Evidence of meeting #10 for Natural Resources in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was workers.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:45 p.m.
Atlantic Director, Unifor
I think that's very helpful as long as we're increasing the standard. We have to be very careful about that because sometimes that's not always the case. The substitution, as long as that means things are being boosted, I would agree, can be quite effective.
4:45 p.m.
Conservative
4:45 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, The Maritimes Energy Association
The conditions that are applied to authorizations offshore are able to reflect best practices and lessons learned, and it has been an effective way that the regulators have been using in order to move forward with what has been learned in the industry over the past 20 years.
4:45 p.m.
Conservative
4:45 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Leon Benoit
Thank you, Mr. Allen.
We go now to Mr. Cleary, for up to five minutes.
December 9th, 2013 / 4:45 p.m.
NDP
Ryan Cleary NDP St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the witnesses.
My questions are for Ms. Payne.
Ms. Payne, Justice Robert Wells appeared before this committee last week. One of the questions I asked him was whether or not the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board or the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board could be in a potential conflict of interest, because they are responsible for overseeing the environment, industry regulation, and health and safety. His exact response was, “It could.”
You also mentioned in your presentation a potential conflict. I want you to comment on that. Also I have a part (b) to this question.
In recommendation 29 from Justice Wells' report, part (a) is very well known in terms of an independent offshore safety regulator, but there's also part (b). Part (b) talks about the creation of “a separate and autonomous Safety Division of C-NLOPB, with a separate budget, separate leadership, and an organizational structure designed to deal only with safety matters.”
Are you satisfied that (a) or (b) has been followed through?
4:45 p.m.
Atlantic Director, Unifor
No, (b) would be better than nothing, but (a) should be the standard we're trying to reach.
If you look at even the C-NLOPB's organizational chart as it still stands on their website, it's very clear that the safety officer is under the CEO. I'll use an example of why I think this is problematic. In the annual report following the crash in 2009 the message of the then CEO of the offshore oil regulator—this is after we had this horrific loss of life—in that report was about how well industry was doing, that it was a banner year economically in Newfoundland and Labrador. It was also a year in which people died in a crash and yet that was secondary in his message in this annual report.
I think that says it all about when you have production, and economic decisions, and safety under the same roof with the same people making the same decisions. I firmly believe, as in Australia, the U.K., and Norway, that these must be separated.
This is a very long discussion that we've been having since Justice Cullen's report, and yet in Canada we still have not done this.
4:45 p.m.
NDP
Ryan Cleary NDP St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL
I have another question, Ms. Payne. You mentioned the July 2011 incident and how the severity of that incident wasn't reported for two years. The helicopter went down and it came within 38 feet of crashing into the water. I believe it fell 152 metres in 32 seconds. What would have been different if that incident happened at night? This has to do with the debate about night flights.
4:45 p.m.
Atlantic Director, Unifor
There are two things with that, and I think this also speaks to why we still have challenges with the regulator. Neither the regulator nor the oil operators expressed the severity of this incident. It was a couple of words when it happened. It didn't seem like it was a big deal. They felt they had done their job by reporting it to the TSB, and yet we had just finished a commission of inquiry that said we must be improving communications at all levels, and that still had not occurred.
I'm sorry, what was the rest of that question? Yes, the issue of night flights.
At the same time this was happening, we had a helicopter safety committee looking at recommendation 12, which is the mandate that was given to this safety committee, which was not exactly what Commissioner Wells intended in his report. We are now having a debate in our province about whether or not we should be returning to night flights. We are opposed to them. We think they are riskier. We don't think that enough improvements have been made and we're still dealing with the helicopter—
4:50 p.m.
NDP
Ryan Cleary NDP St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL
Ms. Payne, I'm sorry to interrupt, but again, if that July 2011 incident had happened in the dark, would it have been a different outcome?
4:50 p.m.
Atlantic Director, Unifor
It would have hit the water, because they wouldn't have been able to see. The only reason the pilot was able to self-correct was that within just feet of hitting the ocean, suddenly they came out of the fog and he could see that they were 30 feet from the ocean. At night that would not have occurred.
4:50 p.m.
NDP
Ryan Cleary NDP St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL
When Justice Robert Wells was giving testimony last week, he outlined all the different improvements in the health and safety and equipment aboard these helicopters. Have advancements been made in the helicopters and in the health and safety equipment aboard these helicopters to make a difference between day flights and night flights, though, since then?
4:50 p.m.
Atlantic Director, Unifor
We still only have a helicopter that has an 11-minute run-dry capability. To this point of how much you don't need regulation because people should be doing things on their own, we were for 10 years trying to get underwater breathing apparatuses for the workers. That was not done until 17 people lost their lives. It seems to me it ends up being this disaster-driven situation where people have to die before things are taken seriously.
There have been improvements in the offshore. How could there not have been with the focus and attention that we have had on offshore safety? Are we where we need to be? Absolutely not.
4:50 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Leon Benoit
Thank you, Mr. Cleary.
We have Mr. Leef, followed by Ms. Duncan, and Mr. Zimmer, with five minutes each.
Go ahead, please, Mr. Leef.
4:50 p.m.
Conservative
Ryan Leef Conservative Yukon, YT
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to all our witnesses. We've heard some great testimony from a lot of witnesses on this piece of legislation.
We're talking about the worker safety aspect. The Atlantic is far away from where I come from, being the member of Parliament for Yukon. I appreciate that much like the Canadian north and the Canadian Arctic, there are a lot of unique challenges in the Atlantic region which would be very different, but nonetheless unique to the region and create some challenges.
We talk about industry involvement and then government legislation and our ability to legislate changes. We keep moving back and forth between legislators asking questions and witnesses testifying about how far we should go with something before it either becomes too prescriptive or not predictive enough of the challenges that exist in a particular region in Canada. Then there is, of course, where we're going with technology.
I will give an example, although it does not compare necessarily to Atlantic Canada. I was up in Raglan mine this year and saw a wonderful piece of highly innovative equipment that is meant to protect workers from exploding tires, those great big truck tires. There is this amazing piece of technology to put the truck tires in which is shockproof so that if the tire does explode, the explosion is contained. This is only possible because technology is at the point where we can actually do something like that.
Justice Wells did talk a little bit about some of his recommendations and where technology has gone since that point, around FLIR, forward looking infrared radar, auto-hover capability, and 15- to 20-minute wheel-up times. He described it as the package of goodies that pilots now have.
Maybe I'll just get each of you to give a quick comment about what we do as legislators to make sure that we're putting on the books something sufficient enough to deal with current day issues but which is still flexible enough to deal with changing times. This would be in terms of innovation and in terms of the unique challenges faced in this particular region as it relates to Atlantic Canada.
I'll start with you, Ms. Payne, and then we'll move to Ms. Dodd, and Ms. Pike after.
4:55 p.m.
Atlantic Director, Unifor
That is an excellent question, if I do say so myself. I actually think we might look at a possibility of doing a review of regulations or getting people together on a regular basis to look at things and maybe come up with best practices.
In other areas where we might be facing the same sort of thing, we've had cases where legislation is reviewed on a regular basis. That's a good thing, especially when you're dealing with health and safety or with an industry like the offshore oil and gas one where technology is virtually changing daily. Five years ago, we wouldn't have been drilling 500 kilometres offshore, and we're doing that today. In order to have a proper safety regime to address that, as opposed to drilling in a basin where it's not as deep, you need the ability to come up with rules around that, for sure.
4:55 p.m.
Assistant Professor of Humanities and Author, University of King's College, Nova Scotia, As an Individual
I'm just thinking that the ideal situation would be to have a stand-alone safety agency that is brilliantly resourced and has both the power to police and the ability to constantly consult with industry. There is no keeping up with industry. The technological developments are always going to be ahead of the regulators, and the best way to deal with that is to try to integrate all of the stakeholders in an ongoing conversation somehow about noble practices, which are practices that are as good as they can be and that inculcate a kind of pride in safe production.
I don't think it will work if you just start with a conflict approach and think you can police these organizations. I don't think our political situation is such that we would be willing to invest as much as we would need to invest to make it work.
4:55 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, The Maritimes Energy Association
Regulatory review is definitely advantageous as well as having rules and regulations which are not so descriptive that they limit the regulator from enforcing and adapting to latest practices, latest technologies, and lessons learned.
One thing to remember as we look at our offshore regulatory regime versus that of the U.K., Norway or Australia is that they have only one federal regulator for their offshore. In Canada, we have the NEB, the C-NLOPB, and the CNSOPB, with the possibility of the CNBOPB, and the Quebec....
That makes changes to regulations a lot easier. I think a regular review, and making sure that you don't make those regulations so tightly defined that it doesn't give the regulator the ability to actually regulate....
4:55 p.m.
Conservative
4:55 p.m.
NDP
Linda Duncan NDP Edmonton Strathcona, AB
We've had a fair bit of testimony on this, and I just want to commend all three of you. I'm finding your testimony invaluable. I really appreciate it. In many ways, it's unfortunate that we couldn't have heard your testimony before the legislation was tabled.
On that theme, following up on my colleague's comments across the way, most federal environmental legislation now includes a provision that calls for a five-year review. That's being implemented because, like occupational health and safety, environment evolves over time with R and D. It puts pressure on the regulator to monitor whether things are effective. Generally speaking, they've been open reviews so that all interested parties can participate.
Presuming that all the parties to this legislation would be supportive, would the three of you support an amendment to this bill to require that the government have a five-year review and that there be a report to Parliament, a review that would engage all interested parties?
5 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, The Maritimes Energy Association
It's difficult to say.
Saying that we're going to go five years is limiting. What happens if a year from now something really big happens, some innovation in the industry that we want adapted immediately? I guess I'd have to take a look at it.
