Canadian Maritime Law and the Offshore: A Primer

Vernon V. Kakoschke was a lawyer in the law department of Canadian Pacific.

Wylie Spicer, a partner at the law firm of McInnes, Cooper & Robertson in Halifax, Nova Scotia, has produced a short research paper on various contemporary issues of maritime law. This is the third paper of the Canadian Continental Shelf Law Project, published by the Canadian Institute of Resources Law. The objective of the Project is to analyse Canadian legal principles governing the conduct of offshore exploration, development, and transportation of hydrocarbons from the continental shelf.

Before dealing with the specific issues, the working paper sets the context by outlining the jurisdiction of the Federal Court of Canada (where most admiralty cases are decided) in relation to the jurisdiction of provincial courts over such matters. It then attempts to answer certain questions such as “Is an oil rig a ship?” and “Is a drilling contract a charter party?” Although there are no right or wrong answers to these questions, as this is still an evolving area of the law, the paper reviews the available case law and comes to some tentative conclusions.

The largest section of this paper and the section that would be of most interest to practitioners in this field deals with liability for marine damage. It reviews the principles to be applied in cases involving damage caused by ships and oil rigs, apportionment of loss for collisions between two or more vessels, and the defences available in such cases, both statutory and at common law.

In general, the working paper briefly but concisely outlines the current state of the law on various selected issues of maritime law, particularly as they relate to offshore oil and gas projects. Unfortunately, some of the issues are dealt with in a cursory manner and there is little, if any, discussion of the underlying policy considerations relating to some of the more novel issues raised.