Collection search - The Big Break

Record information – Brief

1

The Big Break

Item number (ISN):

363391

Series title:

The Fifth Estate

Hierarchical level:

Item (Accession level)

Item number (ISN):

363391

Type of material:

Moving images

Found in:

Archives / Film, Video and Sound

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Record information – Details

Fonds/collection:

CANADIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION, TELEVISION: VIA SATELLITE

Accession:

2005-0001

Media:

Video

Part:

1 of 1

Release date:

2005-02-23

Production company:

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

Description:

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This program is about what happens to large ocean-going ships when they are taken out of service. Every year, hundreds of hulking vessels around the world are retired by their owners and sold to metal scrappers on the beaches of developing countries. The business is called shipbreaking and it earns millions of dollars for ship owners, international brokers and the scrappers. The business poses risks to the workers and the environment. The workings of old ships contain a shopping list of hazardous wastes - including PCBs, asbestos, lead and oil. For the workers in developing nations the opportunity to work in the shipbreaking yard often means the only chance at survival. Countries where shipbreaking takes place become polluted. Last year, THE FIFTH ESTATE climbed aboard as two retired Canadian Great Lakes freighters - Canadian Trader and Canadian Venture - were towed out of the St. Lawrence River to be sold for scrap to the highest bidder. The program followed the story of the ships all the way to the beaches of Alang, India - the world's most notorious shipbreaking yard, where tens of thousands of poorly paid and poorly protected workers toil in some of the most hazardous working conditions anywhere. THE FIFTH ESTATE also followed the business closer to home - coming aboard when Ontario ship-breaker Wayne Elliott towed the old fore-body of the Great Laker Jean Parisien to his yard on Lake Erie to be scrapped. The program also visited Brownsville, Texas, the hub of U.S. shipbreaking, to meet the controversial father of the modern business in the U.S., Richard Jaross. For breakers like Elliott and Jaross, it is a tough business where higher worker and environmental standards mean they simply cannnot compete with places like Alang. However, on the James River in Virginia, dozens of old U.S. Navy ships sit rusting and leaking - a disaster waiting to happen, according to environmentalists. They are part of a larger so-called Ghost Fleet of aging decommissioned government ships in that country waiting to be scrapped. So far, Washington hasn't budgeted the hundreds of millions of dollars required to properly dismantle them all. Jim Puckett, an environmentalist, says there are many financial pressures to export the ships. The cost to dismantle the Ghost Fleet is estimated at 1.8 billion dollars, but it would cost 170 million if the ships were exported to India, Bangladesh or China. Environmentalists recently balked at the U.S. government's attempt to ship 13 Ghost Fleet ships overseas to England, launching a lawsuit to stop them. Other governments, environmental groups and ship owners are engaged in a high-stakes debate, jockeying to define whether a ship is waste, whether the Basel Convention on the trans-boundary movement of hazardous wastes apply to ships, and ultimately who should pay for the clean-up. Canada is a signatory to the Basel Convention, which means its environmental export laws apply to Canadian ships that are being towed to a foreign scrapyard. However, the Trader and Venture dropped the Canadian flag, so the environmental laws no longer applied. <1h>

Language:

English

Notes:

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1. Description is based on information from CBC website.

Detailed holdings information:

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Vault ISN:

979728

Format:

VIDEO

Location number:

V4 2005-02-0058

Number of items:

1

Kind of sound:

SOF

Made from:

VIA SATELLITE

Status:

MASTER
Ordering and viewing options

Conditions of access:

Open

Restrictions on consultation:

No Restrictions / Pas de restrictions

Reproduction access:

With written permissions / Avec les permissions écrites

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Date modified:: 2024-07-24