Only two fines have been issued under a four-year-old federal law meant to compel boat owners not to abandon their vessels when they are shipwrecked or reach the end of their lifespan. Waves crash into the seawall as a barge that drifted loose on English Bay sits grounded on rocks during a massive windstorm, in Vancouver, on Monday, November 15, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck
OTTAWA – Only two fines have been issued under a four-year-old federal law meant to compel boat owners not to abandon their vessels when they are shipwrecked or reach the end of their lifespan.
Vancouver Island NDP MP Lisa Marie Barron says that’s not good enough, after the Liberal government promised it would stop giving a free pass to boat owners who dump their dirty old vessels in Canadian harbours and waterways.
More than 1,700 boats are now in a federal database of abandoned and wrecked ships, and hundreds more get added every year.
A superintendent at the Canadian Coast Guard says 500 boats have been removed since the Wrecked, Abandoned or Hazardous Vessels Act took effect in July 2019.
But Paul Barrett says until this spring, the Coast Guard was not equipped to fine the owners.
It laid its first ever fine at the end of June for a hazardous boat that ran aground in March, while Transport Canada laid a single fine for an abandoned boat in Nova Scotia in 2021.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 8, 2023.
