I haven't seen this covered in US media http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/23/us/canada-float-down-trnd/index.html Apparently roughly 1500 Americans take it upon themselves to float down the St. Clair River on the border. It seems that they have been doing this for several years and EVERY year they require rescuing because of the irresponsibility of the participants. Most of them are inebriated and use any basic thing that can float and most have no paddles or method of controlling the movement of their flotation device. The river is used a major transportation route for Great Lakes tankers as well.

Apparently they even brought coolers of beverages and floated down on wood picnic tables! Winds were consistently blowing at 10-15 knots and gusting up to 27 knots. That's sustained winds of about 20 km/h and gusts of 50 km/h. There is no way the would NOT have ended up in Canada as no self-propelled watercraft could combat those conditions. "The people who take part in this are not mariners," Garapick said. "They don't look at the wind, the weather and the waves. We knew from the get-go, the winds were going to cause a problem. There's no question they were involuntarily coming to Canada."

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/floatdown-sarnia-americans-wash-ashore-1.3730792
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/float-down-sarnia-cost-1.3732294

Because of the sheer number of floaters who ended up in Canada this year, the City of Sarnia is debating how to handle this issue in the future. Assuming Darwin doesn't take care of these idiots, my suggestion to the Mayor would be to stop being so Canadian "nice" and hold them until they pay the rescue costs. This isn't a one-time event, it happens every year and these jokers need to be responsible for their actions. The American authorities take no responsibility either - they should be policing their own citizens and preventing their inebriated behaviour. The last time I checked, drinking while operating a watercraft carried the same penalty as DUI.