Good afternoon. My name is Jody Thomas, and I'm the deputy commissioner of operations with the Canadian Coast Guard.
Thank you for the invitation to appear today to discuss the first chapter of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development's annual report entitled “Oil Spills from Ships”.
I would like to start by thanking the commissioner and his dedicated staff for the recommendations directed at the coast guard in the chapter on oil spills from ships. I would equally like to clarify that the main objective of the audit was to assess the management framework of the coast guard's environmental response program.
The commissioner did not audit the operational delivery of the program or actual environmental response activities related to incidents on the water.
As my colleague from Transport Canada has just explained, Canada's marine oil spill preparedness response regime outlines the framework for industry to be responsible to clean up their own oil spills. Transport Canada is responsible for the regulatory aspects of the regime, while the Canadian Coast Guard is the lead federal agency responsible to ensure an appropriate response to ship-source spills.
In normal situations where a shipowner is responding to a spill, the coast guard will monitor the activities of the shipowner to ensure that actions are taken to the satisfaction of the Government of Canada. However, if a shipowner is either unwilling or unable to respond, or if he is unknown, the coast guard will take action to ensure there is an appropriate response, either using our own equipment or through a private company such as a response organization.
The Canadian Coast Guard responds to an average of 1,300 pollution incidents per year and works with federal, provincial, and industry partners to ensure an appropriate response to all incidents. To date, the Canadian Coast Guard has responded to every pollution event of which it has been notified.
This summer, in addition to responding to the grounding of two vessels in the Arctic, the coast guard responded to 86 reported marine pollution events nationally between August 28 and September 15.
Canadians can be assured that if faced with a major spill, the Canadian Coast Guard will provide all available resources and cooperate with its federal, provincial, industry, and international partners to help minimize the impacts to the marine environment.
Overall, the Canadian Coast Guard agrees with the commissioner’s recommendations for improvements to its administrative processes related to the environmental response program.
Work is underway to make improvements in the areas of risk assessment, updating emergency management plans, and establishing national procedures for documenting results of spill responses.
To effect this work, within coast guard we have created a new environmental response branch under the leadership of a dedicated director. As well, the coast guard and Transport Canada have begun, as you've heard, a scoping exercise to update previous risk assessments.
Further, while the audit notes that several coast guard governance documents are not up to date, as part of our day-to-day business we have made management decisions to ensure response equipment is strategically positioned in locations based on our current and evolving understanding of risk. Risk is not static, and neither is our approach. For example, in Placentia Bay, the coast guard has placed caches of first response equipment commensurate with an increase in vessel tanker traffic.
The coast guard will have a national environmental response strategy in place by spring 2011. This strategy will be supplemented by the development of a national response policy and plans for directing Canadian Coast Guard efforts, including those related to a major incident, and will establish a periodic review process to ensure that its national and regional emergency management plans remain accurate and relevant. This review process will be in place by spring of 2012.
The Coast Guard will continue to improve our management processes and we will continue to ensure that the quality environmental protection measures the Canadian public has come to expect from this national institution continue to be strengthened
Thank you very much. I look forward to answering your questions.