Thank you.
I appreciate the opportunity to provide my comments on that specific provision of Bill C-38 as well, the exemption for foreign-flagged vessels.
On its surface, it's not a bad idea per se, but I would caution with one caveat, and that is you have to have a very good government regulatory environment, plus good enforcement of that regulatory environment, to make sure it's as safe as possible. We had a good experience here in the United States just two years ago with a foreign-flagged, foreign-owned vessel that we thought was under good U.S. control. It's named the Deepwater Horizon. I think we all remember the catastrophic results of that. That vessel was flagged in the Marshall Islands and owned by Transocean. We thought the U.S. government was doing the proper job in regulating it; it wasn't. So we have to have very high controls in the regulatory environment here.
I'll make a couple of very quick, respectful recommendations for the bill or this provision of the bill. Number one, make it explicit in bill language that the exemption does not exempt the vessel from any Canadian existing or future regulations or laws. I think it's important that environmental regulations not be rolled back in any way in this bill. I think this bill is actually an opportunity, a good opportunity, to strengthen Canadian environmental regulation. I think that's in industry's best interest as well, as we found out here in the United States.
Secondly, I think this is an opportunity to improve Canadian standards. By the way, I would offer that in my opinion as a biologist, neither the Canadian standards for seismic mitigation nor the United States' standards are as good as we can do. We need to do better, and we must do better.
Thirdly, I would respectfully recommend that the bill ask the Canadian and U.S. governments to develop a bilateral agreement to make seismic mitigation and monitoring consistent across our borders, in the Atlantic, the Arctic Ocean, and in the Pacific. It makes no sense to have conflicting regulations and monitoring environments.
Finally, I would recommend that the bill suggest that the Canadian administration negotiate a seismic mitigation protocol at the Arctic Council to be trans-Arctic. I think Professor Zedel did very well in going over some of the very brief risks of seismic arrays offshore—and they are very real—so I will not touch on those here. I did provide the committee staff with a copy of notes, and you're all welcome to have those if you would like.
My principal issue is that neither the U.S. system nor the Canadian system are as good as they need to be in managing seismic shoots offshore. I've scanned the statement of Canadian practice on this, and, frankly, a 500-metre safety zone for seismic shoots is in and of itself insufficient. It needs to be a received level, a sound level for cetaceans, pinnipeds, seabirds, and fish. We know that impacts can go out to 50 or 60 kilometres on certain species away from seismic arrays, and the effects can be quite profound, particularly with continuous sound pulses over a long period of time.
There are a number of other things. In the transboundary radiation of sound, even though these guns are pointed down into the seabed, which is where they're targeted, there's a lot of horizontal radiation and propagation of the sound out to several hundred kilometres. If we are, for instance, shooting off the Alaska Arctic coast, the Beaufort Sea off the Canadian Mackenzie Delta is going to be radiated with sound as well. So we have to have some consistency and, I feel, a bilateral agreement to make it as safe as possible.
I think I'll stop at that. There are a number of other issues I touched on in my notes, and I would encourage all of you to take a look at those.
I would be delighted to answer any questions.
Thank you very much.