Bill C-9 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act, 1992

This enactment amends the Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act, 1992, in order to enhance public safety — the safety of human life and health and of property and the environment.
The main amendments fall into two categories: new security requirements and safety amendments. These amendments include the following:
(a) requirements for security plans and security training;
(b) a requirement that prescribed persons must hold transportation security clearances to transport dangerous goods, and the establishment of regulatory authority in relation to appeals and reviews of any decision in respect of those clearances;
(c) the creation of a choice of instruments — regulations, security measures and interim orders — to govern security in relation to dangerous goods;
(d) the use of industry emergency response assistance plans approved by Transport Canada to respond to an actual or apprehended release of dangerous goods during their transportation;
(e) the establishment of regulatory authority to require that dangerous goods be tracked during transport or reported if lost or stolen;
(f) clarification of the Act to ensure that it is applicable uniformly throughout Canada, including to local works and undertakings;
(g) reinforcement and strengthening of the Emergency Response Assistance Plan Program; and
(h) authority for inspectors to inspect any place in which standardized means of containment are being manufactured, repaired or tested.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Okay.

Are the restrictions in Bill C-9 comparable with the approach that your peers work under in other countries? You were saying before that you had to go to a U.S.-type model. Are these pretty well comparable now?

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Did the government adequately consult with you when they brought in the design of Bill C-9?

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I would like to welcome and thank all the panel members who have come out to make these presentations.

My very first question to all of you is, were your organizations adequately consulted by the government in the design of Bill C-9?

I'll start with the teamsters.

[Barrie Montague, Senior Policy Advisor, Canadian Trucking Alliance]

Good afternoon. Thank you for the invitation to appear before the committee today.

My name is Barrie Montague, and I'm responsible for matters relating to the transportation of dangerous goods at the Canadian Trucking Alliance. With me is Ron Lennox, the CTA vice-president who has worked on security files at the alliance for a number of years.

At the outset I should tell you that the Canadian Trucking Alliance is a federation of Canada's provincial trucking associations. We have offices in Ottawa, Vancouver, Calgary, Regina, Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal, and Moncton. The CTA represents the industry's viewpoint on national and international policy and regulatory and legislative issues that affect trucking. We represent a broad cross-section of the industry--some 4,500 carriers, owner-operators, and industry suppliers--and our industry employs about 150,000 Canadians.

The trucking industry is very much involved in the movement of dangerous goods, both within Canada and across the border. The majority of individual shipments of dangerous goods are moved by road, although more dangerous goods by weight are moved by the other modes--rail and pipeline. The transportation industry is ultimately responsible for ensuring that before any dangerous goods are shipped they are being shipped in accordance with the regulations.

The CTA understands that the existing Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act was written before the events of 9/11. It does not give Transport Canada the powers it feels it needs to be able to properly address the potential threats associated with the movement of dangerous goods.

From our perspective, some of the proposed amendments can be regarded as technical in providing clarification to the existing act, most of which will not directly affect the carriers--for example, clarifying the definition of an importer of dangerous goods, enabling an inspector to inspect any place where means of containment are being manufactured, allowing the emergency response assistance plan to respond to a terrorist threat, and ensuring that there is uniform application throughout Canada of the dangerous goods regulations. There have been instances where the application of the federal law has been questioned in some provinces.

However, there are two specific amendments that will have a direct impact on motor carriers: the need for transportation security clearances, as outlined in proposed section 5.2; and the requirements for security plans and security training as outlined in proposed section 7.3. The CTA is also interested in the regulation-making powers found in proposed section 27 to require the tracking of dangerous goods during transport.

While CTA supports security measures, particularly with respect to transporting dangerous goods, our overriding message is that the regulations in all three areas outlined above must not create further duplication, overlap, and cost for motor carriers that are already complying with security regulations adopted by various departments and agencies in both Canada and the U.S.

Let's first look at the security clearances. Somewhere in the order of 70,000 Canadian truck drivers have already been security screened under the free and secure trade program or, as it's commonly called, FAST. Others who are required to access secure areas within Canadian ports have undergone a Transport Canada-administered transportation security clearance. Canadian drivers who operate at U.S. ports are also required to obtain something called a transportation worker's identity credential, or TWIC. While we are not opposed in principle to background checks for drivers moving dangerous goods, at least those for which an emergency response assistance plan is required, we would strongly caution against the establishment of a separate and costly new process. Although 70,000 Canadian truckers have already obtained security clearance, there are many more who will now require such clearance, many of whom may be in remote parts of the country. It is, therefore, important that whatever clearance system is finally adopted, it must be readily accessible to all Canadians, not just those living near large communities or near the border.

In terms of introducing additional requirements for security plans and training, the information we require needs to be clearly laid out so there is no confusion as to what information carriers need to provide government. We've had experiences of it not being clear with the U.S. situation, with what is required in their regulation. The CTA is also mindful that security plans and training are already required under Canada's partners in protection program and the customs trade partnership against terrorism, commonly known as C-TPAT, in the U.S.

The U.S. is currently proposing to amend its regulations so that not all movement of dangerous goods will require a carrier to have a security plan. The CTA encourages Transport Canada to harmonize its requirements with those of the U.S. and to accept those plans that have already been approved under C-TPAT. New requirements are also coming out of Transport Canada's security plans and training for carriers moving cargo that will be subsequently loaded onto passenger aircraft.

Again, CTA does not dispute the importance of advance security, but we do challenge the notion that the country will somehow be more secure if a carrier has two or three, or maybe even four, security plans instead of just one and that a driver needs to be trained multiple times depending on what particular commodity he's hauling or where he's going.

An amendment proposed in Bill C-9 contains another proposal that could have serious implication for carriers. The amendment allows for the introduction of regulations requiring that dangerous goods be tracked during transportation. Again, this was similar to a proposal that had been put forward in the U.S. many years ago and had been demonstrated to be completely unworkable, particularly if applied to the movement of all dangerous goods.

The regulations already contained in the TDG Act require that certain dangerous goods, when shipped in specific quantities, have to be accompanied by an emergency response assistance plan. CTA would recommend that any tracking requirements put forward should apply only to shipments that already require such a plan, in order to ensure that only the most vulnerable or potentially harmful shipments are tracked. We would also suggest that regulations not be prescriptive with respect to any technology that's developed. It should be left to the carriers to determine what works best for them from an operational standpoint.

We appreciate the opportunity to appear before the committee today and would be pleased to respond to any questions you may have.

[Louis Laferriere, Director, Technical Affairs, Canadian Chemical Producers' Association]

I'd like to talk about who the CCPA is, our Responsible Care program, and why we support the proposed amendments.

CCPA represents over 50 chemical and resin manufacturing companies in Canada, as well as nine Responsible Care partners, with $26 billion in revenues. Three-quarters of our production is shipped to the United States or offshore markets; therefore we need to rely upon safe and efficient transportation to get to those markets.

Since 1985, CCPA has made it a condition of membership that all members sign on to what is called Responsible Care. Responsible Care is our commitment to sustain ability for improved health, safety, environmental performance, and social responsibility. There's an ethic with six codes that apply against the total life cycle of chemical management. All of our companies and partners are verified against these codes by external parties.

Of particular interest is the transportation code of practice, where we ask all of our members to select the safest mode--road, rail, air, or marine--routes, and carriers; to have immediate emergency response capability; to ensure the security of their shipments; and to inform and train communities along those transportation corridors.

What's our legacy with the transportation of dangerous goods? In 1970 the CCPA established a national emergency telephone system that eventually led to the creation of CANUTEC, established by Transport Canada in 1982. In 1983, our second iteration of this program established an on-scene response program across Canada. This supported the then-developing ERAP concept under the TDG Act and regulations. In fact, CCPA's TEAP program was the first one ERP-approved in 1990. We are now going through our third iteration, based upon what we know and see in the future for transportation of dangerous goods regulations and other commodities.

All of our members belong to this. We require that we have 24-hour, seven-day-a-week technical advisers to attend incident scenes. We now cover not only dangerous goods but non-dangerous goods and environmentally sensitive materials. We assess and register all of our responders. We track on-scene performance, and we have cohorts in this endeavour. The Canadian Association of Chemical Distributors and the Railway Association of Canada are fully on board with us.

Why do we support Bill C-9? A few years back, the collective industry formally asked Transport Canada to have made-in-Canada TDG security legislation, as otherwise we were forced to follow the U.S.A. requirements. There was a letter sent from the TDG advisory council to the Minister of Transport at the time, requesting action in this regard. I've left copies of this letter with the clerk.

Transport Canada wanted to act, and we had no objection to using the ERAPs for security purposes, but unfortunately for industry we found out that security was not covered in the then TDG Act, and amendments would be required. We understood that and fully participated in all consultations. When the act was finally released for proposed amendments last May, we were relieved to see it, but then we were disappointed when Parliament prorogued for the election.

It's now back, and we fully support it because it provides Canadian-based security legislation and clarifies that the TDG Act and regulations are a federal government mandate. It provides the requested protection we need when we're directed to respond to a CBRN or TDG security-type incident, because currently our insurance policies do not cover acts of terrorism, war, or anything else. We would be left on our own, which is a pretty scary thought for some of our people, when we want to do the good and right thing.

We will be looking at this in the future with other trade associations.

I thank you for your time.

[Phil Benson, Lobbyist, Teamsters Canada]

The bill deals broadly with two key areas, security and safety. Issues surrounding security have a wider context than would have been found several years ago. Canada has international responsibilities that demand that rigorous standards be established and met. Dealing with the requirements of our neighbour and largest trading partner, the United States, compounds the complexity of security requirements.

As a trading nation, we have no other option but to ensure that our transportation security is robust and accepted by our trading partners. As Canadians, we must also ensure that workers requiring security clearances are treated fairly and with sensitivity and that the regulatory framework respects that.

As for our charter rights and our collective bargaining and labour standards, we must also ensure that security clearances are universally applied with the same standards for all workers requiring security clearances. Teamsters Canada has fought for these principles for the past seven years. It has been a difficult fight, but we are starting to see light at the end of the tunnel.

Currently there are four main security clearance systems, either in place or proposed. The air model contains similar provisions to those contained in Bill C-9, without the express right of appeal if a clearance is rejected. The marine model is similar to that proposed in Bill C-9, though there have been concerns raised about that particular system as well. The air cargo security model leaves it to employers, and it is simply not robust enough for our trading partners and, in our opinion, violates charter and collective bargaining rights.

The free and secure trade card, better known as the FAST card, is part of a program designed to expedite handling of shipments between Canada and the United States. The FAST card leaves the security of Canadians in the hands of a foreign country and provides no appeal procedure; both factors violate Canadian charter and collective bargaining rights. For years the pretence was that it was voluntary, a similar claim to that of the air cargo security model. It is not voluntary if you lose your job for not complying. Forced consent is no consent.

The United States, however, recently demanded security clearance for truckers carrying dangerous goods—and the FAST card is the stop-gap. The FAST card is no longer voluntary. It appears that the government understands this issue and is dealing with it.

Bill C-9 deals with security clearance in a consistent manner and is consistent with Teamsters Canada's stated principles. It is our understanding that the transport security clearance will eventually be the model for all modes, that is, for all workers who require clearances.

We wish we could turn back the page of time to when such clearances were rarely needed. Given the harsh realities of our times, the best option is to have transport security clearances undertaken with sensitivity, and mindful of privacy rights, by a government agency with full review. If they do not fulfill that obligation, we are certain that redress will be swift by government and this House.

Safety is the main concern of Bill C-9, with the aim of avoiding problems and dealing with them when they occur. Teamsters Canada views this as both a public interest issue and one of the health and safety of workers. Truckers, locomotive engineers, maintenance of way employees, and warehouse workers are the first people impacted by the release of dangerous goods. They are the first responders.

Safety plans are meaningless without training. Response plans are meaningless without tracking of dangerous goods and planning for the inevitable accidents. Legislation and regulation are meaningless if they're not uniform in nature and are not enforced. Bill C-9 contains provisions that, if properly implemented, will make these amendments to the bill far from meaningless.

Teamsters Canada is also optimistic that we're finally turning the page on the so-called smart regulations built upon risk management, safety management, and the principle that government does not have to regulate or inspect because we can trust companies to do it right. The best example we found that shows where it has taken us is Mr. Greenspan's testimony before a Senate committee looking into the banking collapse in the U.S., where Mr. Greenspan pointed to his trust in robust risk management but did not fully account for the greed factor—oops.

The government has moved swiftly on the rail safety review. We recognize its willingness to place Teamsters Canada and other unions front and centre in the railway advisory council. Its commitment to rail safety was further evidenced by the action taken in the budget.

We hope that the government will deal with the issues and ongoing problems that have affected CN and CP for a great number of years, which could affect how first responders, locomotive engineers, and maintenance of way workers deal with railway derailments. Our railway running trade members continue to complain about inaccurate train documentation related to the number of cars in their trains. Our members inform us that trains are still leaving terminals with missing or extra cars compared with those listed in the train journal, which is basically the train manifest. This could lead to a number of problems, the worst being a dangerous car leaking at a derailment site and train employees and emergency first responders not being aware of the existence of dangerous goods in a car.

Transport Canada is aware of this and could expand on this problem before the committee.

The government also ensured that there were provisions in the amendments to the Aeronautics Act--which the previous Parliament dealt with before the House--that responsibility for the safety of the sector rested with this government and Parliament.

Teamsters Canada suggests one amendment to the bill. It is the inclusion of a provision in the proposed amendments to the Aeronautics Act, which the transport committee dealt with last year, to allow this committee and the standing committee in the other House to review regulations made under the Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act. The final responsibility for the safety and security of the public and workers rests not with companies, industry, regulatory agencies, advisory councils, or bureaucrats; it rests with the government and our elected officials.

Thank you very much. We appreciate any questions you may ask us.

[Stéphane Lacroix, Director of Communications, Teamsters Canada]

Good afternoon. I am Stéphane Lacroix. I am the Director of Communications for Teamsters Canada.

Teamsters Canada is a labour organization with more than 125,000 members. It is affiliated with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which has 1,400,000 members across North America. We represent workers in most sectors of the economy: Transport (air, trucking, rail and shipping), retail, motion pictures, brewery and soft drinks, construction, dairy, graphic communications, warehousing and more.

As Canada's leading transportation union, Teamsters Canada participates in reviews and consultations, and the resulting legislation and regulatory proposals that result from those consultations. Teamsters Canada also participates in regulatory agency activities concerning transportation issues.

Teamsters Canada participated in the review process for Bill C-9. Teamsters Canada is also an observer to the Advisory Council to the Minister of Transportation on the Transportation of Dangerous Goods.

The advisory council is a collegial body where groups with many different viewpoints work together towards improving the safety and security of the transportation of dangerous goods.

Bill C-9 is the result of many hours of work by Transport Canada and the stakeholders in the industry.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities, meeting number four. Pursuant to the order of reference of Friday, February 13, 2009, we are continuing our consideration of Bill C-9, An Act to amend the Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act, 1992.

Joining us today to make presentations and to take questions from the committee, from Teamsters Canada, we have Mr. Phil Benson, lobbyist; and Stéphane Lacroix, director of communications. From the Canadian Chemical Producers' Association, we have Louis Laferriere, director, technical affairs. And from the Canadian Trucking Alliance, we have Ron Lennox, vice-president, trade and security; and Barrie Montague, senior policy adviser.

We welcome you today and we appreciate your making the effort to be here and help us make good laws for Canadians.

I think we're prepared to go. Mr. Benson, if you are ready, I would ask you to start.

Marine Liability Act

[Joe Volpe, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to join in this debate today.

On behalf of my party, the official opposition, we will be taking a very close look at Bill C-7 because we think it has some valuable elements that need to be studied in greater detail in committee.

Before I carry on with my debate, I want to note that the parliamentary secretary is always irrepressible in his desire to make mountains out of molehills, even if molehills are important for the moles that inhabit them and for the people who rely on them, but he will make a great deal out of very little. Bill C-7, although very important, has given him a launching pad to talk about the economy and the environment even though it has very little to do with both.

He is right about the fact that the act may be inadequate, especially as it pertains to those issues which he outlined. This is, after all, a correction of and an adjustment to those issues that relate to liability under the marine act. For those who are unfamiliar with the terms, it has to do with who has to pay in the event of a transgression that Canadians would find absolutely unacceptable, whether they find it unacceptable on the personal liability side, or whether they find it unacceptable on the side of damage to the environment, to the geography, to those assets that Canadians have come to view as part of their standard of living and quality of life.

The parliamentary secretary is right. The bill is about that, but it is only about that. It is an important issue, and as I said, we will study it in detail in committee.

I want to outline for the House that the bill says that those who pollute will have the responsibility for the pollution itself and therefore, will suffer the liabilities in court because that is what we are going to do. We are going to harmonize our expectations with those of others in the world. We have not done that before. That is why the bill is inept. That is why the law as it stands has been adequate. That is why the parliamentary secretary, after three years in government, has finally awakened to that fact. Now we are going to harmonize the expectations of Canadians with the expectations and the practices of the world. That is what this legislation purports to do. We will see if in fact it does that.

It is encouraging that polluters would go from the current liability of $545 million to about $1.5 billion. It is encouraging as well that those who one might view simply as passengers or erstwhile in their association with activities and vessels that engage in activities--I hate to use the same word twice as I am beginning to sound like the parliamentary secretary and some of the Conservatives when they talk about getting the job done, but if the word fits, then I guess I may as well use it once or twice--but the important thing to keep in mind is that those who engage in cruises or some of the adventure tours should not be held responsible for those who bring them into those places and who, unbeknownst to them, shift off some of the liabilities for any of the pollution that they may create or the degradation that they may cause.

That is what the bill purports to do. It would do those two things. It does not say nor is there a mechanism for it to ensure that there is not going to be any pollution. It says that if the owners of those enterprises or those vessels do pollute, they will suffer more severely, potentially in a court of law. Why? Because we are going to raise the premiums and we are going to give greater access and greater application to those conventions already existing on a world scale and in which we have been lagging.

If this is a piece of legislation that brings us up to snuff, as people say, and allows us to meet a standard that is appropriate for everybody else and thereby hopefully builds a greater sense of responsibility on the part of the owners of those vessels or those who arrange activities, then that is good. That is why we are going to be positive as we address this legislation.

When I said earlier that the parliamentary secretary catapults from that into other things, he invites us to take a look at other issues that are related both to the economy and to the environment, but the government is engaged more and more in what we do with the jurisdiction that is provided.

For example, they become management issues, and the management issue of the day is associated with the way the economy is performing. I think the parliamentary secretary and some of his colleagues on the government side have said that the economy is not performing very well, that they are going to stimulate it and engage in a stimulus package that is going to spend dozens of billions of dollars in order to get the economy going. Because the parliamentary secretary invited us to peek through that window, I am going to ask him how this relates to the main agenda of the day, the main agenda of governments everywhere, and I would imagine it should be even this one. It certainly is seized by parliamentarians on this side of the House. I might give a rather gratuitous compliment to the members of the other opposition parties who are also seized with the issue of stimulating the economy. With what means? It is the topic of the day every day. We see it in every headline.

The Minister of Finance says that the government is going to stimulate, and then in the fine print, the government is going to sell off crown assets. Every crown corporation apparently is now up for grabs because the Minister of Finance needs the money in order to pay for the stimulus package, none of which is already on the table, none of which is focused on building an infrastructure for tomorrow's prosperity, none of which is focused on establishing a vision for tomorrow. What will Canadians get for the billions of dollars that this House will authorize the government to spend?

The parliamentary secretary invited that kind of observation when he talked about this bill, the marine liability bill, as being an economic bill and an environmental bill. I ask him, why would we invest additional moneys in some of the projects that he and his finance minister are proposing?

I do not want to pick on poor VIA Rail, but it seems it is one of the ones the Conservatives want to get rid of and dump very quickly. VIA Rail carries about 8,000 passengers a day. It receives $212 million in government subsidies per year. That is about 45% of all of its operating costs, and the Conservatives are going to dump another $300 million into VIA Rail before they put it on the block, for how much? Where is the vision? Where is the economic plan to spend all these stimulus dollars, to see that more people ride these trains and save on the environmental costs associated with train travel, assuming that they believe that that actually happens?

I think they believe it almost happens, because just last week they joined with the province of Ontario in giving about $500 million to build parking lots for potential passengers on GO trains and GO buses. Imagine, about $500 million is going toward that. That is anywhere between $25,000 and $75,000 per parking spot, depending on what the operational costs were by way of contribution of any of the parties.

They are going to spend about $300 million to improve VIA Rail. We do not know how they are going to do that, but they are not going to increase ridership and they do not know whether they are going to dump it. They want to get rid of it.

They want to get rid of other assets, such as Canada Post, for example. It is a revenue generating business. It raises about $7.3 billion per annum, but apparently it is up for sale because the Minister of Finance needs money to build this economic engine that he says will function, and which the parliamentary secretary says is resident in Bill C-7. I do not know; I did not see that in Bill C-7, but I hope to find all the things associated with marine liabilities.

I am concerned that what we ought to be doing is looking at the suggestion of the parliamentary secretary of the kinds of investments the government will make for improving the infrastructure of tomorrow. What grand vision do the Conservatives have for the country?

For example, I find some of these ideas from virtually everywhere, and if members will permit me, I will borrow shamelessly from a Canadian resident in Quebec.

Mr. Renaud wrote to me on the subject of Canada, a bridge between Asia and Europe. He said we have billions of dollars to spend and now is the time to spend it. He added that we have the political will, the authority, the support of the people, and also the money—money to do what?

I would like to read just one sentence: “Prime Minister Laurier was convinced that a second rail line further away from the American border was essential to Canada's economic prosperity.”

Let us think about this for a moment. Here is an ordinary Canadian who looked back through our history and found an example of a politician who had neither the money nor the political ability to undertake a project in which Canada's development as a whole was the focus of the legislation.

And now this man, this Canadian, Mr. Renaud, tells us that, 100 years later, the Canadian railway system has wasted away.

It got smaller.

Mr. Renaud also says:

The technology has not changed much. Operating costs are not competitive and Canadian economic development is overly concentrated on the north-south axis.

This government claims that it will protect and contribute to the growth of our country and boasts about doing it with a bill such as Bill C-7. Just imagine! This bill deals with insurance and legal accountability. And they want us to believe that this bill will move the country forward.

Mr. Renaud continues:

Western oil does not make it to the east coast of Canada but is readily available to Americans.

Just think about that a little. It is available to Americans.

The electrical resources of Quebec and Labrador are more readily available to the U.S. than to the other Canadian provinces, including mine. We are speaking of Quebec's north. The member opposite spoke of a plan for the north, a great plan for all of Canada, in C-7. We have to laugh. Northern Quebec and Labrador are rich in electricity and natural resources that must be transported by waterways to the heart of the continent. Resources from Abitibi and north of Lac-Saint-Jean must necessarily be transported to Quebec City or Montreal, resulting in the development of those cities. It is a praiseworthy objective but it is not the development of the north.

Before looking to the centre of the continent or to Asia, the Government of Canada should propose developing fast transportation arteries on land from one ocean to another, a sort of transcontinental economic bridge between Europe and Asia. That bridge, according to Mr. Renaud, should be less expensive to operate and compatible with Canada's commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The parliamentary secretary says that Bill C-7 is an environmental bill. Here is what Mr. Renaud says. He raises a practical idea:

If it is more energy efficient, the advent of energy transportation will likely generate profit and prosperity for all of Canada. Using hydroelectric power, it will certainly be less harmful to the environment. Strong regions make for a strong Canada, and the federal government should therefore seize the opportunity to get involved in Premier Jean Charest's plan to develop northern Quebec. The northern plan will be cost-effective only if it is supported by east-west transportation arteries.

This is an idea that speaks of collaboration, cooperation and vision in partnership with other governments that have plans to develop the country. The corridor should follow the 51st parallel, a line that runs along the southern edge of Labrador and passes north of the Manicouagan reservoir and Lake Mistassini and along James Bay, reaching the Pacific Ocean north of Vancouver.

That is a pan-Canadian vision. I could keep on reading other people's ideas, but my point is that there are ideas all across this country about what to do with the billions of dollars the government has today, thanks to the opposition. What is their plan? To address gaps in the commercial courts. These are good ideas, but it is shameful to pass them off as economic and environmental plans.

It is also shameful considering the other bills we began studying in committee yesterday.

I get carried away in French. Not being bilingual, I try to do the best I can. I hope members will forgive me for this.

We were talking about Bill C-9. The parliamentary secretary enjoys the greatest support in the House from members of opposition parties as he puts bills before the committee. There is no other parliamentary secretary that enjoys such co-operation. He is going to talk about the transport of dangerous goods. We are talking about technical things. We understand, according to the minister, that everything is already okay, that everything is already being done. Therefore, we will use Bill C-9 to develop the economy.

That is great. Tell us how that happens. We want to be co-operative. We want to ensure he gets the money, the jurisdiction and the support. All these things are important. What do we do? We make this suggestion. Why not take advantage of the fact that now he talks about the need for security in the country? It has nothing to do with the Olympics in Vancouver, but any excuse is a good excuse at this time. What we need are projects on the table to get the moneys rolling.

One of them might be that we take a look at the security of transmission of goods across the country. I talked for a few moments about passenger rail and about commercial. We talked about moving goods and materials across the country. However, we have another mode as well. Mr. Renaud says that as soon as we build this railway, we will find that we will spend lots of money to build roadways as well because surely development will follow.

It has followed. One of the biggest industries in our country is the trucking industry. There has always been a shortage of truckers because it is a tough job. It might be well paying, but it is a tough job. The parliamentary secretary and his minister said that we needed to ensure that everybody was absolutely secure, that everybody was okay and that they would have to be acceptable by the Americans. If they are not acceptable by the Americans, those trucks will roll up to the border, especially in British Columbia, and the American truckers on the other side will say that those guys are not safe and that they will take over from there. Goodbye Canadian business.

There are vehicle immobilization technologies and there are six companies in Canada that can do this job and do it well. Some of the companies are already familiar with this. They slow down vehicles or completely immobilize them.

I mentioned to the minister, his officials and the parliamentary secretary that we should get some of these people here so we could look at building in regulations that would ensure our trucking industry was fully seized of the importance of putting these into their system and making it part of the carriage of commerce and people. This would suggest that there is at least a minimum bit of a thought in terms of building for an infrastructure for tomorrow.

I know members will want to hear more about this and I will be delighted if they ask me to say more.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you.

With the short time we have left, I'll thank our guests for being here today. We certainly have some other witnesses coming forward over the next few meetings, so I appreciate your time and your efforts today.

For the committee members, I want to give you a heads-up for Thursday. We have a full agenda. We have the Canadian Chemical Producers' Association, we have the Teamsters, we have the Canadian Trucking Alliance, and we're waiting for confirmation on one other organization.

I just want to advise members that we are pushing forward, so if you're thinking of amendments or other things you might want to do, you might want to start preparing for that.

On Tuesday of next week we have NavCanada coming. Pending how many other people we contact who accept our invitation to appear on Bill C-9, we could see them on Thursday, March 6, or perhaps be looking at clause-by-clause at some point on that day.

Monsieur Laframboise.

Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act, 1992

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is with some relief that I rise in the chamber today to speak to Bill C-9 in that this bill is long overdue, at least that part in dealing with the issue of transportation of dangerous goods.

The riding that is immediately adjacent to mine is held by the NDP member for Windsor West. It contains several border crossings that are the busiest not only in Canada and the United States, but we believe the busiest between two sovereign countries anywhere in the world. More passenger vehicles and vehicles carrying cargo cross that border daily in numbers that are not matched anywhere else in the world.

The issue of moving dangerous goods in this country has been a long-standing problem from an environmental standpoint. I can remember dealing with this issue over a good number of years. The municipal levels of government, the city of Windsor and the county of Essex, were greatly concerned about the movement through their jurisdictions of goods that were not properly regulated. Safety regulations were not in place. There were no requirements in provincial or federal legislation to identify that dangerous goods were moving through their jurisdictions. Over the years there were a number of incidents where it came to the knowledge of the municipal governments that on a regular basis certain dangerous goods, toxins, and in some cases even radioactive material such as medical isotopes, were moving through their jurisdictions and they had no idea it was happening.

This has been a great concern not just to the elected officials in the municipal governments in my area, but also to our firefighters and police and emergency responders. Oftentimes they are called to scenes of motor vehicle accidents involving goods that are unknown to them in terms of the quantity and how dangerous the goods are. Historically, on a number of occasions, we have been very worried as to whether our emergency responders, police and firefighters have been exposed to toxins and other serious pollutants that would damage their health and the environment in the region around the accident.

This is not something that has been going on for the last few years while consultation on this bill has been going on; it has been going on literally for decades in our area because of its geographic location. Much vehicular traffic moves through our area on a daily basis. In order that people can appreciate the significance, in terms of the numbers, more goods and vehicular traffic goes through our city and crosses to the American side and vice versa on a daily basis than all of the traffic that goes across the Confederation Bridge to Prince Edward Island in a year. Having to cope with that traffic has been a major issue, and perhaps the major issue, in our community for a long time.

It became even more of a concern when the incident of 9/11 took place. It moved from being an environmental and health and safety issue to one of national security. Since 9/11 there has been a significant slowdown in the traffic patterns across the border, at the bridge, at the tunnel, and even with regard to the rail tunnel that moves a huge amount of cargo between the two countries on a daily basis.

The United States has been very adamant and protective of its side of the border. The U.S. refuses to accept that our standards, our safety and precautionary measures are sufficient to respond to the concerns the Americans have. Again, this is around the transport of hazardous waste and goods, but also with regard to the potential for that transportation network to be used by terrorists to attack the United States.

It has been a grave problem for us since 9/11, one to which the government has finally responded. In the last few years the Conservatives and the Liberals before them were very slow to pick up on it. In a number of other ways, we have spent huge amounts of money to deal with national security issues. One can argue that it was probably spent unwisely in a number of areas and that it would have been much better to have spent some more time and to have been more focused on this particular area so that the legislation and standards would have been in place and we could have been moving to deploy and enforce those standards.

I am going to use one example to highlight one of the concerns. The City of Toronto has been transporting huge volumes of municipal waste, general garbage from households in particular, to the state of Michigan. In the last few weeks the City of Toronto has announced that because of some recycling programs it has put into place and other policies around the reuse of items, it has been able to reduce the number of trucks crossing at the border crossings in Windsor and Sarnia by almost 50% in the last year. That is a good development, but one of the reasons it was pushed to do that is that the state of Michigan had taken some very strong measures to prohibit the importation of that garbage into its jurisdiction.

Michigan specifically used the example of the number of times that hazardous goods had gotten through the Canadian side and the American side of the border and ended up in the landfill sites on the Michigan side, and it was discovered only at that point that there was hazardous waste in that garbage. The state of Michigan has now taken steps to pass legislation that has curtailed the amount of garbage that is being transported into its jurisdiction.

This legislation is badly needed from that perspective with regard to environmental and health and safety factors. It is also badly needed to satisfy our concerns on this side of the border with regard to items that are coming in from the U.S. side. By raising our standards here in Canada, we would be able to prohibit goods coming in from the United States that we do not want in our country. That part of the legislation is badly needed. It is a good step forward.

Since 2004 the government has spent an extensive amount of time on consultation. However, that consultation was over in a meaningful way sometime around 2006 or 2007, at least two years ago. This legislation should have been before the House in that period of time. It should have gone through committee, been amended, clarified and refined as necessary, gone back into the House, passed through the Senate and given royal assent. We should have been at that stage at least a year and a half ago, perhaps even as much as two years ago. We could have been at the stage now of deploying the bill and the law and, in particular, putting in place the regulations that would flow under this law so that we could dramatically increase the safety in our communities. I mean safety in terms of the natural environment of my city and county and the national security items that this bill addresses.

There is one significant negative in this bill. Generally, members of the NDP are supportive of this legislation, but we have a significant concern with regard to the methodology that is going to be used by the government with regard to security clearances for truck drivers, but also for personnel at our border crossings such as in my area, but also at our airports to some lesser degree, and most important, at our shipping ports on our coasts. The difficulty we have with the legislation is it would appear on the surface that a good deal of the methodology that will be used to institute the surveillance of employees will be done in secret.

If we are trying to satisfy the Canadian people that we are serious about these security clearances, they will have to be done in an effective, efficient and state-of-the-art way. We have to do it as well as anybody in the world does, and hopefully better. It is hard to imagine how we are going to instill that confidence in the communities most affected by these types of goods being transported through them that we are doing it effectively. We cannot convince people that we are doing a good job unless they can see it. It is an issue of transparency.

I have heard no argument on the part of the government as to why there is this insistence on these regulations that will govern how people will be cleared for this type of employment. How does not telling the general public the criteria that people have to meet and the process they have to go through in any way enhance that sense of confidence in our government and our government institutions, that we are doing a good job in protecting our citizens? I say protecting them both from a personal security basis, that their personal security is assured in this country, but also that the natural environment around their homes and businesses will be protected as well as it can be, and that our emergency responders will be protected as best they can. This insistence on secrecy makes no sense to us in the NDP.

However, there has been a history, and it has been particularly true that some of the tools that we have tried to put in place at our ports to screen employees and the types of methods that were being used were, quite frankly, offensive to our charter of rights, basic human rights and civil liberties. I am going to use one example that came up, I think it was a couple of years ago, when I was a member of the public safety and national security committee.

Transport Canada was proposing at the time to do clearances not only on the employees but on a very wide range of people who were associated with candidates for employment, the candidate's immediate family and extended family, without any reasons for doing that. There would be no suggestion that the person had an extensive criminal record or was associating with people with extensive criminal records. Transport Canada was going on the assumption that everybody was a potential criminal or a potential terrorist, rather than doing the reverse and assuming that unless there was at least some indication that the person was a security risk, it would do a fairly conventional security clearance for the person through our regular police forces.

We are concerned and we will need to take this up, to a significant degree, assuming we can get the government to move beyond its secrecy, almost paranoia, to understand why the security clearances are being done, it appears from the legislation and from some of the comments we have heard from the government, behind the scenes in total secrecy. That does not advance the level of confidence and security in the country. It certainly does not give our citizenry additional assurances that things are being done properly and that we are advancing the level of security, both with regard to environmental issues, health and safety issues and national security issues, if they do not know what is going on.

I can well understand, because of the extensive amount of work I have done in national security since 2004, that there are times when we do need to do things behind the scenes, to do them undercover and to maintain them that way when national security is at issue.

However, I also learned throughout that period of time that oftentimes national security is used as a cloak for breaching civil liberties in this country. It is used as a cloak to, at times, cover up mistakes made within the public service. This, obviously, is a rare exception, but if we start with a system that says that we are entitled to keep everything behind closed doors, that we will not tell the citizenry anything about it nor will we tell members of Parliament about it, we will not even give access to this kind of information, then that is the wrong approach. It is one the NDP will be looking very closely at in committee and moving amendments, if that is necessary.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-9, An Act to amend the Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act, 1992, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Kevin Sorenson, Conservative, Crowfoot, AB]

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, unfortunately the member is just continuing his rant against Israel. We are dealing with Bill C-9, which is a transportation act here in Canada.

I would again ask the Chair to again ask the member to bring his speech back to something relevant to the topic of debate today.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

I thank the hon. member for Crowfoot for raising this point of order. I did ask for a copy of the bill so that I could see if the hon. member was tying in some of his remarks. The member for Crowfoot is right: we are still on Bill C-9, An Act to amend the Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act. The member for Esquimalt--Juan de Fuca has a very short period of time, so perhaps he could use the remainder of it to address his remarks to the content of the bill.

[Kevin Sorenson, Conservative, Crowfoot, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is more a point of clarification. I have listened with some interest to what the member has been saying. He has spoken about CIDA, about poppies and about Afghanistan, and now he is on a rant about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

I am just wondering whether we have moved off Bill C-9 or whether we are still on Bill C-9. If indeed we are still on Bill C-9, I would encourage the member to bring his speech back to some point of relevance that deals with transportation of goods here in our country and with providing safety and security here in our country, which is what Bill C-9 does.