Do you mean the amendments in general for marine liability? The implications are that it would be a good thing and they would harmonize.
Shipping is a very international business, and the pollution parts of the bill.... The supplementary fund has an international focus and it would basically give Canada more money in the event of a spill if a convention ship or a tanker was involved. Given that international ships visit our shores on a regular basis, that's a good thing. Thankfully, in the 30 to 40 years that we've had environmental protection legislation in this country, we haven't had a big spill. The Canada Shipping Act talks of a 10,000-tonne response capability. We've never had a 10,000-tonne spill in this country. The Nestucca spill on the west coast back in the late eighties was an 800-tonne spill. The biggest spill, I think, was a 7,000-tonne spill when the Kurdistan broke its back in the Cabot Strait in the gulf in the late seventies. So we've never had a catastrophic spill here and, touch wood, we never will.
But to be party to the supplementary fund convention.... We're already party to the civil liability convention, the fund convention, the limitation liability for maritime claims convention, Athens--conventions that this bill embraces. The fact that we're harmonizing with the other shipping nations around the world is a good thing.
Maritime liens, as we heard on Tuesday, are a North American fix. They're slightly out of step with the international community with the maritime liens, and the proposal is to give Canadian ship suppliers the same footing as American ship suppliers in situations where priorities become important. I think that is to some degree a North American problem for us in that ships have been known to choose Canada as the place to go bankrupt because of our priorities order. The port of Vancouver was popular for a while there for a certain number of companies that would declare bankruptcy--priority hearings--and the difficult thing for Canadian suppliers is that they would always be at a disadvantage if an American supplier had a claim too.
I used to defend American suppliers when I lived in Vancouver, and it was always a lot better than if you were defending a Canadian supplier because you were guaranteed payment. That always struck me--other than the fact that I was getting paid--as being somewhat unfair to the Canadian, because it was his turf that we were arguing on and the American was getting the benefit of it.
So the proposal by the Canadian suppliers is to create some form of parity. I think that is a good thing, but as I said, if you are giving someone a privilege--and I believe you are by bumping them up the line--you have to put a few safeguards in place too. Charters cannot or should not be able to bind owners and have ships carry that lien around. That is a safeguard that is in the U.S. legislation and it's missing from ours, and I think ours needs to be tightened up as a result.
Is it a good thing to give Canadian ship suppliers a priority ranking? I believe it is. You should look after your own.