Boating in Canada comes with plenty of rules on paper – registration, a pleasure craft operator card, mandated safety equipment – but none of that adds up to a requirement to carry liability insurance or demonstrate real competency on the water, and that gap is leaving victims of boating accidents with no way to recover, according to Adam Wagman (pictured), partner at Howie, Sacks & Henry LLP.
Wagman said the contrast with driving is stark. Getting behind the wheel of a car requires passing both a written and an in-person road test, renewing a license periodically, and operating under constant oversight, from traffic cameras to active police patrols. Boating requires almost none of that.
"You don't have to show any degree of competency on the water, actually in a boat," Wagman said. "There are no lanes, there are no stop signs, there's almost no police patrolling." Wagman said that in more than 40 years of boating on Ontario lakes, he estimates he's been stopped by police only twice, compared with the frequent police presence he encounters driving a car.
That gap in mandatory insurance and competency testing, he said, is part of why he wouldn't advocate for a full no-fault benefit system for boating, similar to what exists for auto accidents, since the added regulation and insurance costs required to support it would likely make boat ownership unaffordable for most people.
"It would probably cost more to insure it if you imposed a no-fault benefit system than the value of the boat in many cases," Wagman said.
What he does support, unequivocally, is mandatory liability insurance for all pleasure craft, a requirement that currently does not exist in Canada except for large vessels over 300 gross tonnage or boats carrying passengers commercially.
"There should be mandatory liability insurance for all pleasure craft," Wagman said. "That is not the case currently."
He said the government should mandate liability coverage for all pleasure craft, potentially with an exception for very low-powered boats under roughly 10 horsepower that pose minimal risk.
Wagman was careful to frame this as a systemic gap rather than an indictment of boaters generally, noting that most people on the water behave responsibly.
"If you spent any time on a lake, you know that there are lots of responsible boaters out there," Wagman said, "but frankly, too many very irresponsible boaters out there as well."
The problem, he said, is that the current system offers no way to distinguish between the two once someone gets hurt, since the absence of mandatory insurance leaves victims exposed regardless of how careful the broader boating community actually is.
Without mandatory insurance, Wagman said, victims of boating accidents involving an uninsured operator are often left with no way to recover anything for their injuries, even when those injuries are catastrophic or fatal.
"If the person responsible for the accident has no liability insurance, the victims will not be able to recover (in practical terms) anything," Wagman said. He pointed to a case involving his own clients, in which a husband and father was killed by a boater who had failed to secure liability insurance for his vessel.
Even when insurance is in place, Wagman said, victims face a separate obstacle: a federal liability cap of $1.5 million per incident under the Marine Liability Act, a limit that applies regardless of how many people are hurt in a single crash.
"If you're on a Sea-Doo and you wipe out a boat with six people in it, the combined value of all six cases cannot exceed $1.5 million," Wagman said.
Wagman was blunt about who that cap actually protects.
"We are protecting negligent boaters, period," Wagman said. "Why, on a policy basis, would we want to protect negligent boaters, and almost create an incentive for negligence, when you know that you can't be sued for more than $1.5 million, and you might not have insurance anyway?"
The cap exists, he said, largely to keep insurance costs down by capping insurers' maximum exposure, similar to liability conventions used in aviation. But he questioned why the federal government increased that cap from $1 million to $1.5 million in 2023 without also addressing the more fundamental gap of mandatory coverage.
"It makes absolutely no sense to mandate a liability limit and not at the same time mandate that people have insurance to meet that liability," Wagman said.
Boating accidents also expose a legal gap that doesn't exist in auto cases, Wagman said, since a boat owner isn't automatically liable for the actions of someone they lend their vessel to, the way a car owner would be.
"When a parent gives their 16-year-old child the Sea-Doo and says, go out and have some fun, that 16-year-old doesn't have any assets," Wagman said. "The parents aren't automatically vicariously responsible for the actions of their child. So without insurance, nobody recovers anything."
Wagman said this combination of gaps, no mandatory insurance, a federal liability cap, and no automatic owner liability, isn't a minor technical issue, but one that leaves genuinely innocent victims without recourse after some of the most serious injuries a person can suffer.
"We are protecting people who are unsafe boaters," Wagman said, "and there's no reason to provide that protection."
