I partly attribute my loss of a good job, and those of my 20 shipmates last year, to the ability of cargo owners to be quickly granted Canada Transportation Act waiver – where foreign owned ships, who pay no Canadian income tax (among others), hire no Canadians, yet operate in Canadian waters, or between Canadian ports. As a guy who’s invested pretty heavily in a seagoing Marine Engineering career, and…
TC HQ in Ottawa, Wikipedia If you live on Vancouver Island, and required any marine certification assistance by Transport Canada Ship Safety, you will be required to go to Victoria to get your certification work done; or you may choose to go Vancouver or Prince Rupert. Effective July 2nd 2013, the Nanaimo office of Transport Canada Ship Safety will no longer process deck or engine examinations, issuance of certificates, endorsements,…
May Edition now on news stands Toot tooot. There’s my own horn. BC Shipping News has picked an article of mine featured here, a few months ago, about the realities of the marine engineering training efficiency in Western Canada over the past twenty years. The piece, Reap what you sow, was the first part of my larger exercise, exploring the marine engineer workforce situation in Canada. The article is in…
In the previous blog post on The Monitor, there was a picture from the Vancouver Sun, with the the Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver presenting the Harper Government’s “World Class” tanker initiative earlier this week. In the background of the picture, there was a small vessel, an oil response vessel, the largest on Canada’s west coast. The Vancouver Sun followed up the Harper Government’s announcement story one day after, with…
Need more lipstick, PM Haprer – from the interwebs Our dear leader’s has taken yet another clumsy step in softening the ramming of a pipeline down the throats of British Colombians. The press release starts with “Harper” and included a press conference by no less than two cabinet ministers in Vancouver, last Monday. The high profile plan / announcements makes no real sense to me, and is strictly to open…
From Interwebs The much heralded National Ship Procurement Strategy’s (NSPS) wheel of progress have been mired in thick mud, seemingly unable to gain any real traction when it comes to actually cutting steel. Today, yet another blow to the program, a report by the Parliamentary Budget Officer says that the $2.6 billion (yes, with a B), committed to the Joint Support Vessels in 2010 is simply not enough to build…
CCGC Point Henry, by CCG A couple of days ago, the Canadian federal Minister of Fisheries, Keith Ashfield, was under scrutiny by local media Chek TV news reporter, after a brief funding announcement in Nanaimo. Of course, he was whisked away to more “important things”, before he could give a meaningful answer to the reporter’s question as to why the Conservative party is closing numerous front line Canadian Coast Guard…
“proud to be stuck in 70’s” Transport Canada, last week, declared that they will not be be enforcing the North American Emission Control Area (NA ECA), which stipulated burning a lower sulphur fuel for ships, and which comes into force next week – August 1, 2012. The whole idea of the ECA is to reduce pollution and the impacts it has on human and planetary health. ” Due to significant…