Many Canadians would think it’s a god-given right to be able to enjoy a Labatt Blue in a canoe. After all, you Hosers, there’s a 50-50 chance any of us were conceived in a canoe or at least that canoeing was part of the courtship that caused your parents to get together. But we have sad news for you. In BC, even as a passenger, you can’t enjoy an ice-cold brewski in a canoe gliding down river or even in the old skiff while fishing on the lake. That is a birthright you no longer have.
What about my freedom?
Talk about freedoms! It seems all sorts of Canadians think their freedoms have been suddenly taken from them. When we hear of this in the office, we struggle to think of a single freedom that we’ve lost in the last decade. In fact, if anything, we see people pushing the boundaries of freedom of expression beyond anything we’ve seen in this country. But when it comes to boating, there are increasing restrictions.
Who governs beers on a boat?
The provincial Motor Vehicle Act doesn’t apply to watercraft because it deals with roads and highways. Most of the offences regarding boating are dealt with by federal legislation because of the federal control over what is criminal and the federal responsibility to govern waterways.
In 2018, the federal government changed the Criminal Code to make specifically clear that boating while impaired by alcohol is a criminal offence. Same with having a blood-alcohol concentration at or over .08% in the two hours after boating.
That all makes sense if it’s a powerboat. It makes less sense if you’re on a tube floating down a river on your day off, which is a true BC tradition. But an inner-tube or other flotation device is classed as a “vessel” and so the offences that relate to the operation of a vessel apply equally regardless of the type of watercraft.
In fact, you can’t even have a beer or cooler while out on an inflatable or in a canoe because of a change made a few years ago to the BC Liquor Control and Licensing regulations. Simply having alcohol, even sealed, on this type of water-going device is unlawfully transporting liquor. If it’s opened, such as an open beer, it’s the offence of consuming or possessing open liquor in a public place.
So beers in a canoe are not permitted unless you are using the canoe to transport the beer to another lawful location. Same with a Kayak. Same with a boat. With one exception.
The weird loophole:
The regulations create exemptions that made sense to the bureaucrats who drafted the law. One exemption is for boats that have a kitchen, a toilet and a bed. If you have a boat that has these three things, then you may have open liquor. And in fact, the regulations do not prohibit the operator of the boat from drinking alcohol while operating the boat which makes this loophole particularly problematic.
On the one hand, the loophole seems to grant more freedoms to people who have large boats. So you can immediately imagine the wealthy boaters enjoying champagne on their evening voyage. Us poor folk with our small boats are prohibited from such pleasures.
On the other hand, the fact that there is no prohibition regarding consumption of alcohol for these big boat owners while operating their boats runs contrary to our whole concept of separating liquor from the operation of large, dangerous moving things. The last thing we want is for boat operators to see themselves as exempt. Permitting this seems to encourage dangerous speculation about how much one can drink before they could be in trouble.
It’s true that at or over .08% or impaired boating is an offence. Nobody wants to see boat operators pushing the limits and placing us all at risk. Interestingly, the prohibition starts at .05% in a car, but not so in a boat.
Our advice
It is unlawful to drink in a small boat. Our advice is not to do it. In an exempt boat, we advise not to operate it if you’ve had more than one drink. When things go bad in a boat, they often go very bad and the last thing you want is to need to hire us to defend your charge for boating while impaired causing death or bodily harm.
If you want to be angry about the government taking away your freedoms, we think it’s fair to complain about no longer being permitted to have a beer while fishing in a boat. As far as we’re concerned, this takes away something fundamentally Canadian. If you can’t have a Labatt Blue in a canoe what can you do?