Feds must act on derelict vessels, Island MPs say
The Laurier II, with a OTTAWA rich and until recently noble history, floats off Vancouver Island’s east coast as a mysterious symbol of federal government inaction on the growing national problem of derelict vessels.
The ship, now apparently abandoned and floating in Deep Bay near Qualicum Beach, was built in a Quebec shipyard in the 1930s to serve as an RCMP patrol vessel to target drug and alcohol smugglers.
When the Second World War began in 1939, the ship was transferred to the Royal Canadian Navy, and after the war served on the West Coast as a federal department of fisheries patrol ship, armed with a “12-pounder” long gun and a .303 machine-gun. In an ironic twist, the Laurier II, named after one of Canada’s most accomplished prime ministers, went to the dark side. In the 1990s, ownership shifted to a group of Vancouver stock promoters with ties to the underworld, leading to current local speculation that it was used for drug smuggling.
Today, it is one of many derelict and abandoned vessels that represent a significant, costly, and growing risk to the environment, to boating safety, and to taxpayers, the federal government has acknowledged.
For at least the second time since last autumn, Canadian Coast Guard personnel boarded the vessel last week to pump rainwater from the decaying vessel to prevent it from capsizing.
The capsizing of the Laurier II would, according to local community leaders, result in environmental damage that could put 600 local jobs at risk.
“We are on top of it. We are taking care of it,” Liberal MP Kate Young said earlier this month in the House of Commons in response to a campaign being waged by Vancouver Island NDP MPs to get the Laurier II and other floating and sunken wrecks dealt with.
Opposition MP Gord Johns, who represents Courtenay-Alberni, says Ottawa isn’t moving fast enough in the wake of a 2012 Transport Canada report, and a followup 2015 departmental “discussion paper,” that both describe the issue as pressing.
The government, according to the papers, is considering a twopronged strategy that will include both costly cleanup operations as well as mandatory insurance for vessels exceeding 300 gross tons — a high threshold that would exclude even large boats like the 201ton Laurier II. The 2012 paper included an inventory of abandoned and derelict vessels, showing 240 across the country, of which 42 were in B.C.
Transport Canada noted that the problem of dealing with these vessels (some disposal operations will cost in the hundreds of thousands of dollars) will only get worse due to the advanced age of many vessels in Canada’s current recreational and commercial fleets. The issue of derelict vessels, which has been percolating for years, took on new prominence earlier this month due to local concerns over another vessel abandoned in Deep Bay, the 30-metre tug Silver King.
Fisheries Minister Hunter Tootoo responded by announcing that pollutants such as fuel, asbestos and bilge water would be removed, and then the ship would be towed to a yard and deconstructed.
Johns, while relieved that the Canadian Coast Guard removed the derelict tug from Deep Bay after a public uproar and extensive media coverage, says Ottawa has to take a more comprehensive approach that includes ships the size of the Laurier II.
Both MP Johns and Bill Veenhof, chair of the Regional District of Nanaimo, said the community has been warned that there could be job losses if either the Silver King or the Laurier II sunk. Environment Canada, they said, warned that the bay’s shellfish industry, which employs 60 people, could be shut down for up to a year to deal with the pollution concerns.
The Laurier II, according to Veenhof, is not technically derelict because when the harbourmaster took steps last year to have it removed, a Victoria lawyer stepped in to say the ship had owners. Veenhof said workers appeared around 2012 to do some work on the ship, in order to prepare it for charter work, but that work stopped.
The owner, according to B.C. Registry Services, is Laurier Charters Ltd., which was incorporated in 1990 as 379713 B.C. Ltd. The current directors are Shawn Scott, who lives in Salmon Arm, and Ian James Rayner of Victoria.
Scott, contacted on Friday, confirmed she and Rayner “go back a long ways” and are indeed the Laurier Charters directors. But she reacted with surprise when told the Laurier II was anchored to concrete blocks in Deep Bay and is presumed to be abandoned.
“Oh, oh, oh, really? Ah!” she responded. “It’s sort of a long story and I can’t really discuss it with you, but let me make a few phone calls and I will talk to you later. That’s strange — weird.”
Scott didn’t call back and, when contacted by telephone twice on Monday, immediately hung up both times. She also didn’t reply to an email to her place of work on Monday.