“Gray urinal mats, they haunt our dreams. We found thousands of them on our initial cleanup and we’re like, ‘We hope we never see these again.’ ”
When Jill Laviolette started picking debris off Cape Palmerston beach on Vancouver Island following the container spill from the MV Zim Kingston freighter, the inflatable dinosaur and unicorn toys she pulled from the sand looked nearly pristine.
It became a multi-faceted environmental disaster when a toxic fire erupted on the ship, taking several days to extinguish. “There’s no formalized mechanism for responding to that in a timely and efficient way and because of that, the spill was worse than it potentially could have been if we did have these mechanisms in place to respond rapidly and efficiently.”
Joyce Murray, the federal minister of fisheries, oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard, did not respond to requests for an interview. Hoyland, who spoke at the committee’s hearings, said in addition to working to reduce the amount of plastic that ends up in the water overall, Canada needs better knowledge about how factors like coastlines, weather and currents create catchment areas for debris.
The committee also recommends that Canada establish and fund a joint spill response task force including federal, provincial, territorial and Indigenous governing bodies. The committee recommended Canada work with the International Maritime Organization to require ships’ manifests to more accurately identify cargo and require the details to be made available to port authorities and any joint spill response task force.
It recommends the federal government examine alternative polluter-pays or industry-pays models that would ensure enough money is available to deal with damage caused by spills.