Coast Guard captain fired for ignoring a distress call loses labour board grievance
A Canadian Coast Guard captain accused of wilfully disregarding a distress call has lost his Federal Labour Relations Board grievance protesting his firing.
Lou Callaghan was captain of a Canadian Coast Guard vessel patrolling off the north shore of Prince Edward Island in May 2024 when a mussel boat ran aground in Malpeque Harbour and started taking on water in rough seas.
Another vessel tried to help and sent out a distress call.
Instead of providing assistance, Callaghan piloted his ship past Malpeque Harbour before calling the Marine Communications and Traffic Services Centre to ask whether he should help. After he was told that he should, he stopped and waited another five minutes to be told a second time. Then, by the time his ship arrived, the five occupants of the mussel boat had already been rescued by the local fire department.
Callaghan’s labour board grievance was about whether he should have been terminated for not responding to the distress call.
“(Callaghan) says that he committed no wrongdoing because Coast Guard vessels should wait to be tasked before responding to a distress call,” writes Christopher Rootham, Federal Public Sector Labour Relations and Employment Board adjudicator in his Jan. 30 decision .
“He is wrong; all captains have a legal duty to respond to a distress call on receiving that call, and the Coast Guard’s policies affirm this duty. Further… that belief would require him to take the absurd position (which he tried to do in his evidence) that a Coast Guard vessel should sail past a vessel that it sees is in distress solely because it has not been formally tasked to render assistance.”
Rootham notes that during cross-examination Callaghan was asked: “So if you see a ship in distress, you do not assist, but you wait to be tasked?”
He writes: “Mr. Callaghan doubled down on his theory, testifying, ‘I would make a call to them (marine communication) and make them aware of the situation and they probably would send me if I was in close proximity.’ In other words, he is saying that he would sail past a vessel in distress because he needs to call it in and be tasked before rendering assistance.”
The lack of credulity in this answer, writes Rootham, put him “in the difficult position of either believing that (Callaghan) has callous disregard for other mariners, or that he does not sincerely believe what he is saying but feels that he must maintain the position, no matter how absurd its results. I choose the later.”
There were two distress calls that morning, the first from the other fishing vessel on behalf of the mussel boat, and a second from the marine communications centre. Both were recorded and subsequently played during the labour board hearing.
“When Mr. Callaghan listened to the first MAYDAY call during the hearing,” writes Rootham, “he said that he did not recognize it, and he denied having heard it on May 13, 2024. All three other crew members testified that they heard the first MAYDAY call and that Mr. Callaghan did too. I accept their evidence.”
Crew members also testified that the deckhand asked Callaghan whether they were going to respond to the distress call and he said no, adding that the water in Malpeque Harbour is shallow. Callaghan denied saying this.
Callaghan also seems to have been confused about how far his ship was from the distressed boat, writes Rootham. He mistakenly thought that he was 27 nautical miles away, when his coordinates stipulate that he was only 9.3 nautical miles away.
Then at the entrance to Malpeque Bay, Callaghan asked the deckhand to take the wheel, which the crew members inferred meant Callaghan was not comfortable piloting the ship in Malpeque Bay.
The Coast Guard suspended Callaghan and held a disciplinary hearing into the incident in June 2024, then terminated him in early July.
Ultimately, Rootham found just cause to discipline Callaghan, and that his termination was justified. Looking to the Canada Shipping Act, which governs this type of situation, Rootham wrote that “the captain of a ship in Canadian waters is under a legal duty to respond to distress calls.”
Most important, he adds, the testimonies of every witness except Callaghan supported the conclusion that the captain of a Coast Guard vessel does not need to be tasked to respond to a distress call. Callaghan’s refusal to acknowledge he should do things differently and his lack of sincerity at the hearing, wrote Rootham, outweighed Callaghan’s 18-years of “otherwise distinguished service.”
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