moved that Bill S-8, an act concerning personal watercraft in navigable waters, be read the second time and referred to a committee.
Mr. Speaker, Bill S-8, the personal watercraft act, is essentially the same bill I introduced in the last session of Parliament as Bill S-10.
I feel very privileged to debate this bill in the House of Commons to support the many years of work done by Senator Spivak to resolve a very real ecological and social problem. In the absence of regulatory changes, Senator Spivak has developed this legislation and, through great persistence, twice brought it through the Senate.
The bill would improve the safety of Canadians, protect the fragile environment of our lakes and rivers and, most important, give local communities a choice and a measure of local control over a significant problem on their lakes and rivers. The bill would also reverse one area in which the federal authority is being eroded.
The problem this bill addresses arose some 10 years ago with the use of personal watercraft or PWCs, also known as Jet Skis or Sea-Doos, in areas where they pose an undue threat to safety, to the environment and to everyone's peaceful enjoyment of the waterways. For those not familiar with them, they are small, high-powered, jet-driven machines that people ride like a snowmobile on the water.
In brief, the bill would allow municipalities, cottagers' associations and other bodies to place restrictions on PWCs on designated lakes, rivers or portions of coastal waterways. It would also allow local authorities to ban them entirely where they pose an inordinate hazard to safety, to the environment or to the peaceful enjoyment of any navigable water.
At the heart of the bill are two principles: first, the principle of choice, and second, the principle of local control. The bill would allow owners or renters of personal watercraft to continue to use them in areas where they can be used safely and without undue harm to the environment. It would give local authorities, the people who best know the area, a measure of control to decide where restrictions are needed.
The bill has received a significant amount of support. Some 78 organizations are now behind it: municipal associations, cottagers' associations, canoeists, wildlife groups and others who are calling for a resolution to the problem. Because of lack of time, I will skip the list of the many, many organizations that support this bill. However, I will say that petitions from thousands of people urging Parliament to pass this legislation have been presented in the Senate. The news media also has taken a great interest in this issue, and well over a hundred items have appeared in magazines, in newspapers, on radio and on television.
Not everyone is in favour of this approach. As expected, personal watercraft manufacturers and some boating organizations are not in support. They believe that it is untrained drivers, not their machines, that cause the problems, and they believe that education can solve everything.
This was indeed the approach adopted by a cabinet committee in 1994. In fact, the Canadian Coast Guard had drafted regulations that would have made this particular bill, Bill S-8, redundant. Communities wanted the right to restrict PWCs. The Coast Guard responded with new proposed regulations. With provincial agreement, a lake in Quebec and the waters of Pacific Rim National Park were chosen to set the example other communities could follow.
However, the cabinet committee rejected the option on the erroneous assumption that boating education would solve all the problems. Cabinet told the Coast Guard to go back to the drawing board to devise new safety regulations for all types of pleasure craft in respect of equipment, boating safety, training, and the age of boat and PWC operators. Now, no one under 16 years of age can drive these powerful machines.
This approach was advanced by the personal watercraft manufacturers who, to their credit--and credit must be given where it is due--contributed financially to boating programs. It was also an approach which held that personal watercraft were not unique and that it was somehow discriminatory to allow local communities to restrict them while allowing larger power boats on lakes and rivers.
The response to these claims is threefold.
First, the educational program has not worked. The problems have not gone away. Among them is a stunning rise in PWC related fatalities. Last summer the Royal Life Saving Society documented a 53% increase in PWC related deaths since 1996. At the same time, the deaths linked to all small boats declined by 29%. The fatality rate from PWC use is now almost double the rate for other power boats.
Second, personal watercraft are unique, both in their design and the way in which they are used as a thrill craft.
Third, it is no more discriminatory to regulate the activities of PWCs than it is to regulate the activity of waterskiing or boardsurfing, which are currently allowable through the boating restriction regulations.
What the bill would do is change policy. The government could effect the necessary changes by simple regulatory changes to the boating restriction regulations under the Canada Shipping Act. Bill S-8 mimics what the Coast Guard officials proposed to do in 1994 and what appeared in the Canada Gazette as a proposed regulation. The internal documents supporting that proposal describe it as a “balanced regulatory regime”. The bill attempts to restore that balance.
I have referred to the problems of PWCs repeatedly. I want to briefly outline them. First and foremost are the deaths, injuries and rescue operations that result when these high-powered machines collide with others on the water or with rocks, or they become stranded offshore.
An extensive review of PWCs in the United States found that several years ago they made up 9% of all registered boats but were involved in 26% of all boating accidents and 46% of all boating injuries. Emergency room information collected and analyzed by Health Canada under the Canadian hospitals injury reporting and prevention program also tells us that PWC use results in a disproportional number of injuries. All things being equal, PWCs should account for anywhere from 3% to 5% of the emergency room injuries from watercraft. In fact, they account for more than 20% of them.
Boating safety training will go some way to reducing this toll but it is important to remember that PWCs are primarily thrill craft. People ride them for the fun and the thrill of speed. There will always be thrill seekers whose courage is greater than their skill or judgment.
The pollution from PWCs is of great concern. While many new models are now powered by four stroke engines, the majority of older models are powered by two stroke engines. The U.S. EPA estimates that up to 30% of the fuel in these engines is discharged unburned directly into the water. With fuel consumption rates of up to 10 U.S. gallons per hour, one PWC can discharge 50 to 60 gallons per year based on less than one hour of use per week.
The exhaust emissions also cause air pollution. The emissions from one 100 horsepower PWC driven for just seven hours is equivalent to the emissions from a passenger car driven 160,000 kilometres. Just one hour of PWC use generates as much smog forming pollution as a passenger car generates over one year.
These facts have been recognized by governments in Canada and the U.S. and by the manufacturers of marine engines for PWCs. All have agreed to reduce emissions over time but that is small consolation for people living on shallow lakes or in other areas where pollution is an increasing problem. They have to live with the PWCs that people now own.
The threats to birds that nest on the shore or lake, to marine mammals and to loons has also been well documented. James Martin has a written a report for the year 2001 entitled “Loon and Grebe Study”. I will not have the time to quote from it but it is available on the web and the report documents it very clearly.
Similarly, noise is a well recognized problem. Wildlife or people just 100 feet away from a PWC will be exposed to approximately 75 decibels, which, because of rapid changes in acceleration and direction, may be more disturbing than a constant sound of 90 decibels.
The American Hospital Association recommends hearing protection for occasional sounds above 85 decibels. When they travel in packs, as they often do, the noise from PWCs is multiplied. Here too, PWC manufacturers know that they have a problem and they have begun to put less noisy models on the market. Again, people will have to live with the noise that older models produce.
The status quo is simply not acceptable. Provinces are no longer prepared to sit by and watch PWCs and power boats harm their drinking water, the environment and the safety of others on or near their lakes and rivers.
André Bourgon, Diane Rivard and Nicholas Bourgon of Montreal, Quebec wrote the following:
It has now become necessary for Canada, with the support of the provinces, to start doing something about water. This depletable resource needs to be protected. Not only the quality of our water, but also the peace and quiet of our river banks and lake shores.
In British Columbia, a municipality many years ago banned PWCs from a lake on Vancouver Island. Earlier this year, the resort municipality of Whistler, site of the 2010 Olympics used a noise bylaw to ban PWCs from four lakes. In New Brunswick, in the interests of protecting their watersheds, provincial authorities have banned all motorized watercraft from 30 lakes. Last summer, in the interests of safety, the Quebec government gave municipalities the authority to set near-shore speed limits and it is widely expected to soon ban gas power boats on small lakes.
None of these provincial or municipal actions are in keeping with the constitutional division of powers in which the federal government has sole jurisdiction over navigation; the sole right to set limits on when and where boats can and cannot go. In the absence of federal actions, however, these actions are morally, if not legally, justified.
A better course would be to do what Bill S-8 proposes to do: to respect the federal government's constitutional authority, while acknowledging the need for local choice and control. Bill S-8 would do this by requiring a resolution from a local authority, together with proof of consultation, to come to the federal minister for publication in the Canada Gazette. It would require a public comment period and it would give the minister the right to deny the requested restriction if it would unduly impede navigation.
Local authorities that strongly favour this approach want it because they know that boating safety courses and age restrictions have not been sufficient. They want the choice to restrict personal watercraft where residents agree that they are clearly hazards to safety, to the environment or to the peaceful enjoyment of their lakes.
It is not expected that Bill S-8 will be needed everywhere. In fact, I hope it will not be needed on the majority of our lakes and rivers. Voluntary codes, negotiated settlements and good common sense by PWC users should solve many of the problems. However where “a certain boating activity poses a danger to the public or is harmful to the environment” local authorities should be able to apply for a boating restriction. Bill S-8 would give them the means.
I do hope that members of the House will agree with the importance of the bill and send it to the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development for closer examination. I hope the practical solutions put forward in the legislation will one day become law. We lose nothing by sending it to the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development for debate on the issue. To close our eyes and our ears and pretend there is no problem with PWCs is avoiding the issue altogether.
Bill S-8 offers a very important option. It enables us to debate this very important issue, protect the environment, protect the rights of citizens to quiet enjoyment of their waterways and protect wildlife. I ask all my colleagues to support the bill very strongly.