Vessel Operation Restriction Regulations II: TC handed control over to the provinces and municipalities

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agentaqua

Well-Known Member
This follows the closed thread: https://sportfishingbc.com/threads/...er-to-the-provinces-and-municipalities.95152/

As you may be aware, Transport Canada held a consultation in Fall 2023 focused on modernizing the Vessel Operation Restriction Regulation (VORR).

Transport Canada completed the analysis of all comments received and shared a “What We Heard” report in July 2024.

We are happy to inform you that proposed changes to the VORR in response to consultation feedback received have been pre-published in the Canada Gazette, Part I, on September 14, 2024, and are open for comments for 75 days until November 28, 2024.

Note that the Canada Gazette website allows you to comment on proposed regulations through its online feature and we encourage you to take advantage of this mechanism. For more information on this online feature, please visit the Canada Gazette information page “How to Comment on Proposed Regulations.”

Finally, if you would like to be kept up to date on future updates related to VORR modernization or other files related to marine safety and security, please reach out directly to the Canadian Marine Advisory Council Secretariat (cmac-ccmc@tc.gc.ca) and request to be added to their distribution list.

This is the clause they propose to use now below to hand authority over to the municipalities using ministerial orders:

Enforcement​

Marginal note: Designation

  • 135 (1) The Minister may designate any person or class of persons for the purposes of enforcing this Part.
  • Marginal note: Designation — Minister of Transport

    (1.1) The Minister of Transport may designate any person or class of persons for the purposes of enforcing a provision of this Part or of a regulation made under this Part that the Minister of Transport is responsible for administering.
  • Marginal note: Stopping and boarding vessel

    (2) A person, or a member of a class of persons, designated under subsection (1) or (1.1) who has reasonable grounds to believe that an offence has been committed or is about to be committed under this Part by a vessel or any person on board a vessel may stop and board the vessel and take any reasonable action to ensure public safety or protect the public interest.
 
Well, it's at least a walk back from simply handing over enforcement powers to the municipalities that was first envisioned in the original "Let's Talk Transportation" backgrounder & the suggestions contained within - which would have resulted in yet another "Ultra Vires" court case like the Morton 2009 decision. I guess the DoJ finally reviewed the comments sent in about that stupid idea & stepped in.

and TC/Coast Guard really don't have the personnel needed for those numerous navigation infractions - although the RCMP do - but their marine teams & boats are largely absent in many municipalities in Canada. So, this is the "if it is so important to you - you provide the personnel, boats & costs" response by TC/CG back to the municipalities doing the whining.

But....

We will find out how rigid and complete any enforcement personnel training & evidence generation actually will be when any of this goes to court down the road...

Additionally, the common-law right to navigation, consisting in the exercise of a right of way, which may be enjoyed in the sea, in tidal and in non-tidal water. (Coulson & Forbes on Waters, 4th edition, by H. Stuart Moore, 437 https://openlibrary.org/books/OL630...s_(sea_tidal_and_inland)_and_of_land_drainage) is also upheld in the British North America Act - may also challenge those enforcement actions by any municipality.

I guess we are living in interesting times:
R.png
 
If they can’t fund the current level of enforcement personnel or equipment, where will the money come from for a completely new organization? If they download it to the Provinces, are we not heading down the path where the Federal Government is abdicating its coastal authority? Municipalities are no help they can’t in most cases enforce their own bylaws.
 
agentaqua said:
Well, it's at least a walk back from simply handing over enforcement powers to the municipalities that was first envisioned in the original "Let's Talk Transportation" backgrounder & the suggestions contained within - which would have resulted in yet another "Ultra Vires" court case like the Morton 2009 decision. I guess the DoJ finally reviewed the comments sent in about that stupid idea & stepped in.

and TC/Coast Guard really don't have the personnel needed for those numerous navigation infractions - although the RCMP do - but their marine teams & boats are largely absent in many municipalities in Canada. So, this is the "if it is so important to you - you provide the personnel, boats & costs" response by TC/CG back to the municipalities doing the whining.

But....

We will find out how rigid and complete any enforcement personnel training & evidence generation actually will be when any of this goes to court down the road...

Additionally, the common-law right to navigation, consisting in the exercise of a right of way, which may be enjoyed in the sea, in tidal and in non-tidal water. (Coulson & Forbes on Waters, 4th edition, by H. Stuart Moore, 437 https://openlibrary.org/books/OL630...s_(sea_tidal_and_inland)_and_of_land_drainage) is also upheld in the British North America Act - may also challenge those enforcement actions by any municipality.

I guess we are living in interesting times:
View attachment 110864
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What’s missing from this is where money will come from. The Feds are pretty good at downloading responsibility, while keeping the money. There is only one taxpayer funding all levels of government, the Feds conveniently forget this. What is the next responsibility to download, National Defence? Eventually they will download themselves out of a job.
 
since canada cant seem to build warships (or any type of military craft for that matter) i'm all for handing controls to the civilian population for national defence. hell all my boats had more and better sensors and displays than the military patrol craft i toured last year. pretty sure we could do better if they awarded performance based contracts to the private sector. thats pretty much what the DoD did with anduril in the US. throw the best civilian tech and designs at the wall and see if it can do better than equipment provided by legacy military contractors. and the civilian stuff can be mass produced in bulk in a hundreth of the time it would take you to bolt together something from a canadian shipyard. i bet we could mass produce hundreds of aluminum 40 footers on the island, slap a few VLS box launchers on them with good FLIR/broadband radar gear and be more effective and lethal than the entire canadian navy.
 
zurk said:
since canada cant seem to build warships (or any type of military craft for that matter) i'm all for handing controls to the civilian population for national defence. hell all my boats had more and better sensors and displays than the military patrol craft i toured last year. pretty sure we could do better if they awarded performance based contracts to the private sector. thats pretty much what the DoD did with anduril in the US. throw the best civilian tech and designs at the wall and see if it can do better than equipment provided by legacy military contractors. and the civilian stuff can be mass produced in bulk in a hundreth of the time it would take you to bolt together something from a canadian shipyard. i bet we could mass produce hundreds of aluminum 40 footers on the island, slap a few VLS box launchers on them with good FLIR/broadband radar gear and be more effective and lethal than the entire canadian navy.
Click to expand...
Civilians run National Defence as well as the the Department that handles procurement, always have. I worked in Sonar for 35 years and I can guarantee none of your boats ever had close to the sensor capability of a modern warship or even a decades old one.

Procurement in DND is based on civilian politics. Where the ships are built, where the Regional benefits are and whose Riding benefits most. All the ships so far have been constructed in civilian shipyards in Canada. Saint John Ships, Davie and now Seaspan. If the military were doing the purchasing they would likely buy off the shelf from builders that have successfully build decent vessels. Instead the local yards demand that they get the build and politics demand that that’s the case.

Anyways this is off topic so maybe we have drifted too far.
 
having looked at it in person i can guarantee you they dont.
The one i looked at was - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston-class_coastal_defence_vessel
which has the : Kelvin Hughes Nucleus S-band surface search radar and there are 12 in service currently.
max range is 40nm at best and is outclassed in every way by a off the shelf halo 24 which has better range, better target discrimination, better resolution and better target tracking. its partially the better electronics and Ka band of the halo. we have come a long way in 30 years. and since RCN still uses crappy 30 year old vessels they havent adapted fast enough. there is a reason we dont use 30 year old computers anymore. the world has moved on. for some reason a 30 year old warship is still considered as canadas best. i like your patriotism but it doesnt match reality. whats sad is that these are 40% in numbers of the entire complement of warships in the navy. 4 subs, 12 frigates, 4 OPVs and 12 of these and thats it.
 
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zurk said:
having looked at it in person i can guarantee you they dont.
The one i looked at was - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston-class_coastal_defence_vessel
which has the : Kelvin Hughes Nucleus S-band surface search radar and there are 12 in service currently.
max range is 40nm at best and is outclassed in every way by a off the shelf halo 24 which has better range, better target discrimination, better resolution and better target tracking. its partially the better electronics and Ka band of the halo. we have come a long way in 30 years. and since RCN still uses crappy 30 year old vessels they havent adapted fast enough. there is a reason we dont use 30 year old computers anymore. the world has moved on. for some reason a 30 year old warship is still considered as canadas best. i like your patriotism but it doesnt match reality. whats sad is that these are 40% in numbers of the entire complement of warships in the navy. 4 subs, 12 frigates, 4 OPVs and 12 of these and thats it
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Yes and there’s a massive difference between the partially civilian equipment used of an MCDV and the total military grade used on CPF. Different roles. Interesting in hearing about your boats that are you tracking beyond 40 NM? Obviously not a sport fishing vessel? It also appears that the Radar was upgraded in 2008 according to the Internet, to Sperry, not sure when you had your tour.
 
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yes frigates will obviously have more power output and better radars. halo can track ships at long ranges (my halo is around 50 feet off the ocean surface on the mast), sportsfishing boats at around 20nm, kayaks at around 1.5nm. i had the tour last year and had a chance to play with the radar and systems for 2 hours (they had it open and didnt really care). initially i thought it was a bit of a joke/mockup or something for the dumb public and it couldnt really be that bad but then i saw a target actually move and reflect on the radar screen and i knew it was real. i could go into a 3 hour lecture on how bad the ship design and electronics were but suffice to say i was unimpressed. not even basic stuff like AIS overlays for situational awareness. typical generic government layout with no thought or effort put into situational awareness/ease of configuration for the crew. the only thing good were the gyros - far faster update rate than my HS60 but i suspect probably worse than an HS75.
 
ya they should have instead stuck with wake restrictions. That at least makes sense rather than a knee-jerk reaction to calls from some minor municipal mandarin getting tired of fielding their calls from irate locals dealing with wake from idiotic boaters.

It may be a bit of an aside - but on the night vision thing - Reach Technologies Inc. out of Victoria has been testing a new invention that has not yet made it into production or is listed on their web site yet - a night vision camera that uses 3 different optical plates reading 3 different wavelengths imbedded in a receiver that is remarkable in the ability to see logs, buoys & stuff on the water. Glenn Jones is the contact for that product/project. see: www.reachtest.com
 
zurk said:
yes frigates will obviously have more power output and better radars. halo can track ships at long ranges (my halo is around 50 feet off the ocean surface on the mast), sportsfishing boats at around 20nm, kayaks at around 1.5nm. i had the tour last year and had a chance to play with the radar and systems for 2 hours (they had it open and didnt really care). initially i thought it was a bit of a joke/mockup or something for the dumb public and it couldnt really be that bad but then i saw a target actually move and reflect on the radar screen and i knew it was real. i could go into a 3 hour lecture on how bad the ship design and electronics were but suffice to say i was unimpressed. not even basic stuff like AIS overlays for situational awareness. typical generic government layout with no thought or effort put into situational awareness/ease of configuration for the crew. the only thing good were the gyros - far faster update rate than my HS60 but i suspect probably worse than an HS75.
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Sure you weren’t looking at a bridge radar repeat? What kind of vessels do you run, you forgot to mention? Love to hear your 3 hour lecture, but how about you start another thread, it would be nice to share info. Very interested in how you mount a 13 ton 25 foot high VLS system on a 40’ boat as well. Seriously start a thread and we can discuss your theories, but let’s let this thread get back on track.
 
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pretty sure they dont have a CIC. i asked the operator how they controlled the missiles - they had none. only manually operated machine guns. considering i climbed all over and didnt see any they dont have a repeat from CIC. only the frigates carry missiles.
you wouldnt mount it directly. you would just tow a pack behind the boat. same type of packs they use in submarines to launch. it floats the missile pack up to the surface and launches. tow 2 or 4 encaps behind a 40 footer and you have 4 harpoons to throw at your chinese opponent. and the best part is they cant see you since anything below 12m LOA doesnt register on modern military radars.
anyway, youre right we are going off topic. i will cease with the moving national defense to civilians bit. still think it would give us more pokey sticks to throw at adversaries than we currently have at a fraction of the cost. and we're gonna need all the pokey sticks we can get once the northwest passage opens up.,
 
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looks like the US marine core just announced something similar. 2 naval strike missiles in a low profile package with a furuno broadband radar, starlink and 2 radio masts. $3m for each which is pretty much what i would charge if building something like that.
news.usni.org

Marines Testing Low-Profile Vessels, Oil Industry Support Ships to Resupply Distant Outposts - USNI News

The Marines are testing vessels inspired by narco-boats and support ships used to supply oil rigs to see how they could resupply Marines fighting across the Indo-Pacific, the commander of the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory said Wednesday. The Marines’ Autonomous Low-Profile Vessel is a...
news.usni.org news.usni.org
 
for ***** and giggles i put in a proposal for 2 naval strike missiles in a 2 encapsulated launcher config with halo radar, VHF and frequency hopping radios, some custom target tracking stuff and twin diesels + electric drive for low speed cruise in a 40 foot carbon fiber semi submersible package for $1.3m to forces canada. we shall see. haha.
 
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