No more sinking feeling
Proposed federal act should prevent another MV Miner situation from happening
SYDNEY, N.S. — It may have come too late for the cleanup of the ill-fated MV Miner but District 8 Coun. Amanda McDougall says she is pleased with the federal government tabling a bill making it illegal for anyone in the future to abandon vessels in Canadian waters.
“This is great news — it’s a good day,” said McDougall on Wednesday, reacting to news that federal Transport Minister Marc Garneau introduced the Wrecked, Abandoned or Hazardous Vessels Act on Monday.
McDougall has been involved with the Main-a-Dieu Community Development Association, which advocated for the cleanup of the vessel that ran aground off Scatarie Island on Sept. 20, 2011, when it was being towed to Turkey for dismantling.
Since it ran aground off Nova Scotia, the province had to pay for the removal of the vessel, which ended up costing almost $18.5 million.
This new bill, if passed, should prevent this from happening again, which McDougall says should have been the rule in the first case.
“In my inbox last night, there was an article that cited the MV Miner as being a case that gave teeth to this new piece of legislation to move forward so it was pretty wonderful to know that we worked so hard not only for our community but to ensure that this is not going to happen in other communities again,” said McDougall, adding the whole situation with the MV Miner should have never happened in the first place.
“They (the federal government) have really dropped the ball over a number of years — we have communities along the coastline of Nova Scotia that have been racking up bills, municipalities and the province paying these huge, huge bills, for derelict vessels and it all stems back to the permit-issuing process from the federal government so it’s good that this legislation is in place.”
Cape Breton-Canso MP Rodger Cuzner said there was no way the past federal government was going to step in and pay for the cost of the salvage of the MV Miner since it wasn’t the law of that time. This proposed act will hold the government more accountable.
“The federal government has to do a better job in identifying the ownership of all vessels in making sure that there’s insurance and financial security to cover the costs of any kind of cleanup,” Cuzner said.
“In this legislation that we tabled, it’s the Nairobi International Convention on the Removal of Wrecks … We’re making sure that we operate under best practices.”
He did confirm there would be no reach back provision in the proposed bill to cover the MV Miner’s past costs but the proposed legislation will make it much more difficult for such a situation to happen again.
He also said there would be some money available from Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s Small Craft Harbours program to help with the cleanup of wrecked vessels.
The proposed act will bring into Canadian law the Nairobi International Convention on the Removal of Wrecks, a 10-year-old international agreement that establishes uniform rules for removing abandoned and derelict vessels from international waters. It will require commercial carriers to have insurance to cover the potential cost of removing a ship.
It will also require owners of large commercial vessels to carry insurance to cover the potential cost of disposing of the ships, and there will also be significant penalties in place to go after those who do abandon their vessels.
This article was originally published Nov. 1, 2017.