Shuswap Crash Highlights Lack of Enforcement

(Aired on June 5, 2010)

The weekend tragedy on the Shuswap has once again focused peoples' concerns about policing on the lake. I guess not just this lake, but every large lake.

It might be a while before all the details come to light about the weekend accident that saw a speedboat collide with a houseboat, killing one person and sending several more to hospital. So it's hard to say that this is something relating to lack of policing, or whether other issues involved. But when you talk to residents of the Shuswap, or Okanagan Lake, or Kalamalka Lake, or Skaha Lake, one of their big issues is a lack of a police presence. Police presence is negligible.

There are rules against drinking. How many times have you seen boats checked? You have to have an Operator's Card, which is a joke in itself, but nevertheless, how many times are people checked? How many times do you see people speeding dangerously close to other boats, to houseboats, or swimmers in the lake? Where are the enforcement officials?

I'll tell you where they are. Doing the myriad of other tasks that are assigned to them because there just aren't enough officers to go around. Funding is such that we just don't have enough officers to get out to these locations, just like we don't have conservation officers to do their jobs, or staffing in provincial campsites. And I could go on and on.

Many of these tragedies are caused by carelessness, or consumption of alcohol. How many people do you know who go out on the lake with a case of beer or something stronger and laugh about how they're only going to have a couple of drinks. Pretty soon their judgment suffers to the point where they shouldn't be operating a boat at all. The cost of putting enforcement in place is high. I guess it's a question of what value we put on a life to determine whether or not we need to put pressure on our governments to make changes.