Transport Committee on Oct. 28th, 2014

[Capt John Chomniak]

I'm sorry, but could you say the question again?

[David Yurdiga, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Which aspect of port operations poses the greatest risk to the safety of persons and/or property, and what legislation provisions govern the safety of Canada port authorities operations?

[Capt John Chomniak]

There are very few port operations within the country that realistically have any problems with any tour boat operators. Probably the biggest one, when you look at it, would be the Port of Toronto, with the reconstruction process of the entire port. Safety-wise the vessel operators know that it is their livelihood, and the safety of their vessel, their crew, and essentially the passengers is at the top of the list of everything they do every day.

A port has no issue.

[David Yurdiga, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

I'd like to address this question to Mr. Lewis-Manning. Can you provide the committee with some examples of how the leaders of shipping companies foster a strong safety culture among employees? I know that this was answered somewhat earlier, but for new employees coming on, and existing ones, and coming back and forth, what is the process?

[Robert Lewis-Manning]

Number one, there's close engagement from the CEO level down to the crew on a ship at every level at least annually. All the companies have what is basically called a “fleet week”, where they get together to discuss issues of safety. That starts right from the top.

There are companies that have reward competitions for new safety aspects. I'll give you a great example. One that came out of that type of culture was called the “draft information system”, DIS. It allows a ship to have a 3-D map of the St. Lawrence River through the seaway in real time. That's available to the master of the vessel on the bridge and also in the corporate office, so not only is it increasing the level of safety of the vessel, it's also effecting more efficiency in transportation in the loading of the vessel.

Those are the types of innovations that happen through that kind of corporate culture.

[David Yurdiga, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Thank you.

I have a second portion of the question. What measurable safety benefits, if any, have your members achieved in their operation since the introduction, either voluntary or by regulation, of safety management system principles in marine shipping?

[Robert Lewis-Manning]

I think the biggest measurable is the drastic decrease in marine accidents and incidents. I'm not sure if we have specific statistics here. I mentioned one in my presentation.

In looking at TSB statistics, we see an 18% decrease from 2008 to 2012. There are a lot of positive trends in the last decade that I think speak to the culture of the industry and also the regulatory environment of government.

[David Yurdiga, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

How much time do I have left, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

You have a little over a minute.

[David Yurdiga, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Thank you.

Transport Canada has delegated part of its statutory inspection and certification functions for domestic marine vessels. What are the respective roles of Transport Canada and the classification societies in terms of inspections and certification of Canadian domestic vessels?

[Robert Lewis-Manning]

Thank you.

I think you're asking me what is the role of Transport Canada in regulating the class societies—

[David Yurdiga, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Yes.

[Robert Lewis-Manning]

—to some degree, just to make the question more simplistic, they have to audit the class societies to ensure the class societies are doing their inspection regimes properly in accordance with the government's regulations. I would say that class societies and Transport Canada work hand in hand almost daily, because the class society is the customer of Transport Canada, not of the shipowner, for example.

What comes of that is a very experienced and knowledgeable inspection regime that I don't think Transport Canada could have on its own, because they would never have the capacity to do it as often and with as much expertise as the class societies, which not only are dealing with the Canadian domestic fleet but have experience globally, because most of them are global companies, so they bring a lot of expertise to the table. I know for a fact that Transport Canada and the class societies work closely in developing new regulations or amending current regulations, so I think they're getting good value for money and good advice from that expertise that is on the dock, shall we say, and working with shipowners every day.

You can imagine that in a domestic regime our ships are in port almost every day because they're not doing long transits, so that relationship with the regulator is much closer than you would find in ocean-going shipping, where you're transiting a week or two. It's a very different relationship that you find domestically than you would internationally.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you. That concludes this.

We're going to suspend for two or three minutes in order to get Mr. Nelson on. They need to hook up, so we'll just take two or three minutes and hope they can get him on.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

We'll call our meeting back to order.

Mr. Nelson, thank you very much for joining us. It's nice to have you here. With that I'll turn it over to you for ten minutes or so for your presentation.

[Capt Phillip Nelson, President, Council of Marine Carriers]

Thank you very much.

My intention this morning—or I guess it's afternoon for you folks in Ottawa—is to concentrate on the aspect of safety management systems in the marine mode.

Just by way of a short introduction, I am a master mariner. I sailed in sea on deep-sea vessels for about 17 years, mainly on tankers, bulk carriers, tugs, and ferries. Following that, I was with Transport Canada for about 16 years, both here on the west coast and in Ontario as the regional director of marine safety. For the past 11 years I've been the president of the Council of Marine Carriers here in Vancouver.

The Council of Marine Carriers is a shipowners association representing the tugboat industry on the west coast. Our vessels sail up and down the west coast of North America and into the Arctic. We have about 40 members, 30 of whom are shipowners. The remainder are affiliated members consisting of lawyers, insurance companies, and marine underwriters. The Council of Marine Carriers, as I said, is a shipowners representative, and as such we generally look after the welfare of the vessels, the companies, and the people who are manning their vessels.

I'll go back to safety management systems. The Council of Marine Carriers firmly believes that an effective safety management system is probably one of the most truly effective safety measures that a company can institute, providing the safety management system is applicable to the size and the operation of the vessel.

There is an international safety management system in existence. I'm sure you've probably heard most of this from your other witnesses this morning. I'm afraid I didn't hear their testimony, so you'll have to bear with me if I do repeat some of their information. The international safety management system, or ISM, was developed for use on large ocean-going vessels and has proven to be effective. However, for smaller vessels, implementing the full ISM can be cumbersome and almost impossible to institute at times, mainly because of the level of information that's required to be carried on board the vessel.

In 2009 the Council of Marine Carriers entered into a pilot project with Transport Canada for what we called at that time DSM. We changed the “international” to “domestic”, so it's the domestic safety management system.

We prepared the DSM pilot project with Transport Canada throughout 2008. In 2009 five of my member companies entered two vessels each into the pilot project. Of those companies, two had already implemented ISM—they were large companies with fairly large vessels; two had no safety management system whatsoever; and one had a fledgling system. The companies ranged in size from the largest, Seaspan Marine, one of the largest towboat companies in North America, through to a mom-and-pop operation on the west coast of Vancouver Island.

For the pilot project we developed a safety management system for each individual company. We tailored it to that company, so for a large vessel, an ocean-going ship, we boiled down the paperwork from probably seven or eight binders two inches thick each for the towboats to about one binder one inch thick with about 80 pages in total. The project ran for two years. In our opinion it was extremely successful.

Upon the conclusion, Transport Canada decided not to proceed with implementing such a system in our industry. It was our hope that it would be applied across the board, across Canada, to the domestic fleet.

However, a testament to the success of that, which by the way cost about $1 million total for the five companies to implement, is that we found that safety culture within those companies showed evidence of vast improvement. For instance, I was speaking to an employee of one of the companies, on the tug. This individual advised that he had resigned from the company prior to DSM being put into place. He went to the company about one year afterwards and he said it was like night and day. The safety culture and the approach of the company to safety and the whole operation of the vessel was completely different. He was sorry he wasn't around—

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Mr. Nelson, I'm sorry to interrupt you.

Ms. Morin, are you having trouble with translation?

[Isabelle Morin, NDP, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

I gather that the interpreters cannot provide us with the translation. There is too much interference.

[Capt Phillip Nelson]

I'll try to make it better by lifting the handset.

I just described the experience of one of the employees on board one of the vessels in the pilot project. Another company, North Arm Transportation, had a complete change in its approach to its safety culture. That is most significant for them, since they were one of the companies that had previously implemented ISM.

A third company advised me that, at the beginning of the project, it had been having a lot of small accidents on board its vessels. It was having warnings from its insurance companies and its underwriters that it might not be able to have insurance coverage in the future. It went from that to getting a discount on its insurance from its underwriter, two years later.

A testament to the project was that all five companies continue to this day[Inaudible—Editor] and enhance their safety management systems, even though there is no obligation by law for them to do so. They've all seen safety, efficiency, and financial gains as a result of that.

At the end of the project, we had a meeting with Transport Canada and discussed the project and the outcome with all the companies. We proposed at the end that all commercial vessels in Canada, regardless of size or area of operations, should have an appropriate safety management program in place.

I stress the word appropriate. It is no good trying to force the veritable round peg into a square hole. I think it's more like trying to get a round peg into a triangular hole, which is even more difficult. By that I mean trying to put in place, for instance, the international system and have that in place on a small, two-person towboat running on the west coast of Vancouver Island. It has to be an appropriate system that is tailored to the size of the company, the size of the vessel, and the operations of that vessel.

I'd like to point out that both the Canadian Transportation Safety Board and the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board fully support the establishment and the operation of safety management systems. They see them as critical safety measures.

Unfortunately Transport Canada chose not to require all commercial vessels to implement SMS but have moved to a three-tiered approach where SMS is voluntary for smaller vessels and not monitored by Transport Canada. I don't think having a voluntary system would be as effective as having one that is audited. We did propose to Transport Canada a small vessel compliance program based on our pilot project; however Transport Canada did not see fit to implement it. It put into place since then, though, an alternate service delivery program whereby classification societies perform both approval and inspection services on the government's behalf, and they're authorized by Transport Canada to do—

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Mr. Nelson, you're fading out on me. Is there something you're doing or not doing on your end? I'm just wondering what the issue is.

[Capt Phillip Nelson]

Is that a little better?

Transport Canada has brought into place the alternate service delivery program, and they also established what they call the blue decal program, which they intended to replace safety management systems for smaller vessels. The blue decal program is a voluntary self-reporting system that seems to have very little oversight or monitoring by Transport Canada.

In conclusion, then, I would like to stress again that the Council of Marine Carriers is a strong supporter of an audited safety management system approach, and one that is appropriate to the size of the vessel and the nature of the operations.

I'd like to thank you very much for the privilege of talking to you this morning. I'm ready to answer to any questions you may have.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Okay, thank you very much, Mr. Nelson.

We're going to continue with our questioning. You'll remember that there are two other witnesses with us here live, so not every question will be directed at you, although they could be. I'm just going to ask the members, any time that they ask you a question, to make sure that you understand it's for you.

With that we go to Ms. Morin for five minutes

[Isabelle Morin, NDP, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Given the interpretation problems we are dealing with here, could you tell me again what your recommendation about the size of vessels is?

[Capt Phillip Nelson]

Yes, of course.

Our recommendation was that all commercial vessels in Canada, regardless of size, should be required to implement a safety management system in the operation of those vessels.

[Isabelle Morin, NDP, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Thank you very much.

I am going to go back to Mr. Lewis-Manning now.

According to what you say, the reduction in accidents is clear. The statistics are encouraging and we are on the right course.

But I am wondering how we can include the environment around the vessel in the safety management system. Is the increasing number of vessels on the St. Lawrence, for example, going to have an impact on the number of marine accidents? How can we be sure that the number of vessels is included as a factor in the safety management system?