Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Ladies and gentlemen, members of the committee, thank you for having agreed to hear us today on Bill C-469. You received the English and French version of our short brief several weeks ago already. My intent today is not to reread out loud a document you have probably already looked at.
The Shipping Federation of Canada is federally regulated and represents international maritime transport headed for or leaving Canadian ports. Our members are listed at the end of our brief and they operate ships that carry Canada's international trade. Our industry is regulated by a broad spectrum of regulations that cover all of our operations, whether we are referring to the ship, its equipment, its cargo, its crew, its containment material, processes or management. These regulations are based in large measure on international conventions Canada subscribes to.
The position we wish to share with you today is that of operators who wonder how the new act will impact the stability of the regulatory framework that governs their activities, and whether the new civil action remedy may be invoked against operations that are in full compliance with regulations.
Our concern is that at this time, we still don't know how the two new remedies introduced by the legislation will apply, i.e. the judicial review and the civil action, and what their implications are for federally regulated industries.
Although we have read with interest the speeches delivered by the various political parties when the bill was introduced and discussed at second reading, they have not furthered our understanding of how the new act, and its new remedies in particular, will actually work, nor has the parliamentary library yet produced any background research that would contribute to our comprehension of this bill. We have also read the transcripts of the November 1 hearing before this committee, but the discussion addressed the government's lack of action rather than its regulatory production. As a result, our concern about the impact that the new remedies will have on federally regulated industries such as our own remains as acute now as when we first read the bill. This is why we are here before you today to clarify the legislator's intent with respect to this bill and hopefully find a response to our questions and concerns.
Our fundamental question with respect to Bill C-469 is as follows. Will a federally regulated operator be safe if he complies with all of the relevant federal regulations, or will he remain exposed to the civil action remedy introduced by the bill? Clause 23 of the proposed bill provides that every resident of Canada can seek recourse in Superior Court against a person who has contravened, or is likely to contravene, an act of Parliament or a regulation, if such a contravention has resulted or will likely result in significant environmental harm.
The Canadian Environmental Bill of Rights is an act of Parliament, and clause 9 of the act guarantees the right to a healthy environment. Therefore, Bill C-469 makes it possible for anyone to initiate court proceedings against a federally regulated company and claim that the company infringes on his or her right to a healthy environment. We are especially alarmed by subclause 23(3), which, if we have read it correctly, simply implies that regulatory compliance is not a defence. This is of paramount significance for us, because regulatory compliance is the necessary safe haven for doing business. Without a guarantee that regulatory compliance will make it safe for you to conduct business, business becomes an activity that is too risky to undertake.
Related to this concern is our other question: how reliable will the regulations adopted under the current regulatory process be? Will anybody be able to challenge them at any time under the new judicial review remedy, on the basis that another standard should have been adopted instead? If so, all of the operators who rely on that particular standard would face nothing but confusion and uncertainty. The wording of clause 16 of the bill, which deals with the judicial review process, is so wide that we can easily foresee this section being used to challenge the government on any environmental regulatory standard at any time. This runs exactly counter to the regulatory predictability that is so essential for our industry to operate within.
Does regulatory compliance still have any relevance and value? Does the regulatory process still have any relevance or value? These are the questions that we cannot answer based on what we have read in the bill.
In view of the foregoing, we respectfully submit that if it is not your intent that the remedies introduced by Bill C-469 be applicable against regulatory standards and regulatory compliance—clauses 16 and 23 respectively—this should be stated explicitly. We have suggested wording towards this end in our brief.
Although our brief focuses on the issue of regulatory standards, because it is a key consideration for federally regulated operators, our reading of the bill raises other questions as well, including its consistency with international conventions on maritime liability. This is a point that was raised in the presentation of the Canadian Maritime Law Association on November 1, which, needless to say, we support.
We hope that your committee will have the opportunity to hear from other witnesses as well, including representatives of the federal departments that produce and administer environmental regulations, and from specialists in public and administrative law.
There is an old saying that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and we are concerned that the legislator, buoyed by the enthusiasm surrounding this bill, may fail to adequately consider how the act's mechanisms will actually work within the existing statutory framework. Although our testimony is designed to highlight our industry's concerns regarding the relationship between the remedies proposed by the bill and the regulatory standards by which we are governed, we suspect there are other issues that should be clarified before, rather than after, the bill receives royal assent.
Thank you for your attention. We would be pleased to answer any questions.