Transport committee  In our current system, every ship above 24 metres must enrol with the classification society and be inspected by them. There are certain provisions. If a ship is too old, let's say, and was not built according to their rules, the ships can opt out or apply to us and ask not to en

Transport committee  We do.

Transport committee  Very briefly, a system that's fully audited and certified for every ship in Canada is difficult to implement at best, for the industry and for Transport as well, in terms of the resources that would be required to do that, without necessarily attaining the objectives so that they

Transport committee  Yes, I fully agree—

Transport committee  The system we've had in place since the early 1990s has served Canada quite well. That was following the Brander-Smith report that was published back in the late 1980s, and the regime was implemented in the early 1990s. The capacity that was identified at the time was 10,000 ton

Transport committee  Well, I could certainly answer, not with the precise numbers, but if we compare the traffic of tankers, for example, on the west coast and what's going on in the St. Lawrence River today in Canada, they're quite different. If we compare it with that in the rest of the world, in p

Transport committee  If you are talking about the Strait of Malacca having 17,000 tankers going through, that's a lot. At Bosporus you are talking about, if my memory serves me right, maybe 1,200 tankers a month.

Transport committee  Port Metro Vancouver right now is at 60 a year.

Transport committee  Yes.

Transport committee  That requirement exists as we speak today, sir.

Transport committee  No; not coming into Canada.

Transport committee  We have a number of measures. One that administration would use is fining a company. We normally call them administrative monetary penalties, or there's suspension of certificates. There's quite an array of measures we can take for enforcement purposes.

Transport committee  The classification societies are delegated by the minister to conduct inspections, and so on. They will deliver certificates to ships on behalf of the Minister of Transport. In conducting their inspection and work, if they determine they cannot deliver a certificate, then the cer

Transport committee  We're proposing a three-tier approach. Tier one is with ships or companies that are pursuant to the SOLAS Convention. They are currently subject to the safety management regulations. Those are ships that will conduct international voyages. Tier two is with vessels that are not s

Transport committee  We have created templates, checklists, and manuals for companies to help them implement SMS. Part of the scheme would be that when we inspect vessels, our inspectors could go on board and ask to see their SMS.