even a limit by type of watercraft? If, one day, we get to 5,000 big wake boats, that will be too many.

Scientists in Europe and the United States have examined this. We're proud to have found a master's student who will look into it next year and review all existing studies on the carrying capacity of a body of water as it pertains to boating. I've also read up on this. There may be a surface area by type of watercraft. For example, if it takes so many square kilometres per given type of watercraft, that will yield the threshold number of watercraft for a body of water.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you for that.

I think built into this idea of “carrying capacity” is the idea that the impact on the environment is relative to the number of boats. I represent a huge rural riding with many lakes. On most of those lakes, you could be in your boat for hours and hours, if not days, and never see another boat. On the idea of national standards, I wonder if it could somehow accommodate the fact that Canada is very diverse and that there are huge regions of our country where there's never going to be the density of recreational boating traffic to necessitate regulations like the ones that are being contemplated.

How would you establish national standards that accommodate those different contexts in our country?

[Ariane Orjikh]

Actually, on any waterway, if a boat passes within 300 metres of the shore and generates oversized waves, it will always cause erosion. As Vermont has done, I believe it would be much easier to establish national science-based standards than to ask every municipality to implement regulations and provide evidence for each of its waterways.

In fact, the Municipalité de Nominingue took seven years to regulate one of its waterways. It has practically 100 within its boundaries. It took seven years to regulate a single waterway. Some standards may be applied, perhaps not for the boat limit because that obviously depends on the body of water, but for the distance from the shore. For example, for sports generating oversized waves or maximum speed at a certain distance from the shore, that distance would ultimately be the same in any body of water.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

If such standards were put in place, which level of government would be responsible for enforcing those standards and paying for the enforcement of those standards?

[Ariane Orjikh]

That's a very good question.

Memphremagog Conservation Inc. is a non-profit organization that doesn't report to any level of government, be it municipal, provincial or federal. In the case of Vermont, it was the state itself that decided to get involved. Is that the best way to go about it? That's a great question.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

The reason I asked the question was that I was thinking about my constituents and about the Canadian context and the fact that lakes near highly populated areas often have a lot of recreational boating traffic and pressure; therefore, there are environmental impacts, as you've mentioned. There are many lakes in many areas of Canada that have less impact and less pressure, and they have very little federal government presence.

If the federal government were charged with enforcing national standards, then that effort would predominantly take place in highly populated areas, in cottage country or in places with a lot of recreational boat traffic. The question would then be this: How do you allocate the costs of enforcement so that they're fair to all Canadians?

Of course, if Transport Canada is doing that enforcement, which is paid for by all Canadian citizens who pay taxes, then it's going to be challenging to build that fairness and equity. That's just an editorial comment on my part.

The last question I have for Ms. Orjikh is about whether she sees a role for the provinces in this regulatory process, or whether municipalities and the federal government are the two jurisdictions that should really be preoccupied with this challenge that she has laid out.

[Ariane Orjikh]

Another great question.

Could the Government of Quebec do the same thing? Municipalities are finding the process far too difficult. That's the challenge right now.

I would like to ask the people from the Municipalité de Lac-Simon to answer that question. Would they prefer that the provincial government have jurisdiction in this area? If the process were simplified for municipalities and they could easily refer to clear scientific standards, they might prefer to enforce the rules themselves.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Unfortunately, Mr. Bachrach's time is up. You'll be able to say more in the next round of questions.

Mr. Vis, you have five minutes. The floor is yours, sir.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My questions today will be directed towards Mr. Layzell.

At the end of your previous comments, you mentioned that the PBO reports on the luxury tax were severely short in terms of the total impact it had on the sector. You outlined that this was because Canadian consumers were not purchasing boats in United States, but were going south of the border to spend significant money on new products. Is that correct?

[Rick Layzell]

There's one minor adjustment. Canadian consumers are purchasing boats in the United States. They are not purchasing the boats in the luxury tax regime threshold in Canada.