Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise today to talk about marine debris, in light of an incident on November 3, when a South Korean cargo ship lost 35 shipping containers at the entrance of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. These shipping containers were insulated with styrofoam. The debris ended up washing up along the west coast of Vancouver Island, on the coast of Pacific Rim National Park Reserve, in the District of Tofino, and on Vargas Island.
As soon as I heard about the issue, I contacted the acting superintendent of Pacific Rim National Park Reserve. I talked to local government officials and first nations. We called on Ottawa for funding support, because there was no mechanism to clean up the debris on the west coast. After a week, there was no response from Ottawa, and the local communities were left to clean up what turned out to be fridges on their beaches and styrofoam that was getting into the ecosystem, into fish and shellfish, and really contaminating the local ecosystem. This could have been prevented.
Marine debris is a huge problem where I live, and it is only getting worse as we see increased traffic on the west coast with the increased trade with the Pacific Rim and Asia. There is 6% growth in our trade with Asia. The government is working toward increasing that trade, yet we see no mechanism to deal with the environmental fallout of marine debris. There is actually no money going to clean up debris right now targeted specifically to marine debris.
The people on the west coast would like to see a mechanism tied to economic growth and a real commitment from the Government of Canada and corporate interests that they are going to invest in protecting the coastline.
Right now we are relying on local organizations and true community champions like Surfrider and the local indigenous-led Guardians to do that kind of work, and we are giving them no funding. In fact, when this incident took place, they were given no money to help with fuel or to even buy coffee and cookies for their many volunteers. Nothing came from Ottawa. This is a terrible situation. At the time, we did not even know what was in those containers.
The cleanup of the high-profile beaches is mostly complete through the combined resources of these community volunteers, such as Surfrider, and the great work of the Pacific Rim National Park staff. However, now they are focusing on remote areas outside the Pacific Rim National Park Reserve. The surveillance of the remote areas is complete. We know where pretty much everything is and where to concentrate the cleanup efforts, but some of the debris is buried deep in the beach, under logs and sand, and requires large equipment to remove it.
Parks Canada received $72,000 from the South Korean cargo ship for the cleanup effort. What we need now is a mechanism to transfer the money from Parks Canada to the community volunteers, organizations like Surfrider and the indigenous Guardians program, so they can get reimbursed for their cleanup efforts and finish the job. The only reason this debris has been removed from the shoreline so far is because of these community volunteers.
I am calling on the government to not only release this funding immediately and get it to the local community organizations but to establish a plan. We really need a plan. We need a national and international plan. Right now, the ocean protection plan, as has been discussed, is not talking about marine debris.