By: Jim Taylor

Outdated laws encourage unacceptable behavior


We’re having a problem on Okanagan Lake that we wouldn’t have on the road.

        On the road, rules govern how fast vehicles can go, how loud they can be, what equipment they need for safety.

        On the lake, there are few such rules – and the few rules that exist can’t be enforced.

        When I was younger, I admit, I loved going boating for precisely those reasons. The water had no yellow lines, no speed limits or stop signs, no pedestrian crosswalks or “no passing” zones…

        I felt freed.

        Of course, there weren’t many boats out there in those days either.

        There certainly weren’t any “Cigarette” boats. Cigarette boats were designed for off-shore ocean racing. They’re incredibly loud, incredibly fast, incredibly powerful. They may have two or three motors totalling more than 1000 horsepower. They can travel at 150 km/hr.

Which may be fine when they’re ten km offshore, racing from Miami to Nassau.

        It’s not when they roar up a lake less than two km wide.



Like a slap in the face

        Corporal Gerry Guiltenane of the RCMP’s Marine Patrol carries a decibel (db) meter with him. “In the workplace, 81 db is considered hazardous,” Guiltenane told a meeting of concerned residents in Lake Country. “Labor laws require hearing protection. Some of these boats register between 94 and 124 db at idle! I can only guess what they reach at full throttle.”

Guiltenane handed out 28 tickets last summer. But at only $100 each, a ticket costs less than the gas for a cigarette boat’s single run up the lake.

        At full throttle, the unmuffled blast of these boats’ exhaust drowns out conversations, rattles windows, makes pets cower.

        It feels even louder after midnight, when they race up the lake in the darkness. Without lights.

Lake Country councillor Penny Gambel lives three km from Okanagan Lake, almost under the flight path for the Kelowna airport. “These boats are noisier than planes taking off,” she says.

        For a community like Okanagan Centre, which prides itself on being so quiet you can hear deer nibbling the roses, where residents can chat in the middle of the main road without fear of traffic, the boats are as offensive as a slap in the face.



Historic distortions

    And there’s precious little anyone can do about it.

        That’s because water has traditionally been regarded as beyond anyone’s jurisdiction.

        Think about the days of the “high seas,” when ships from Britain, France, Germany, Holland, and Portugal raided each other freely.

        In Canada, even more than in most European nations, waterways have been considered free. Early explorers all traveled by water—up the St. Lawrence, down the Mississippi, across the Great Lakes, along the Saskatchewan, the Fraser, the Columbia, the Mackenzie…

        In Britain, you can own a river. Not in Canada. Navigable waters are our first highways.

        For these historic reasons, the law is reluctant to act against offences on water. Even when death results. In Kelowna, a young woman died when an overloaded houseboat capsized during a party. “It took nine months to get any action at all,” Gavin Brown, Senior Marine Inspector with Transport Canada Marine Safety, told the community meeting in Lake Country.

        To further complicate matters, most marine legislation is federal. Few provincial laws govern boats. And there’s no precedent at all for municipal jurisdiction.



“Legal” does not mean “safe”

  The Canada Shipping Act (2001) ranges, in Brown’s blunt terms, “from archaic to almost modern.” Most of it deals with commercial vessels and with industrial practices. Only one small section, Section 10, covers pleasure craft.

        That section does establish fines up to $10,000 for violating federal regulations. But levying those fines requires taking offenders to court. And courts, Brown commented, “are notably unwilling to tackle marine law cases because there are so few legal precedents.”

        Courts also require hard evidence. The RCMP has just one officer, Gerry Guiltane, assigned to patrol 80 km of Okanagan Lake, with a single Zodiac patrol boat.

        He has little chance of actually observing cigarette boats in the act of breaking the law; he has no chance at all of catching one of them.

        He does carry a radar gun. But there are no speed limits for him to enforce.

        Think about it for a minute—150 km/hr is faster than you’re allowed to drive on any highway, anywhere in Canada. On water, it’s happening in a vehicle that has no brakes and limited visibility.

        To cope with the pounding they can undergo in ocean racing, cigarette boats typically have a tiny cockpit near the stern, with a very long bow extending forwards.

        It’s roughly equivalent to trying to steer a runaway semi-trailer rig while perched on its rearmost axle.

        It would be foolhardy and illegal on any road. But it’s legal on the water.



Time for re-thinking

 The Lake Country meeting was, according to Gavin Brown of Transport Canada, the first such meeting held anywhere in Canada. I hope it is not the last.

        Because I believe it’s time to re-think our attitude toward lakes and rivers. As speed, power, and congestion increase, they can no longer be treated as “open waters” where boat owners operate under some kind of unregulated but mutually respected “gentleman’s” code.

        Waterways today need the same kind of regulation that we demand for our collective safety on highways.

        That means speed limits, appropriate to the location. It means practical tests to earn an operator’s licence. Enforceable rules of conduct. Mandatory testing for blood alcohol or other substances that can impair performance. Safety inspections, with time limits for compliance.

        It means fines and penalties severe enough to act as a deterrent. Including escalating fines, impoundment, or even jail time, for serious or repeated offences.

        I see no reason why we should tolerate behavior on a waterway that we would consider dangerous on a highway. Not on Okanagan Lake. Or anywhere else.

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Copyright © 2007 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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