The federal government’s surprise decision to close the only Canadian Coast Guard lifeboat station at Canada’s busiest port will put lives at risk, Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson said Friday.

Even with a state-of-the-art hovercraft station located 17 nautical miles away on Sea Island in Richmond, the closure of the Kitsilano station in False Creek is “a slap in the face” from Ottawa and doesn’t reflect the reality of Vancouver’s busy recreational boating community, he said.

“We are Canada’s busiest port and an extremely active recreational area that needs to be protected,” he said. “They [Ottawa] are abandoning ship on marine safety and lives are at risk. This is a major downloading to our police on the water because we can’t let people drown.”

Robertson’s comments come as the retired commander of the Kits base predicted lives will be lost “soon” if it is closed this fall.

“I have to think it is some mistake on a piece of paper in Ottawa because I just can’t believe this,” said Fred Moxey, who was stationed at Kitsilano for 28 of his 35 years in the Coast Guard. He retired as commander three years ago.

“We have a port that has 120,000 float plane landings a year, 1.3 million cruise ship passengers, 100,000 various watercraft in English Bay. Without a Coast Guard vessel there somebody is going to lose their life, and it will happen pretty soon.”

Moxey said the 13 staff at the Kitsilano station respond to an average of 350 calls a year, making it the busiest Coast Guard station in Canada. Combined with the Sea Island base, the two locations are responsible for the vast majority of life-saving rescues on the West Coast.

Many of those are incidents involving small watercraft and people who attempt to commit suicide by jumping off Metro Vancouver’s many bridges. Relocating the English Bay service to Sea Island makes no sense because it will take a hovercraft 35 minutes to make the trip to Vancouver’s West End beaches, rather than the two minutes from Kitsilano.

“If someone is drowning at Sunset Beach don’t they deserve a second chance?” Moxey asked.

The Harper government made the decision to axe the Kitsilano station earlier this year, but only revealed it to staff on Thursday as details of its March 29 budget began to trickle out. There was no public announcement or details in the March budget and it was left to the union representing Coast Guard employees to raise the alarm.

The planned closure was also severely criticized by the head of the Coast Guard’s local marine advisory committee for Vancouver, who said trust in the Coast Guard is being eroded.

“We save their bacon on numerous issues, but here again we’re in this sort of dictatorial Ottawa-knows-best mode whereby we hear about it on the radio or in the newspaper. They didn’t even give us the courtesy of a call,” said Roger Boshier, a University of B.C. professor emeritus who specializes in marine rescue research.

“It makes a mockery of the local consultation process and it erodes our trust in the local Coast Guard officials because we are not sure exactly where this decision has been made.”