I have an SMS on board my vessels.
We were made aware of a template that was being used in Australia, so we basically looked at that template and worked on it to apply it to our own operation on our vessels here in Ottawa. But prior to an SMS or even hearing about an SMS, we had something called “standing orders”, and it was very, very similar. Each and every operator had their own standing orders for their vessel, for their crew.
We comply with the regulation. We are required to run drills biweekly: fire drills, man overboard drills, evacuations. This all has to be recorded and entered in logbooks.
I found that the SMS that we had adopted from Australia, which was an accepted SMS for smaller domestic fleet operators like us, was pretty good, but it was basically putting everything we had already been doing into yet another package, another folder. There was a lot of duplication.
I represent the oldest family owned and operated tour boat company in Canada. We've been at it for a long time. We've evolved as we've had to in the different markets, and it's yet another piece of paperwork, another requirement, that was already in place and just given a different name. We still have our standing orders.