Senate passes the Alaska Tourism Recovery Act

[AmazedByCruising]

3 hours ago, chengkp75 said:

However, by granting exemption to a specific set of ships, they leave the bill open to legal challenge from any other cruise line that wishes to operate in Alaska this season.

 

I think they couldn't care less if another cruise line says they should be on the list and would amend the act for them immediately. I'm only curious why the list itself is written in the law, hence difficult to maintain, instead of referring to an "Official List that is maintained by the Established Cruise Ship Authority, and published daily on a Very Official Website" that in reality gets an email from CLIA every few weeks which IMOs should be listed and which non-paying competitors should not.

 

But, IIRC, if the law is passed there will also be duck boat owners with dollars in their eyes, seeing the possibility to hire Filipinos for a couple of bucks per day, as the judge would say that the UN definition of what a "passenger vessel" is cannot be messed with by humble lawmakers unless they renegotiate existing international treaties. I wonder how it is even possible that all the lawyers that looked at this act forgot about that.

[kazu]

Some interesting news today.  Canada is entering into discussions to potentially open some borders.  Not sure what will come of it.

[CruiseMGM]

5 minutes ago, kazu said:

Some interesting news today.  Canada is entering into discussions to potentially open some borders.  Not sure what will come of it.

 

Wow! Please keep us posted on what you hear!

[Horizon chaser 1957]

30 minutes ago, AmazedByCruising said:

But, IIRC, if the law is passed there will also be duck boat owners with dollars in their eyes, seeing the possibility to hire Filipinos for a couple of bucks per day, as the judge would say that the UN definition of what a "passenger vessel" is cannot be messed with by humble lawmakers unless they renegotiate existing international treaties. I wonder how it is even possible that all the lawyers that looked at this act forgot about that.

I had no idea the duck boats were foreign registered and travelled all the  way from Seattle to Alaska. Live and learn!

[kazu]

3 minutes ago, CruiseMGM said:

 

Wow! Please keep us posted on what you hear!

 

I will if anything serious materializes with these talks.

[ontheweb]

5 hours ago, chengkp75 said:

 

You will note that this bill, nor the accompanying House bill, does not carve out cruise ships as a "special class" of passenger vessel.  The Senate bill, lists a specific list of ships to which it applies, so that no other ship can avail themselves of this waiver.  However, if Senator Murkowski wanted to add the ships from the Alaska Marine Highway to the bill, or a ferry brought up from Mexico, that could be done as well.  However, by granting exemption to a specific set of ships, they leave the bill open to legal challenge from any other cruise line that wishes to operate in Alaska this season.  This is also a time limited waiver.  So, to say that this is a permanent change to the PVSA, creating a special condition for cruise ships is incorrect.  Unless the Congress wants to list every cruise ship that operates in the US on a bill, and then amend that bill each time a new ship is built, you are not going to create a new class of "passenger vessel".

And the specific list of ships is rather odd since it includes ships that no longer exist such as the HAL Noordam and the Pacific Princess. (There are probably more, but I noticed those 2 specifically.)

[1ANGELCAT]

6 minutes ago, ontheweb said:

And the specific list of ships is rather odd since it includes ships that no longer exist such as the HAL Noordam and the Pacific Princess. (There are probably more, but I noticed those 2 specifically.)

Noordam Most Definitely Exists.    

[JRG]

42 minutes ago, kazu said:

Not sure what will come of it.

 

You will probably have to do a lot of editing to your daily cruising blog with all the cruise changes that will be taking place.

 

Thank you for keeping us posted on this wonderful development too.

 

We should give a shout out to inside-the-cabin as he called the shot yesterday.   

 

 

 

 

 

[kazu]

6 minutes ago, JRG said:

You will probably have to do a lot of editing to your daily cruising blog with all the cruise changes that will be taking place.

 

LOL - I’ve been doing a ton of changes on an ongoing basis to the Future Cruise Listing with all the itinerary amendments, changes, etc.

 

There’s a lot of politics and view points involved with the border openings between different provinces so whether this comes to fruition is something yet to be seen.

 

[Gail & Marty sailing away]

1 hour ago, kazu said:

Some interesting news today.  Canada is entering into discussions to potentially open some borders.  Not sure what will come of it.

That is good news.

[The-Inside-Cabin]

On 5/15/2021 at 5:45 AM, ontheweb said:

The bill does nothing for her district or the state of California. The bill specifically says that it only applies to the state of Washington.

Princess has run Alaska Cruises from LA in the past.   Don't know if their is any interest in using Speaker Pelosis San Franciscon district as an origination point for Alaska.   Lots of potential customers would like to cruise without flying.    Cruise lines would love to get more of the millions of people in LA and San Fran to go on Alaska cruises.    Not having to stop in Vancouver/Victoria may make the scheduling easier.

 

The door has been opened.    Hard to predict how it may turn out.    I suspect Canada will want to close the door as quickly as possible before people starting thinking about making the waiver situation permanent.  (assuming it passes Congress in the first place)

 

Vancouver is a nice city and I enjoy visiting but if I could cruise Alaska from California without flying I would probably cruise Alaska more often.   I am probably not alone.

 

WRT to the Jones act/PVSA there is a significant US Merchant Marine hauling cargo.   Passengers - not so much - there isn't a significant USA based passenger ship industry to protect like there is on the cargo/fuel/oil side.    The "new" PVSA could easily be written to protect ferries and other similar operators.

 

Time will tell...

Edited May 16, 2021 by The-Inside-Cabin

[david,Mississauga]

2 hours ago, mcrcruiser said:

For us Americans   it is far more expensive to cruise from Vancouver  to Alaska than cruising 

 

  It  cost less to  cruise out of  a American port vs Vancouver  if you need to fly to take the cruise .Thus ,there is a  benefit there  because international air is more pricy than domestic air 

 

It is not just Americans who take Alaska cruises from Vancouver. On a Noordam cruise a few years ago there were more people from the UK than any other country. We were told that was followed by people from  Canada, Australia  and the US in that order.

 

On Cunard's Queen Elizabeth two years ago there were a lot from the US, but they were not the majority. 

 

Several Americans have told me they prefer the Vancouver-based cruises because they spend more time in sheltered water and less time on the Pacific Ocean.

[Lido deck main]

The CEO of the Greater Victoria Harbour Authority was on the news the other night, he is lobbying federal government to allow cruise ships to do a technical stop in Victoria, come into port, tie up, no one allowed off, stay for an hour or so, then untie and off the cruise ship goes.

[AmazedByCruising]

38 minutes ago, Horizon chaser 1957 said:

I had no idea the duck boats were foreign registered and travelled all the  way from Seattle to Alaska. Live and learn!

 

I don't think duck boats would apply for a Maltese flag and would enjoy hiring crew for pennies as the cruise ships do, but I've spent many, many posts saying that you actually can carve out the cruise ships from PVSA or simply abolish PVSA altogether, and I've heard the rebuttal that a passenger vessel is a passenger vessel over and over again. The argument has always been that each and every ship, including duck boats, would be under the same rule and if lawmakers would try to make an exception, every ship owner would be able to get the same status by telling the judge that they also have a passenger vessel according to UN definitions. Including the duck boat owners. A discussion that was closed by agreeing to disagree, but now there is a proposed law that states exactly what I've said lawmakers can dictate. 

 

Exploding steam ships is what offically started the PVSA. A perfect example of what "temporarily" means because a law supposedly meant to prevent people being killed on a steam ship now leads to ships that don't even use steam making absurd itineraries to visit "far" countries, and at the same time prevents itineraries that people actually would like. How much time and money was spent to invent "technical calls", where a ship goes to an island and leaves immediately only to satisfy PVSA, and how much time and tax money was spent to get rid of those loopholes? Who's in the committee that decided that Vancouver is not "far" enough? Do they sleep thinking they helped humanity or at least the US public, or are they simply glad that everybody at the table finally agreed? 

 

This act could be a precedent that could eventually lead to allowing ships to do itineraries on the West Coast that we now only can dream of by making exemptions for cruise ships for the damage done by PVSA. Even Covid has its silver liniing.

[chengkp75]

2 hours ago, AmazedByCruising said:

I'm only curious why the list itself is written in the law, hence difficult to maintain, instead of referring to an "Official List that is maintained by the Established Cruise Ship Authority, and published daily on a Very Official Website"

Probably because there is no "Established Cruise Ship Authority", and the law would need to set one up, with funding, etc, but even then, waivers are given to specific ships for specific routes for specific times, not to some nebulous "authority".

 

18 minutes ago, The-Inside-Cabin said:

WRT to the Jones act/PVSA their is a significant US Merchant Marine hauling cargo.   Passengers - not so much - there isn't a significant USA based passenger ship industry to protect like their is on the cargo side.  

And, again, you are looking at the PVSA as if cruise ships are the only passenger vessels involved.  The PVSA fleet employs hundreds of thousands of US citizens, and adds hundreds of millions of dollars to the US economy and US tax roles.

Edited May 16, 2021 by chengkp75

[d9704011]

5 minutes ago, Lido deck main said:

The CEO of the Greater Victoria Harbour Authority was on the news the other night, he is lobbying federal government to allow cruise ships to do a technical stop in Victoria, come into port, tie up, no one allowed off, stay for an hour or so, then untie and off the cruise ship goes.

Excellent!  Ruling(s) by US authorities have negated ‘technical stops’ as a stop that would satisfy the PVSA.  So, other than paying some people a few bucks to handle lines, who would benefit from this suggestion?

[LAFFNVEGAS]

1 minute ago, Lido deck main said:

The CEO of the Greater Victoria Harbour Authority was on the news the other night, he is lobbying federal government to allow cruise ships to do a technical stop in Victoria, come into port, tie up, no one allowed off, stay for an hour or so, then untie and off the cruise ship goes.

I had stated this as an option shortly after Canada made the announcement of not allowing cruise ships to enter Canada Waters till Feb. 2022. I was told no way and that Canadians did not want to chance having cruise ships and Americans bringing the virus into Canada. Canada is missing out on port fees which I am guessing is a nice chunk of money from each ship. Had Canada originally stated they would allow this the cruise lines could have moved forward faster to restart a short season in Alaska. It would be a win-win for both although Canada is still missing out on some tourism dollars but some money collected is better than none which is what I stated several months ago. 

I believe that the cruise lines were working both of these angles which was why they were not willing to totally cancel what was booked for Alaska. Most of the sailings all the way through September were booked to 80% which was why they had no problems with just stopping the sale of those sailings. They also have sold a lot of excursions. Holland America especially a year ago right now they were offer specials on reduced excursions. I have been told that many excursions were sold out and they were contracting to allow more. This was a fight the cruise lines were not wanting to give up on.   

[d9704011]

1 minute ago, LAFFNVEGAS said:

I had stated this as an option shortly after Canada made the announcement of not allowing cruise ships to enter Canada Waters till Feb. 2022. I was told no way and that Canadians did not want to chance having cruise ships and Americans bringing the virus into Canada. Canada is missing out on port fees which I am guessing is a nice chunk of money from each ship. Had Canada originally stated they would allow this the cruise lines could have moved forward faster to restart a short season in Alaska. It would be a win-win for both although Canada is still missing out on some tourism dollars but some money collected is better than none which is what I stated several months ago. 

I believe that the cruise lines were working both of these angles which was why they were not willing to totally cancel what was booked for Alaska. Most of the sailings all the way through September were booked to 80% which was why they had no problems with just stopping the sale of those sailings. They also have sold a lot of excursions. Holland America especially a year ago right now they were offer specials on reduced excursions. I have been told that many excursions were sold out and they were contracting to allow more. This was a fight the cruise lines were not wanting to give up on.   

You know, that guy isn’t speaking on behalf of Canadians; not even British Columbians.

[Roger88]

6 minutes ago, d9704011 said:

You know, that guy isn’t speaking on behalf of Canadians; not even British Columbians.

Lol, in any case no matter what happens in one country will be automatically be repeated in the other. Almost like one country (an empire kinda thing) 

[chengkp75]

10 minutes ago, AmazedByCruising said:

A discussion that was closed by agreeing to disagree, but now there is a proposed law that states exactly what I've said lawmakers can dictate. 

And, no, it does not.  It can only "carve out" specific ships, on specific routes, for specific time periods.  It cannot say "this applies to all "cruise ships" and not to other passenger vessels", and it cannot be an indefinite proposal.  Further, as I've said above, the requirement to "deem" foreign crew to have "left the US" may run afoul of other immigration statutes, especially since the people who have "left the US" have not been accepted as "entering Canada" regardless of what Congress "deems".  This may be a stumbling block for the survival of the bill.

[AmazedByCruising]

1 minute ago, chengkp75 said:

Probably because there is no "Established Cruise Ship Authority", and the law would need to set one up, with funding, etc, but even then, waivers are given to specific ships for specific routes for specific times, not to some nebulous "authority".

 

In my country new "Authorities" are set up all the time. Once the word authority meant that someone was generally accepted as a source of wisdom. Now they are separate clueless entities that act as if they are to decide on what's ok and what isn't. Times have changed.. 

Anyway, I don't see a problem setting up such an "authority". There are probably plenty public servants who are very willing to set up a Very Important Bureau that copy/pastes a list from CLIA, and while being paid for their wisdom also need to visit the ship for a week or so once in a while to make absolutely sure that the ship is, in fact, a cruise ship. 

[The-Inside-Cabin]

13 minutes ago, chengkp75 said:

And, again, you are looking at the PVSA as if cruise ships are the only passenger vessels involved.  The PVSA fleet employs hundreds of thousands of US citizens, and adds hundreds of millions of dollars to the US economy and US tax roles.

Are these coastal and interior ferry operators?  Like the Seattle Ferry system etc?   New York Ferry etc?   

I think it would be easy to rewrite the PVSA ro exempt traditional cruise ships while protecting these ferries.      You could create a PVSA to protect vessels only opertaing inside the USA territorial limits, or by passenger size etc.     

 

I support USA industry but the USA passenger industry (except ferries and a handful of riverboats) is sadly long gone.   If people really wanted to resurrect this they could support a law to prohibit the current foreign port exemption.    But no one really wants that.   (Most) Everyone is happy with the current fig leaf so why not rewrite the law to match reality.

[harkinmr]

1 hour ago, AmazedByCruising said:

 

In my country new "Authorities" are set up all the time. Once the word authority meant that someone was generally accepted as a source of wisdom. Now they are separate clueless entities that act as if they are to decide on what's ok and what isn't. Times have changed.. 

Anyway, I don't see a problem setting up such an "authority". There are probably plenty public servants who are very willing to set up a Very Important Bureau that copy/pastes a list from CLIA, and while being paid for their wisdom also need to visit the ship for a week or so once in a while to make absolutely sure that the ship is, in fact, a cruise ship. 

You are obviously not familiar with how government works in the US.  Things always seem "easy" from the outside...

[Host Jazzbeau]

Saying the PSVA can 'never' be changed in a certain way is basically the same thing as 'proving a negative.'  Laws are written by politicians, not engineers.  And history shows that if they want to pass something, politicians can find a way.  They aren't bound by the laws of physics, even when they claim to 'follow the science.'

[Lady Arwen]

28 minutes ago, Host Jazzbeau said:

Saying the PSVA can 'never' be changed in a certain way is basically the same thing as 'proving a negative.'  Laws are written by politicians, not engineers.  And history shows that if they want to pass something, politicians can find a way.  They aren't bound by the laws of physics, even when they claim to 'follow the science.'

I think The Chief’s advice and opinions regarding PVSA are far more reliable, accurate and believable than any politician’s.