US cruise ships are using Canadian waters like a toilet: report

Jul 10 2022, 8:41 pm

Environmental organizations say that because the US has stricter regulations than Canada, American cruise ships are using Canadian waters like a toilet.

Environmental advocacy group Stand.Earth created a report that looked at the regulations for cruise ship pollution on the West Coast from California to Alaska.

They found that Canadian regulations are seriously lacking, and they practically incentivize “cruise companies to dump the enormous volumes of wastewater generated onboard in waters off Canada.”

“Canadian regulation of cruise ship pollution lags far behind the regulatory regimes in other countries and, significantly, is much weaker than in the US states with whom we neighbour on the Pacific Ocean and share the West Coast cruise industry,” said Stand.Earth.

The issue has even captured global attention. On Saturday, July 9, British publishers at The Guardian also called out Canada’s “lax” regulations.

In April 2022, Transport Canada announced stricter environmental measures for greywater and blackwater for the 2022 cruise season.

Still, greywater and treated blackwater can be dumped three nautical miles away from the shore “where geographically possible.”

Stand.Earth said that the regulations were a “welcomed first step worth celebrating – as long as they actually become enforceable regulations.”

In the US, regulations like the US Clean Water Act better protect American waters. And, in Alaska, they have fecal coliform and suspended solids limits for sewage that are 18 times more stringent than Canadian allowances, said Stand.Earth.

Even though cruise ships account for a lot of pollution in Canadian waters, they don’t even bring that much economic benefit to the province, said Stand.Earth.

According to a report, in Victoria, cruise tourism spending in 2019 was $137.1 million, whereas non-cruise tourism spending was $3 billion – in other words, cruise tourists are cheap.

“Cruise tourism in Victoria constituted nearly 12% of total number of visitors, but cruise-related tourists were responsible for less than 2 percent of tourism spending in the region,” reads the report.

So with little economic benefit and a massive environmental impact, Stand.Earth wants to see stronger regulations on the cruise industry in Canada.

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