Fifteen million Canadians are boaters. In Canada we have about two million lakes plus the longest coastline in the world. In Ontario we have about 250,000 lakes. We have a lot of pleasure boats. In Canada marine law is the jurisdiction of the federal government and not the provinces.
If you are a boater having insurance is a very good idea. It’s not mandatory like car insurance in Ontario but with the number of boats on the water, and with high powered speedboats, it would be crazy to have a boat without insurance.
The good thing is that boat insurance is a lot cheaper than car insurance. But it’s not because the injuries in boating accidents are less than in car accidents.
Firstly, marine boating insurance does not have mandatory benefits like car insurance in Ontario. In Ontario the law is that every policy of insurance for a car must have minimum benefits available regardless of fault. There is no such requirement with marine insurance.
Secondly, marine liability is capped and I suspect the reason for this comes from a long time ago — many years ago. To encourage shipping and trade by sea the governments of many seafaring nations got together and agreed that the damages for accidents on the water should be capped. This helped encourage the expansion of shipping and trade by sea because it lowered costs and made costs more predictable.
In modern times with the improvements in design and technology some of these speed boats can travel very fast and cause enormous damage in an accident. When marine liability was capped all those years ago I doubt very much that boats moved as fast as they do now and I doubt very much that there were as many pleasure boats as there are today.
The same rationale doesn’t exist to day that existed when liability was capped. For inland pleasure boats maybe this limit on damages should be removed.