Thank you, Madam Chair.
The folks at Environment Canada might be able to answer my question, but I'm not sure.
My colleague was talking earlier about the idea of amending the Canadian Environmental Protection Act to require vessel owners to adopt a preventive approach, in other words, to put everything in place to ensure that a spill is avoided, if I understood the intent behind that correctly.
Am I to understand that the purpose of this change—which would shift the burden of proof from the Crown to the polluter—is to demonstrate that the polluter did everything possible to prevent a spill, for example? Am I correct in understanding that the ultimate goal is to reduce the number of spills?