Titan vs. landfill: painful tale of two search costs

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 26/06/2023 (843 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There was a striking moment during last week’s search for the submersible that, while travelling to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean to explore the wreck of the Titanic, tragically imploded and killed all five people aboard.

Asked about the rising costs to search for the Titan, an uncertified transport vehicle with millionaire tourists who knew the life-and-death risk they were undertaking, Minister of Fisheries, Oceans, and the Canadian Coast Guard Joyce Murray said price was “irrelevant” as long as there was a chance the five men could be found.

“I think there’s nothing that’s too much,” Murray said of the cost. “These are human beings and we need to do what we can to save them.”

No one debated that point, nor should. The cost of human life is incalculable.

Authorities are now trying to recover the craft’s wreckage. It is two miles deep, spread over a vast debris zone and projected to cost tens — if not hundreds — of millions of dollars.

It’s uncertain if insurance for OceanGate, the U.S. company who operated the doomed expedition, will cover any of the recovery but it’s unlikely.

As with the search, taxpayers will pay the majority of the costs.

In fact, OceanGate may simply go bankrupt. On the weekend, company executives told Forbes magazine they are “considering the company’s survival” and have closed their website.

Regardless of how taxpayers feel, the cost may be justifiable. It’s important to uncover what happened and learn from the tragedy and stop others from repeating it. We are, after all, talking about human beings.

What’s been made evident by this incident though is that some lives are clearly more valuable than others.

Just a few days before the search for the Titan, a boat with 750 refugees (mostly from Pakistan and Syria) was left to languish for days off the coast of Greece before finally sinking on June 14. Just over a hundred survivors have been recovered.

It’s not news that governments, media, and much of the world doesn’t care about poor and marginalized people escaping wars and persecution but it’s somewhat disturbing how much effort goes into saving reckless, joy-riding, millionaire men and their toys.

Which brings me here.

I’ve spent the last week reviewing the “Landfill Search Feasibility Study Committee” report on what it will take to search the Prairie Green Landfill for the remains of (at least) two slain Indigenous women.

According to researchers, a search for Morgan Harris and Marcedes Myran “could cost between $84 million and $184 million” and take “between 12 and 36 months.”

It’s a high price because the work isn’t easy. Authorities are now trying to decide if it’s worth it and who will pay.

There is, however, a part of the study called: “The cost of not doing a search.” It identifies “costs that cannot be quantified financially” like that not searching for the women “could send a message that disposing of victims in dumpsters is a good method for perpetrators and one that comes with impunity.”

The report also identifies the incredible costs to family members, to Indigenous peoples, and to Canadians believing kindness, justice and the rule of law exists in this country.

Simply put, it costs all of us when a society decides some lives are worth more than others.

Indigenous women, girls, and LGBTQ2S+ people are murdered and missing all the time in our society.

In some cases, authorities have no idea where to look so a search takes place. Once the budget for that search dries up — usually over a couple of weeks — the case gets put on the shelf.

It sure would be helpful for a minister to call the price for searches “irrelevant” then.

When authorities are informed precisely where missing Indigenous women, girls, and LGBTQ2S+ people are, usually by family members, the information is not believed, the work is deemed too difficult, or other expensive obstacles emerge.

Searches for Indigenous women, girls, and LGBTQ2S+ peoples always become full of words like “cost,” “quantifiability,” and “feasibility.”

We are, after all, not talking about human beings here, right?

When authorities know where the remains of Indigenous women, girls, and LGBTQ2S+ peoples are, it’s virtually the same. See the report.

I wonder if we would be talking in the same way if an exploded hobby craft and the bodies of a few millionaires were at the Prairie Green Landfill?

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I wonder if anyone would care about millions of dollars to search for them and to find out what happened so that such events are not repeated?

I wonder if politicians, police, and the public would care differently?

The fact two — or more — Indigenous women languish while a society decides if they are worth it probably answers these questions.

The problem, though, is that all of us are sinking while we wait for an answer.

niigaan.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca

Niigaan Sinclair
Columnist

Niigaan Sinclair is Anishinaabe and is a columnist at the Winnipeg Free Press.

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