Water warning
News
Posted By PAUL SCHLIESMANN, THE WHIG-STANDARD
Updated 3 months ago
Boaters across eastern Ontario can expect more random spotchecks and higher fines for equipment violations on the water this season.
It's also the first full year in which they will have to carry a pleasure boat operator card from a certified course, or face a $250 fine -- $315 after surcharges.
Some have already learned the hard way that the region's lakes and rivers are no longer the carefree playgrounds they used to be.
Last August long weekend, Jesse Kelly, 18 at the time, and Sara Hamilton, 17, set out from the Hamilton family dock on Lower Beverley Lake to go swimming off their sailboard.
From the house a while later, Sara's mother Deb watched as a boat approached the pair.
They were soon paddling back to the dock with the boat right behind them. Her husband, Tom, joked that it must be a police boat.
In fact, it was an Ontario Provincial Police cruiser escorting them to shore.
At the dock, Hamilton demanded to know from the officer what was happening as her daughter walked past her to their house.
"She said, 'He's going to give us a fine," recalled Hamilton. "She stormed up. He told her to get her identification."
Sara was about to be charged and fined $280 for not having the proper safety equipment, in this case lifejackets, aboard their "vessel."
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Ontario Provincial Police say they will be showing up on area waters randomly and without warning for spotchecks.
"By doing that, checking for safety equipment and for sobriety, we're preventing things from happening," said OPP Const. Randal Haddrall of the SAVE (Snowmobile, ATV, Vessel Enforcement) Unit in Odessa.
"We're checking everybody. We don't discriminate," he added. "The vast majority of boaters are safe but a small percentage aren't. Thirty or more people are dying every year that could be prevented. If I could save 30 people every year that's huge."
Heading into the Victoria Day weekend, three people had already died in Ontario this year in separate, single-vessel occurrences.
Two of the three people had not been wearing lifejackets; alcohol was involved in one of the incidents.
In 2009, there were 32 incidents that resulted in 33 deaths. Of those, 28 people were not wearing lifejackets and alcohol was a factor in 10 of the occurrences.
Among the new boating laws in place this year is a careless driving charge for the unsafe operation of a motorized vessel. It carries a substantial $430 fine, or $615 after the additional fees.
With the goal of reducing fatalities there is a renewed emphasis this year on lifejackets and personal flotation devices (PFDs). Lifejackets are designed to keep unconscious people buoyant and their heads above water while personal flotation devices will not.
Haddrall said that 90% of boating deaths could be avoided if lifejackets were worn and alcohol was not consumed.
"I've pulled many bodies out of the water and it's not a pleasant job," he said.
Besides the heavy cost involved in water rescue searches, Haddrall said that if a person drowns and disappears, it creates long-term anxiety for families who cannot find closure.
To drive the message home, fines for lifejacket and PFD violations have also been increased.
In the past, four missing lifejackets for a boating party of four people would have resulted in a total fine of $240. Now it will cost $200 for the first missing vest and $100 for each additional one, for a grand total of $615 after surcharges.
"It's not about money," Haddrall emphasized. "It's about avoiding tragedy and saving lives."
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"I was really disgusted with the whole incident," Deb Hamilton said of last year's experience on Lower Beverley Lake, 50 kilo-metres northeast of Kingston.
"The kids had been out on the sailboard and the sail doesn't fasten securely. We bought it knowing it wouldn't secure. We have a weedy shoreline and to swim that's what you take out. It's just a way of getting on the water. Our dog loves going on it."
Hamilton recalled the police officer as being "grumpy" and lecturing them on how many people die each year because they aren't wearing lifejackets.
She described a similar incident at a cottage on a lake near Parham. The children of friends were playing on rubber dinghies in a small bay when an OPP boat appeared and sent the kids back to shore where the officer informed the parents about water safety.
"Those kids have all had swimming lessons. My kids have all had swimming lessons," said Hamilton.
She and her family were surprised to discover that a surfboard can be considered a vessel requiring safety equipment.
"That kind of takes the fun out of going out on the lake to swim," she said. "How can you swim?"
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Are water safety regulations impinging on people's fun?
In Calgary this month, a brother and sister were in court battling fines they had received for not wearing lifejackets while floating on the city's rivers.
It's a tradition among some Calgarians to hop on air mattresses and inner tubes to cruise the Bow and Elbow rivers, parts of which are barely ankle deep.
In 2007, the Calgary fire department reported making 60 rescues involving 80 people. They had to warn more than 3,000 people to put on life vests.
"I think it's important that people become aware of what their rights really are and what the city's rights are," said 25-year-old Brittany Latouche, one of the appellants, in an interview with theGlobe and Mail.
Brittany and her brother Cory, 22, argued the federal government has control over water vessels and transportation, not municipalities.
They also argued that federal laws don't require boaters to wear their lifejackets, only to have them in their boats.
An Alberta provincial court judge, however, upheld the right of the municipality to levy the $500 fines -and to require the wearing of lifejackets.
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Sara and Jesse split the $280 fine from their surfboard incident on Lower Beverley Lake.
But Sara's mother wonders why the officer couldn't have shown some leniency considering that for years the family had used the board simply for swimming and fun.
"Wouldn't a few warnings make the difference?" Deb Hamilton asked. "That fellow was just mean and nasty. He wasn't there to educate the public. He wouldn't have met my meaner side if he hadn't come in growling."
Despite the tensions that day, she asked the officer if the teens could get off with a warning.
He refused.
Haddrall said police do have discretion when it comes to imposing fines and laying charges on the water. In this case, he said, the officer was correct in his legal interpretation.
"They could have charged both if they were both paddling," Haddrall said after hearing a description of the incident. "Whether it's got the sail or not it's designed as a windsurfer. The difference was they were paddling. When you go out swimming, you know your limits. When you start paddling out, are you going to be able to get back without your board?"
Even if an air mattress is used to navigate across a lake, he added, "it's probably a vessel. It depends on how far it is from shore."
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Haddrall insists that police aren't trying to take all the fun out of boating and water sports.
Jet ski riders, for instance, can still zoom around lakes and make sharp turns as long as they do their so well away from other boaters and swimmers.
"If you take a car into a field you can what you want. You can do doughnuts and wheelies. The same with boats. You just can't endanger other people's lives," he said.
He said that, despite the popular rumour, police are not assigned quotas to issue a predetermined number of fines.
"You can tell from experience if a boat needs to be stopped," Haddrall said. "You can pick and choose from the state of the boat."
Police are empowered under the Canada Shipping Act to pull boats over at any time for a number of reasons.
As Transport Canada's Safe Boating Guide says: "They may inspect your boat and monitor your boating activities to make sure that requirements are being met. This may include checking for safety equipment, your Pleasure Craft Operator Card and careless operation on the water."
The checklist of necessities for boaters continues to grow with the addition of the operator cards, a kind of boat driver's licence.
The cards were introduced a decade ago, allowing boaters a long lead time to take their tests online or through accredited courses to prepare for last September's deadline.
"It's been 10 years in the works. People know that it's been coming. If people complain they haven't had time to get it, that's not good enough," Haddrall said.
Online accreditation for the cards has been criticized because the test can be rewritten a number of times until the passing grade is achieved.
People sometimes find others to take the test for them with the result that they don't learn anything about boating safety or regulations.
Haddrall said police have no way of determining the validity of people's cards. They aren't even registered on a central database.
"It's only a scam for people who make it a scam. The pleasure craft card is just a way to educate people in the basics," Haddrall said.
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In 2001, three SAVE units were established in North Bay, Orillia and Kingston, giving additional support to local OPP detachments that may also have patrol boats.
"It was because of recreational fatalities on trails and waterways -- because the number of fatalities were really high," said Haddrall.
"Years ago there weren't as many boats. There are a lot more recreational boaters now and the boats of today far outdo the boats of yesterday. We'll randomly pick lakes. Sometimes we base that on complaints."
Haddrall believes spotchecks one of the police tools making waterways safer.
"I've been doing this unit for nine years. We have goals to check boats and make sure everyone's safe," Haddrall said. "If I want to go through all the equipment, I can."
Queen's University law professor Don Stuart says the laws and police powers pertaining to boats are not unlike those for road vehicles.
"There's part of me which says driving a boat is dangerous and it's all right to regulate for safety reasons," said Stuart. "It's a privilege to drive a boat."
He said police can stop cars on any provincial highway for "vehicle- related" checks and "as long as you believe the officer's reasons, that's OK."
Stuart said that doesn't mean a person wouldn't have a challenge under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
"The trouble will come when you have an officer who is not checking for safety at all," said Stuart. "He's checking kids for alcohol and marijuana. That's different."
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pschliesmann@thewhig.com
