Mr. Speaker, I am once again standing in the House to talk about solutions to deal with Canada's long-standing problem of abandoned vessels in our marine environment.
The imperative we have talked about many times. There are hazards to navigation, visual pollution impacting tourism, a very strong threat of oil spills that can impact local jobs in the area of aquaculture, oil spill risks that can affect the marine environment and sensitive coastal ecology, and the fact that there is no government in Canada that will actually take ownership. This is a hole in jurisdiction that is recognized by all parties that we are working very hard to fix. It will make it easier for coastal communities if we do.
I also want to salute the patience and persistence of coastal communities. They have been trying ad hoc solutions one vessel at a time in the absence of the federal leadership that we are seeking. There are costs. I note it was picked up in the media just a few weeks ago, where a member of the legislative assembly in British Columbia, Andrew Weaver, who is the Green Party representative, quite improperly scolded the municipality of Oak Bay, saying that it should do what the municipality of Saanich has done. In fact, we cannot pit one community against the other.
His criticism also reveals a misunderstanding of the fact that if we leave this to the high-capacity municipalities to deal with issues in their own harbours, that squeezes problem vessels out into unincorporated areas or more remote regions, which is why, again and again, we have been calling for a comprehensive coast-wide solution to the problem of abandoned vessels.
Let us talk about solutions. My private member's bill, Bill C-219, proposes to make the Coast Guard the go-to agency on abandoned vessels. The men and women of the Coast Guard are already doing a good job. They are doing it off the side of their desk, but they do not have clear authority. My bill proposes to give them that authority, to make the Coast Guard the receiver of wrecks. We are also pushing very hard for full resources for the Coast Guard, so it can do that job as one of its central responsibilities, one that is well funded.
Other solutions that I have been proposing that the government supports are fibreglass recycling; finding new markets for these materials; boat amnesty, where people can bring in their boats; fixing vessel registration, which has really fallen into disrepair; and mechanisms to take a load off taxpayers, such as sending vessel registration funds to a fund, as Washington state has done, to deal with vessels on an emergency basis.
Just this past week, I sat down with some local community leaders. We are planning our presentation to the AVICC convention, which is a local government association that represents the Vancouver Island and Sunshine Coast local governments. On April 8 we are presenting together on solutions to deal with the abandoned vessel problem. This includes Ladysmith Mayor Aaron Stone, Stz'uminus Chief John Elliott, and one of the operators of the local marina, Rod Smith from Ladysmith Community Marina. They are asking what the details are of the coastal protection plan, and I am really hoping to be able to bring that to the convention April 8, so I can give some good news.
It was announced four months ago by the government that it is reopening a Coast Guard station in St. John's. I wish it was reopening the Comox Coast Guard station on my coast that the Liberal government closed. There were very few details otherwise, so I am hoping that the representative for the Minister of Transport can tell us when the legislation is coming, when the funding is going to be available to coastal communities, and what the specific mechanisms are that the government is proposing. I am concerned the only one that it has raised is criminalizing vessel abandonment, and I surely hope that is not a path the government is going to go down. We are looking for solutions on the ground.
