Shipping company fined $40,000 after tanker entered wildlife area

A Quebec-based shipping company got $40,000 in fines after pleading guilty to illegally entering Nunavut’s protected waters off the coast of Baffin Island.

Transport Desgagnés Inc., a company that manages sealift services to Nunavut and Nunavik, was charged last year under the Canada Wildlife Act after Environment and Climate Change Canada officers received a report that stated the company’s tanker had entered Akpait National Wildlife Area.

The area, located approximately 130 kilometres south of Qikiqtarjuaq, is a feeding ground for thick-billed murres and is one of the “most important” seabird areas of the eastern Arctic, according to ECCC.

In fall 2024, the Sarah Desgagnés tanker — an 18,000-ton, 147-metre double-hull oil and chemical tanker — travelled from Levis, Que. to Milne Inlet.

It illegally sailed through the protected zone on its way to Milne Inlet and back, spending roughly 24 minutes in the area on Sept. 29 and just over an hour on Oct. 6.

“There was no attempt to alter course or reduce speed to avoid entering the park,” the company’s lawyer Lauren Shadley said in the agreed statement of facts. She appeared virtually in an Iqaluit courtroom on Friday.

The ship was equipped with a navigation system that had “protective area overlays,” which are supposed to help vessels veer away from protective areas, Shadley said.

But due to a “human error,” the function was not activated by the vessel crew at the time the route was planned or during the trip itself, she said.

During Friday’s proceeding, the company pleaded guilty to operating a conveyance — in this case, a vessel — in the protected area.

Shadley and Crown prosecutor Belinda Peres jointly asked for $40,000 in fines as the sentence.

The maximum fine for the offence is $250,000, according to the Wildlife Act.

“That acceptance of responsibility and the very proactive measures they’ve taken are what brought that fine down from our perspective,” Peres said after making the joint submission.

The company did a “thorough internal investigation” before the charges were laid to make sure “something like this can’t happen again,” Shadley said.

As well, both Shadley and Peres agreed there was no “demonstrable harm” to the environment.

However, “in certain circumstances, the sound of vessels at a certain speed may disturb marine mammals’ activities,” the company said in a news release issued Friday after the proceedings.

Justice Vital Ouellette agreed with the submission. The company has two months to pay.

This is the first time Transport Desgagnés Inc. has faced criminal charges under the Canada Wildlife Act, Shadley said.

In October 2015, the Sarah Desgagnés spilled an estimated 3,000 litres of diesel fuel into the water outside Salluit during a delivery. The company worked with the Canadian Coast Guard and Quebec’s Ministry of Environment to clean up, and the spill didn’t result in litigation.