EDITORIALS Keep the heat on the feds
Regional politicians put a federal counterpart in the hot seat last week. Let us hope the temperature was warm enough to get him moving. Capital Regional District directors had a sitdown with Terry Beech, parliamentary secretary to Fisheries Minister Dominic LeBlanc, to try to get the federal government to do something about derelict boats — an issue that has little resonance in Ottawa, but is vexing to us on the coast.
Beech, whose Burnaby North-Seymour riding crosses Burrard Inlet and Indian Arm, might at least understand some of the issues that seem so perplexing to MPs whose experience of water is confined to reedy sloughs or the Ottawa River.
CRD chairwoman Barb Desjardins had two improvements at the top of her wish list: streamlining the processes for federal assistance in removing abandoned vessels and co-operation with the province to create a small-boat registry. As it stands, residents and politicians on the coast are constantly frustrated that a jurisdictional spider’s web makes prompt action — or any action — almost impossible.
The buck never seems to stop anywhere, but local politicians are the ones who get an earful from angry residents.
“As a former locally elected representative, you will know that the community isn’t interested in hearing: ‘It’s not in our bailiwick. We don’t have the resources.’ They just want the issue dealt with,” Saanich Coun. Susan Brice told Beech.
Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps described the hoops the city has had to jump through to try to get abandoned boats moved from the Gorge Waterway.
The city had to get a licence of occupation, rezone and then try to enforce the removal of the boats.
“Now, we’re trying to get injunctions on every single boat,” Helps said.
That’s an expensive, time-consuming and unnecessary nightmare. Municipalities are scrounging money where they can to deal with the most urgent cases. Volunteers blitzed Cadboro Bay this year, but were limited in what they could accomplish.
The federal government has made some moves in the right direction. It introduced the Abandoned Boat Program, which makes $5.6 million available over five years to support assessment, removal and disposal of highpriority abandoned and wrecked boats.
The program will pay 100 per cent of the costs for boatassessment projects and up to 75 per cent for boatremoval and disposal projects.
However, with boats rotting in bays and harbours up and down the coast, that money won’t go very far. And the legal complexities are as frustrating as the lack of money.
“It should just be like one-stop shopping, where you pick up the phone and it’s all properly handled through one department,” said Sidney Mayor Steve Price.
It sounds like bureaucratic heaven, but it’s not an impossible dream. It just takes the will to cut through the red tape and create a system that works. Local politicians have the will.
They just have to keep the heat on the politicians on Parliament Hill.