When a Greater Victoria man dumped his old car in the forest near Jordan River in 2014, he got shamed on the Internet and visited by the RCMP, who informed the man he would have to remove the car or face hefty fines.
Too bad the same thing doesn鈥檛 happen to people who abandon boats in the region鈥檚 waterways. It might have saved the 91原创 Coast Guard and the Victoria Fire Department the effort and expense of removing a sunken boat from the waterway near the Selkirk Trestle last week.
The Sooke resident who found an abandoned Thunderbird in the wilderness also found paper in the wrecked car that identified the owner. He did some sleuthing and found the car owner had posted photos of himself and his old car on Facebook, where he bragged about giving the vehicle a 鈥渞edneck funeral.鈥�
The man who discovered the car turned the papers over to the RCMP and posted a rant, along with a photo of the car, on UsedVictoria.com.
鈥淒ude, we found your car,鈥� said the posting, which went on to needle the car owner about leaving insurance papers and a resum茅 in the car. The post resulted in headlines and a thorough social-media scourging.
The RCMP visited the embarrassed car owner, who apologized and had the car towed away for proper disposal. Otherwise, police said, he would have faced fines of up to $3,000 under conservation and motor-vehicle legislation, and could have been sued by the landowner.
It鈥檚 common knowledge that abandoning a vehicle in the forest 鈥� or anywhere else 鈥� is wrong in many ways. Beyond esthetics, old cars tend to pollute the environment.
Abandoning boats on the water should be no different. In fact, the potential for pollution is worse, as contaminants can be widely spread by tides and currents.
Yet it鈥檚 difficult for municipalities to deal with derelict boats. It鈥檚 an issue tangled by overlapping jurisdictions, which allow the various government entities involved to say: 鈥淣ot our problem.鈥�
The City of Victoria, after wrestling for years with the problem of liveaboards and derelict boats, many of which are in poor condition and leaking oil, obtained a licence of occupation from the province over the waterway. It passed a bylaw declaring the waterway a recreational zone and prohibiting overnight moorage.
Wary of court challenges, the city has moved cautiously on the bylaw 鈥� the coast guard, Transport Canada and the province all have roles involving waterways, and the right to anchor has been part of marine law for centuries. But that right is intended to provide safe havens when needed, not to allow boat owners to leave their unwanted vessels wherever they choose.
While there are regulations about abandoning vessels, they are seldom enforced unless marine navigation is threatened or a boat is leaking contaminants. At that point, remediation becomes difficult and expensive. It would make more sense for the various levels of government to come together to form a cohesive, enforceable set of regulations aimed at preventing such problems.
John Weston, Conservative MP for Powell River until his defeat in the 2015 federal election, introduced a private member鈥檚 bill in Parliament last year that called for a fine of up to $100,000 and jail time for a person who abandons a watercraft. The bill did not pass.
The same scorn for those who abandon vehicles on land should be heaped on negligent boat owners. While we鈥檙e waiting for governments to make up their minds on this issue, maybe social-media shaming can help clear our waterways of unsightly, leaking vessels.
