Canada Shipping Act, 2001

Marginal note:Civil or criminal liability

• 181 (1) A person who is directed to take or refrain from taking measures under paragraph 180(1)(c) is not personally liable, either civilly or criminally, in respect of any act or omission in the course of complying with the direction or doing anything incidental to it, unless it is shown that the person’s conduct was not reasonable in the circumstances.

• Marginal note:Civil or criminal liability

  (2) Response organizations and persons who have been designated in writing by the Minister as approved responders are not personally liable, either civilly or criminally, in respect of any act or omission occurring or arising during the course of a response operation unless it is shown that the act or omission was committed with the intent to cause loss or damage, or recklessly and with the knowledge that loss or damage would probably result.

• Marginal note:Exception

  (3) Nothing in subsection (1) exempts or lessens the liability of the owner of a vessel for the occurrence that necessitated the response operation.

• Definition of response operation

  (4) In this section, response operation means the activities undertaken following a discharge, or a grave and imminent threat of a discharge, from a vessel, including activities related to or connected with surveillance of and assessing areas of pollution, mobilizing and demobilizing response equipment and resources, protective booming, containment, recovery, dispersal or destruction of the pollutant, shoreline mitigation and restoration, transporting and disposing of recovered pollutant or waste materials and planning and supervising activities related to the response operation.