Canada faces a significantly larger issue with shipwrecks and abandoned boats than previously thought, according to the Coast Guard. Blacklock's Reporter says cabinet has proposed a special tax on all boats, from cabin cruisers to tugs, to help fund clean-up efforts.“Over 2,100 vessels have been reported to the Canadian Coast Guard to date,” stated a June 15 briefing note titled Wrecked Or Abandoned Vessels. Of these, 742 have been removed, leaving approximately 1,350 vessels in the national public inventory.In 2018, Parliament passed Bill C-64, An Act Respecting Wrecks, which required owners of vessels over 300 gross tonnage to carry proof of insurance and banned the mooring of any dilapidated vessel for more than 60 days without a permit. At the time, the transport department estimated there were about 500 derelict freighters, barges, fishing boats, and other vessels in Canada.“There are a large number of abandoned and wrecked vessels in Canadian waters,” then-Transport Minister Marc Garneau said at the time. “We don’t have a specific number, but we are trying to determine how many.”“In line with the ‘polluter pay’ principle, owners are responsible for the costs of addressing their problem vessel,” the Coast Guard briefing note continued. “This includes cleanups or repairs and any remediation action taken by the Canadian Coast Guard.”In 2022, the cabinet proposed the introduction of a Vessel Remediation Fund, which would collect fees from all boat owners to create a compensation pool for clean-up costs. Proposed fees ranged from a minimum of $10 for pleasure craft to a maximum of $1,000 for commercial vessels, payable every five years as a condition of registration.The Vessel Remediation Fund is modeled after similar funds, such as the 1974 Ship-Source Oil Pollution Fund, which is financed by the industry to clean up tanker leaks, and the 2016 Fund For Railway Accidents Involving Designated Goods, which charges oil shippers a fee per tonne. Parliament approved the Vessel Remediation Fund in Bill C-47, the Budget Implementation Act of 2023, though it is not yet in force.Federal regulators have not yet calculated the total cost of salvaging all existing wrecks. One derelict freighter, the Canadian Miner, cost Nova Scotia taxpayers over $12 million after it ran aground in a protected wilderness area of Cape Breton in 2011 with fuel oil and 30 tonnes of asbestos aboard.Taxpayers alone should not bear these costs, then-Fisheries Minister Dominic LeBlanc said in 2017 testimony at the Commons fisheries committee. “We think the owners of these vessels have to be held to account and have to pay the bill,” said LeBlanc. “Canadian taxpayers can’t fund every single one of these.”“This is a horrible problem,” LeBlanc added. “You can’t abandon your car on a four-lane highway in New Brunswick, take the license plates off and just say, ‘Look, I don’t need that car anymore’ or ‘It doesn’t have any value, it’s too expensive to tow it,’ and just ditch it on some shoulder on a highway. And yet people get away with doing that in rivers and lakes and marine ecosystems.”
