In April 2018, the B.C. Supreme Court ruled on the admissibility of evidence in a ship pollution context.
The ship Marathassa is accused of discharging a pollutant at Vancouver in 2015; the trial is actually still underway.
The Court was asked to make a preliminary ruling on some of the evidence obtained by Transport Canada inspectors.
The position taken by the ship’s interests, and which was accepted by the Court, was that the inspection and enforcement roles of the Transport Canada inspectors was confusing and that they could not carry out enforcement activities (such as obtaining evidence) under the guise of a compliance inspection. The result was that some of the evidence had to be excluded as it was unlawfully obtained.