in protecting its coastline from environmental disasters. BC governments at every level seem all too quick to blame everyone else for any possible environmental issue whether real or imagined. It’s now clear that there is no coordinated action plan to include all the stakeholders when a spill or disaster occurs. The approach seems to be that if no serious spill has occurred then why bother worrying about doing anything. Add into that bureaucratic chest thumping by various agencies and you have a recipe for disaster. When such competing interests are not forced into a coordinated approach, bureaucracies are bound to resist change.
To be fair, there is the issue of jurisdiction and that means the coast guard and the Fisheries and Oceans Canada department consider the immediate coastal shoreline and all adjacent water their exclusive responsibility. There is no history of sharing that responsibility with BC provincial and municipal governments. That saw the coast card handle the recent fuel spill by itself. However, because there was a delay in getting the spill under control, the BC premier and Mayor of Vancouver where quick to blame the coast guard. The insinuation was that had the coast guard involved those governments that somehow the fuel spill would have been addressed a lot quicker. However there is no indication that involving local governments in dealing with the fuel spill would have made any difference. But there was political hay to be made by those same governments and self-serving BC politicians.
One hopes that perhaps a lesson can be learned from the recent fuel spill – that being there are too many grain ships waiting in Vancouver harbour, and too many ships increases the possibility of oil spills. But history shows that nothing is ever done to discourage the number of waiting ships. As long as demurrage costs are paid for by grain growers there is little incentive to speed up the scheduling and loading of grain shipments. You would think that there would be a demurrage formula that significantly increases the cost on a daily basis or requires waiting ships to leave after two weeks. The other incentive would be to allow only a certain number of grain ships to wait in certain areas. For instance rather than 30 or more ships being anchored at various sites, restricting it to 10 ships at any one time would force ship owners and shippers to improve coordination. How about making long term anchorage more costly and more trouble by requiring all waiting ships to be surrounded by oil spill booms and daily inspections. Any approach that reduces waiting times reduces demurrage charges and reduces those costs to grain growers. However, one expects that any move to speed up or eliminate grain ship waiting times will be met by resistance from powerful shipping and handling lobby groups. It’s unlikely the coast guard will initiate waiting time changes and restrictions as that seems outside their mandate. Besides one suspects a cozy relationship between long time shippers, terminal operators and entrenched regulators like the coast guard.
Another way to improve the situation would be for the BC provincial government and the city of Vancouver to put their money and lobby where their mouth is. Instead of playing politics with the issue perhaps they need to find ways and means to make doing business miserable for grain terminals and shipping companies. Surely there are on-shore regulatory angles that can be used to pressure them to reduce waiting times and improve coordination. But such action seems unlikely, being BC politicians have a history of making politically correct rhetoric over any real action when it comes to environmental issues.
For example BC boasts about being green when they are in fact one of the most significant contributors to greenhouse gas emissions as a result of their massive coal mining industry. BC cuts down more trees than it replants. The city of Victoria is notorious for pumping massive amounts of raw sewage into the ocean. BC is opposed to pipelines which means more oil products will have to be shipped by rail. BC wants it coastline to remain pristine, yet it is allowing the flooding of 10,000 acres of agricultural land and wildlife habitat in the Peace River district. The point is - don’t hold your breath expecting actual common sense on environmental issues, including grain ship fuel spills, from any BC or Vancouver city governments.