Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for her intervention and her private member's bill that she has put forward today. I will be making some remarks on that shortly, in particular on why the Canadian Coast Guard cannot be designated as a receiver of wreck, which is a major technical flaw in the bill. Apart from that, the way the system works right now is that owners are responsible for their vessels. In the case particularly where there are known owners, certain actions can be taken.
What the bill proposes to do, though, is quite different. It actually proposes to shift the liability from the owner of a vessel onto the government and therefore onto the taxpayers. I do not know whether the member thinks that might not lead to people dumping their boats when they realize they are no longer responsible for doing anything responsible with them. That is a problem.
Secondarily, the member has talked about an estimated number of boats, probably underestimated. We know that dealing with some of these boats can cost into the millions of dollars, maybe even the tens of millions of dollars, for removal and cleanup. Does the member have an idea how much it would cost to have the taxpayers deal with every single derelict vessel in Canada?