Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to Bill S-8, an act concerning personal watercraft in navigable waters. Essentially the bill would give local authorities to same kind of ability to restrict the use of seadoos and personal watercraft, jet skis and so on, as they have to restrict water skiing or prevent sea plans from landing.
Bill S-8 would allow local authorities to have the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans make boating restriction regulations under the Canada Shipping Act. To the extent that the Canada Shipping Act only applies in federal waters, Bill S-8 does not trample on provincial powers.
Speaking of the Constitution, most experts describe Ottawa's residual powers therein as POG, peace, order and good government. I am pleased that the peace and order are very much at the heart of Bill S-8.
The amount of noise that personal watercraft produce is such an issue that in February the municipality of Whistler, the site of the 2010 Olympic Winter Games, added personal watercraft to its noise bylaws.
However, another major concern is the safety of other people using the waterway. According to internal Coast Guard information obtained by Senator Spivak, its rescue and environmental response division has found that personal watercraft have a higher rate of collisions than any other small vessel. Similarly a disproportionate number of calls on the department's 1-800 boating safety hotline were about personal watercraft.
However, peace and order do not necessarily imply a ban on personal watercraft. They imply respect within a community and consultation, as well as responsible and courteous use of public waterways. Therefore, while some in this chamber might see an outright ban on watercraft as the true manifestation of peace and order, I would tend to look further.
For me, peace and order involves a community deciding together the best ways to collectively share our lakes and waterways. In a confederation like Canada, true peace and order involves an understanding that different communities will choose different realities.
The concept of community is central to Bill S-8, and expressed in the term of local authority which can include both an incorporated city and a cottage association. In essence, it could best be described as the collective that controls the water for the benefit of all. This is important, because it should be obvious that in any cottage association there are people who like jet skis and there are people who do not. If cottage country is really to have peace and order over summer barbecues, it is essential to make as many people as happy as possible.
It is important to understand that Bill S-8 is not intended to be anything more than a tool in allowing authorities to deal with the increasing use of personal watercraft. In the vast majority of cases, voluntary codes, negotiated settlement and good common sense by personal watercraft users will make the provisions of Bill S-8 unnecessary, in practical terms. At the same time, Bill S-8 gives local authorities the same ability to apply for a boating restriction for personal watercraft as they do for other boats.
It is with this understanding in mind that Bill S-8 would require a local authority to be the catalyst for any change in boating regulations. In fact, as if to reinforce the importance of local authority in being part of the solution that starts the process, Bill S-8 has a purpose clause which reads:
- The purpose of this Act is to provide a method for a local authority to propose to the Minister that restrictions be applied respecting the use of personal watercraft on all or a portion of a navigable waterway over which Parliament has jurisdiction, in order to ensure the waterway's safe use and peaceful enjoyment and the protection of the environment.
Even then clause 4 of Bill S-8 would require the local authority to give “general consultation within the community including consultation with local residents and law enforcement agencies” before calling for new regulations. Then the local authority must pass a resolution and forward it to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans.
At this point Bill S-8 gives the minister 60 days to publish the regulations in the Canada Gazette and begin his or her own 90 day consultation period, after which time, unless navigation would be impeded or his or her consultation yields negative results, the regulation will then take effect.
It is interesting to note that Bill S-8 was first born as Bill S-26 on May 9, 2001, exactly three years ago yesterday. It proposes a similar balanced regulatory regime to be published in the June 1994 Canada Gazette as a result of work done by the Canadian Coast Guard.
When she first presented the bill, Senator Spivak told her colleagues:
The bill is supported in principle by all 141 municipalities in British Columbia; by half the rural municipalities in Alberta; by the Union of Nova Scotia Municipalities; by the Newfoundland and Labrador Federation of Municipalities; by the Manitoba Association of Cottage Owners, with its 60 member associations that represent more than 9,000 cottagers in my province; by FAPEL, a Quebec federation of cottage associations; by the Alberta Summer Village Association--
It has been in the Senate as three different bills, Bills S-26, S-10 and more recently S-8, which we are debating today, and has received some 15 days of Senate committee time and has been reported without amendment.
That something so basic with such broad national support could be allowed to languish for so long astounds me and tells me that the federal Liberals are not as good at copying ideas as some in the House may think.
Perhaps the true genius of Bill S-8 is that it gives local authorities true influence over the federal regulations that apply to “a designated waterway whose shoreline is within jurisdiction or area of the local authority”. For example, under Bill S-8, the village of Belcarra in my riding could, after consultations, call for Bedwell Bay to be added to schedule I of the voting restriction regulations “Waters on Which All Vessels Are Prohibited With The Authority of the Minister”. This would ban personal watercraft from Bedwell Bay and subject owners to a $500 fine for the violation of that provision.
Similarly, under Bill S-8, the village of Belcarra could, after consultations, call for Bedwell Bay to be added to schedule II of the voting restriction regulations “Waters on Which Power Drive Vessels or Vessels Driven by Electrical Propulsion Are Prohibited Except With The Authority of the Minister”. This would require personal watercraft operators in Bedwell Bay to comply with the restrictions set out by the village of Belcarra or face a $500 fine.
In a real sense then, Bill S-8 would give, for example, the village of Belcarra and tens of thousands of similar local authorities the ability to influence the federal regulations that apply to their waters. In each case once the local authority has conducted its consultations and submitted a resolution to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, section 5 of Bill S-8 requires the minister, unless navigation will be impeded, to within 60 days draft up new regulations, publish them in the Canada Gazette and then after 90 days of successful consultation begin enforcing the new regulation.
For perhaps the first time, it gives local authorities the ability to tell Ottawa and to tell Ottawa bureaucrats what the local priorities are. The importance of this cannot be understated. The village of Belcarra , the very place I mentioned earlier, is a case in point. If Bill S-8 passed and the village of Belcarra conducted consultations essentially by this time next year, it would have influence over Bedwell Bay.
That would be an amazing step forward. In fact, for the citizens of the village of Belcarra and all the tri-cities, in particular Ralph Drew the mayor of Belcarra, it might well an unbelievable step forward. That is because since 1996, the village of Belcarra has been petitioning the federal government to have Bedwell Bay designated as a “no discharge zone” for the discharge of sewage by pleasure craft.
In 1996 the government of B.C. included Bedwell Bay on a list of roughly 70 sites that it wanted to have designated as no discharge zones via a memorandum of understanding with the federal government. In July 1998 the GVRD board of directors unanimously echoed the Bedwell Bay no discharge zone call and a month later the B.C. Ministry of the Environment Lands and Parks regional office also added its endorsement.
In 2000, as required by the Waste Management Act, the GVRD completed the Vancouver region's liquid waste management plan and called again for Indian Arm to be designated under the pleasure craft sewage pollution prevention regulations as a no discharge zone. The B.C. Ministry of Water, Land and Air Protection subsequently endorsed the recommendation in 2002.
If Bill S-8 passes, and I am fortunate to be re-elected in the coming campaign, I will work and introduce my own private member's bill to give the village of Belcarra and other similar areas the same power to declare local waters no discharge zones that Bill S-8 would give them to add local waters to schedules I and II of the boating restriction regulations.
The Conservative Party of Canada believes in sending more power, money, control and influence back to local municipalities. Allowing local governments to decide what regulations to impose on personal watercraft and sewage disposal are only two of the many examples of policy areas where local common sense should always be put ahead of Ottawa bureaucracy.
We have to wonder who is in favour of dumping raw sewage from pleasure craft into Bedwell Bay, but they must be big supporters of the Liberal Party if eight years after petitioning, they still cannot get such a beautiful part of my riding, indeed this country, listed as a no discharge area.
However, the fact that Bedwell Bay is not yet a no discharge zone is probably rooted in the fact that Ottawa bureaucrats are handling the file and they see Bedwell Bay as a benign place or name, a word on a page rather than what it really is. However, for those of us in the tri-cities, we know Bedwell Bay for its full beauty and glory. For the people in my riding, Bedwell Bay and all of Indian Arm are a big part of keeping British Columbia beautiful.
Just so the House understands, the official opposition, the Conservative Party of Canada, strongly supports Bill S-8. We see it as a precedent for the kind of new government Canada needs in respecting local authorities, giving power, money, control and influence back to Canadians, back to municipalities so we can all have the kind of government we want, not the kind of government that is mandated by Ottawa and the bureaucrats here.
