OTTAWA — The Laurier II, with a rich and until recently noble history, floats off Vancouver Island’s east coast as a mysterious symbol of federal government inaction on the growing national problem of derelict vessels.
The ship, now apparently abandoned and floating in Deep Bay near Qualicum Beach, was built in a Quebec shipyard in the 1930s to serve as an RCMP patrol vessel to target drug and alcohol smugglers.
When the Second World War began in 1939, the ship was transferred to the Royal Canadian Navy, and after the war served on the West Coast as a federal department of fisheries patrol ship, armed with a “12-pounder” long gun and a .303 machine gun.
In an ironic twist, the Laurier II, named after one of Canada’s most-accomplished prime ministers, went to the dark side. In the 1990s, ownership shifted to a group of Vancouver stock promoters with ties to the underworld, leading to current local speculation that it was used for drug smuggling.
Today, it is one of many derelict and abandoned vessels that represent a significant, costly, and growing risk to the environment, to boating safety, and to taxpayers, the federal government has acknowledged.
For at least the second time since last autumn, Canadian Coast Guard personnel boarded the vessel last week to pump rainwater from the decaying vessel to prevent it from capsizing, which according to local community leaders would result in environmental damage that could put 600 local jobs at risk.
“We are on top of it. We are taking care of it,” Liberal MP Kate Young said earlier this month in the House of Commons in response to a campaign being waged by Vancouver Island NDP MPs to get the Laurier II and other floating and sunken wrecks dealt with.
“The cost of removing these vessels can be high and often beyond the capacity of local communities and marinas,” said Young, who is parliamentary secretary to Transport Minister Marc Garneau. “We realize that this is an issue, and we are making sure that we address it as quickly as possible.”
Opposition MP Gord Johns, who represents Courtenay-Alberni, says Ottawa isn’t moving fast enough in the wake of a 2012 Transport Canada report, and a follow-up 2015 departmental “discussion paper”, that both describe the issue as pressing.
The government, according to the papers, is considering a two-pronged strategy that will include both costly clean-up operations as well as mandatory insurance for vessels above 300 gross tonnes — a high threshold that would exclude even large boats like the 201-tonne Laurier II.
The 2012 paper included an inventory of abandoned and derelict vessels, showing 240 across the country, of which 42 were in B.C.
Transport Canada noted that the problem of dealing with these vessels (some disposal operations will cost in the hundreds of thousands of dollars) will only get worse due to the advanced age of many boats in Canada’s current recreational and commercial fleets.
“Given the difficulties and gaps in tracking vessel owners in Canada, the incidences of abandoned and derelict vessels could be expected to increase and could become unmanageable,” the 2012 report concluded.
Johns, while relieved that the Canadian Coast Guard recently removed the derelict tug Silver King from Deep Bay after a public uproar and extensive media coverage, says Ottawa has to take a more comprehensive approach that includes ships the size of the Laurier II.
The issue of derelict vessels, which has been percolating for years, took on new prominence earlier this month due to local concerns over another vessel abandoned in Deep Bay, the 100-foot tug Silver King.
Fisheries Minister Hunter Tootoo responded by announcing that pollutants such as fuel, asbestos and bilge water would be removed, and then the ship would be towed to a yard and deconstructed.
Both MP Johns and Bill Veenhof, chair of the Regional District of Nanaimo, said the community has been warned that there could be huge local job losses if either the Silver King or the Laurier II sunk. Environment Canada, they said, warned that the bay’s shellfish industry, which employs 60 people, could be shut down for up to a year to deal with the pollution concerns.
The Laurier II, according to Veenhof, is not technically derelict because when the harbourmaster took steps last year to have it removed, a Victoria lawyer stepped in to say the ship had owners.
Veenhof said workers appeared around 2012 to do some work on the ship, in order to prepare it for charter work, but that work stopped.
The owner, according to B.C. Registry Services, is Laurier Charters Ltd., which was incorporated in 1990 as 379713 B.C. Ltd. The current directors are Shawn Scott, who lives in Salmon Arm, and Ian James Rayner of Victoria.
Scott, contacted on Friday, confirmed she and Rayner “go back a long ways” and are indeed the Laurier Charters directors. But she reacted with surprise when told the Laurier II was anchored to cement blocks in Deep Bay and is presumed to be abandoned.
“Oh, oh, oh, really? Ah!” she responded, sounding startled. “It’s sort of a long story and I can’t really discuss it with you, but let me make a few phone calls and I will talk to you later. That’s strange — weird.”
Scott didn’t call back and, when contacted by telephone twice on Monday, immediately hung up both times. She also didn’t reply to an email to her place of work on Monday.
In a 2006 registry filing, Laurier Charters’ directors were listed as Rayner, Barry Mann, and Qing “Queenie” Zhang. Scott didn’t join Rayner as a director until 2010.
Mann used to be regularly described by former Vancouver Sun investigative business journalist David Baines as a “long-time associate” of Martin Chambers, who recently returned from a U.S. prison.
Zhang, meanwhile, was Chambers’ weeping spouse in a Florida courtroom when he was given five concurrent 15-year, eight-month sentences on money laundering charges in 2003. Chambers launched a lawsuit in B.C. Supreme Court last year against Zhang after finishing his U.S. sentence, alleging that she withdrew $3.2 million from his accounts during his absence.
Baines, in a September 29, 2003 feature article in Canadian Business magazine, described Chambers as “a brilliant former Vancouver lawyer who, according to the RCMP, toiled for decades in the city’s underworld as a financial facilitator for the Hells Angels, Russian mobsters and myriad other people who worked on the edge of the law.”
In that same article, Baines cited the role of another Vancouver stock promoter, Jack Purdy, who was charged but later acquitted in the same RCMP-Federal Bureau of Investigation sting that nabbed Chambers. Purdy, Baines noted, had been “buying millions of dollars of property on Vancouver Island, particularly in Bamfield” on the island’s West Coast.
Baines, a year earlier, did a lengthy report on those Vancouver Island purchases by Purdy that included undeveloped land, a tiny airport, waterfront lodges, and a small island. In every case, little money or effort appeared to be invested to improve the value of these assets.
“The one thing none of us could ever comprehend was why he would inject all that capital into all these investments and not get them up and running as soon as possible to recoup his investment,” John Johnston, a local businessman, told Baines. “That is the central question in this community.”
The 2002 article noted that Purdy had “many business dealings” with Chambers.
“Chambers also owns, through a nominee, the Laurier II, a 113- foot, former federal fisheries vessel that is permanently moored at one of Purdy’s docks,” Baines wrote. “Nearly derelict, the vessel maintains a haunting presence in Bamfield Inlet.”
The Vancouver Sun previously reported that the Laurier II had been decommissioned by the federal government in 1983, and was bought in 1990 by 379713 B.C. Ltd. The company’s only director at the time was Mann, and his listed office address was the same as Chambers’.
