Canadian Lawyer

24 A u g u s t 2 0 1 4 w w w . C A N A D I A N L a w y e r m a g . c o m Cross EXaMinEd T o hear Joe Spears tell it, three recent international marine disasters — Malay- sian Airlines flight 370, the Korean ferry disaster, and the Costa cruise ship sinking — have two things in common with Can- ada: "They could all happen here today," he says. "And like the countries involved, Canada is ill-equipped and unprepared to respond to such emergencies in a timely and efficient manner." As horses' mouths go, it would be hard — if not downright impossible — to get the goods any straighter on ocean issues in Canada than from the inimitable Spears, a Vancouver-based maritime law spe- cialist and advocate of ocean issues. The founding principal of the Horseshoe Bay Marine Group, an interdisciplinary ocean- consulting firm with a wide variety of clients in the maritime, ocean, arctic, and space sectors, Spears is a fifth-generation mariner and a former federal prosecutor with degrees in biology, economics, and law from Dalhousie University, as well as a Masters in sea-use law and policy from the London School of Economics. He is also a member of various pro- fessional organizations in the law, policy, and marine and ocean fields, a frequent speaker and commentator on ocean and arctic issues, and takes particular pleasure in pointing out the unpleasant truths about Canada's marine search and rescue (or SAR) capabilities while publicly jabbing bureaucrats and politicians in the process. "Canada is not meeting its international obligations to provide timely maritime SAR, especially in the Arctic," says Spears, who is also an honorary member of the Canadian Rangers. "We've got the best SAR people in the world. But they need the best equipment and the best thinking to do their job [and] as a country we are not providing that." To be sure, Spears comes by both his passion for the sea and his opinions on the subject honestly. Born and raised near the Halifax waterfront in a family with a long line of seafaring men, he went to Dalhousie in the late 1970s with dreams of becoming a marine biologist. But a series of events, including Canada's unilateral declaration of a 200-mile fishing zone and the salvage near Halifax of the shipwrecked oil tanker Arrow, transformed the normally staid Dalhousie marine community (including the ocean studies program and the Bed- ford Institute) into a hotbed of debate on ocean issues. "It was a pretty exciting time for a young Farley Mowat. I became fasci- nated by maritime law and oceanography," Joe Spears' family history is all about the sea and so is his law practice. by MarK cardwell Setting a course for legal adventure Joe Spears, right, was born and raised near the sea and dreamed of marine biology.

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