Fisheries Committee on April 5th, 2022

[Clifford Harvey]

Thank you, Ms. Fox and Mr. Chair.

I'll address the question in English, if that's okay.

The communication protocols on board the vessel are generally undertaken in English, and the communication is undertaken in English between vessels and vessel traffic control. However, it's my understanding as well that this communication can be undertaken in the second official language, as the member posed that question. That would be at the marine communications and traffic services centre with the Canadian Coast Guard.

[Caroline Desbiens, Bloc, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

In your view, then, it shouldn't be a problem for a French-speaking captain who operates a vessel in the Desgagnés fleet to have access to service in French in the event of an emergency or complications.

[Kathleen Fox]

As Mr. Harvey said, it should be possible to undertake communication in French, but we don't have any information to indicate whether it has been a problem in the past. I don't want to give an opinion on the matter without any supporting evidence.

[Caroline Desbiens, Bloc, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

Very well.

Thank you to both of the witnesses.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you for that.

We'll now go to Ms. Barron for six minutes or less, please.

[Lisa Marie Barron, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses for being here today.

I have a few questions here. The first one is for Ms. Fox, or whoever Ms. Fox feels would be best suited.

I'm happy to hear that there is an investigation happening around the Zim Kingston, as you mentioned. Perhaps this is following a little more on Mr. Arnold's question, but you'd mentioned that this investigation was happening specifically because of the fire. I'm wondering if you could clarify what criteria need to be met for you to conduct an investigation? What happens when those criteria aren't met? What happens from there?

[Kathleen Fox]

I can speak, Mr. Chair, generally to that question.

We have a policy on occurrence classification, which is available on our website, but which we're happy to table with the committee. It outlines the things we look at. In particular, our role is to advance transportation safety. I do have the statistics in front of me, and in 2021 there were about 214 marine accidents and another 860 or so marine incidents. We're talking about close to 1,200 occurrences. We can't investigate every one, nor does every one warrant the use of limited resources to conduct a full investigation with a public report.

What we look at is, what do we know about the occurrence? Is it something that we're already watching through our watch-list? Is it something that we know is of interest from an international perspective? Was there loss of life? Was there significant property or environmental damage? There's a series of criteria that the directors of investigations use in all four modes to determine which of the many, many occurrences that are reported to us warrant a full investigation. Within that, there's an initial scoping of the investigation to determine the different lines of inquiry that we're going to look at.

The TSB was certainly aware from the time this vessel was encountering difficulties, and then the subsequent fire, and then we had to wait until it was safe to board the vessel. Certainly, this was an example of one that we felt warranted a full investigation and public report.

[Lisa Marie Barron, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Could you clarify what happens, then, if the incident that's reported to you doesn't meet the criteria? What are the next steps?

[Kathleen Fox]

The follow-up on that is simply that.... We get between 3,500 and 4,000 occurrences reported to us per year in all modes. All of those occurrences are assessed, documented and analyzed to determine if we're going to deploy a team, and then, once we've deployed, what level of investigation we are going to do. We have various levels of investigation, from fact-based, which is a level four, to a major investigation, which is a level two.

All of the occurrences that have been reported to us are assessed, documented and reported in our statistics. If we see a flurry of a similar type of occurrences, for example, we could use them to inform a future investigation.

[Lisa Marie Barron, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Thank you.

You mentioned that over the last 10 years, there were four others that were investigated. Can you clarify—you don't need to go into detail, but briefly—what those four incidents were?

[Kathleen Fox]

There were four. I'm talking specifically, Mr. Chair, about incidents where cargo went overboard, as opposed to cargo shifting, because one of our reportable occurrences is cargo shift or cargo loss.

In terms of cargo loss, there were four occurrences. The most recent one was in December 2021. The North Arm Tempest reported having lost three cargo containers overboard while in the Strait of Georgia. Of course, there's the Zim Kingston, which we are investigating. Of the other two, one occurred in 2016. It was the Hanjin Seattle, which reported losing 35 containers overboard in severe weather about eight miles south of Cape Beale, British Columbia. In 2014, there was a barge, the Southeast Provider, that was under tow by the Pacific Titan and lost 28 containers overboard while transiting the Queen Charlotte Islands.

Three of those four were what we call class 5 occurrences. They were reported to us, and we assessed them and documented them, but we didn't pursue the investigations further. The Zim Kingston is the first one we're doing a full investigation of, with a public report.

[Lisa Marie Barron, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Based on the level of investigation that was conducted on the other three incidents, were there any lessons learned that you can share with the committee today?

[Kathleen Fox]

I don't have any details beyond that. Each one is unique in terms of the circumstances.

This particular occurrence will give us an opportunity to look back at some of those and look at what's happening in other marine jurisdictions to see if there's any commonality among any of these occurrences and any lessons that can be learned.

[Lisa Marie Barron, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

One thing that comes up over and over again is the need for a coordinated response and to have an integrated response plan when spills occur. Have you done any investigation around any gaps in jurisdiction? Have you seen in your work any ways in which the response plan has not been as effective as it could have been if there had been a more integrated response plan in place, including first nations, those on the ground and so on?

[Kathleen Fox]

Mr. Harvey, I don't know if you can reference any in your memory.

In my memory, the one that comes to mind is the grounding and subsequent sinking of the Nathan E. Stewart off Bella Bella in 2016. We took a very close look at the incident response. We made a number of findings about the need for a comprehensive and coordinated response, as well as a follow-up, following the response, to ensure that the lessons learned are operationalized and institutionalized for future emergency responses.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Ms. Barron.

We'll now go to Mr. Zimmer for five minutes or less, please.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'll start off with a simple question. What is the success rate of container ships in general, as opposed to trips that are made with incident or loss of cargo, etc.? What is the percentage of successful trips versus unsuccessful trips?

[Kathleen Fox]

Go ahead, Mr. Harvey.

[Clifford Harvey]

Thank you, Ms. Fox.

Mr. Chair, there were statistics released by the World Shipping Council, which identified that for an annual period around 2017, approximately 625 million containers were shipped worldwide. Of those containers that were shipped worldwide, the percentage that they calculated were lost outside of catastrophic events—which would be the complete loss of a vessel—was in the factor of 0.0006% or potentially around 2,000 or 2,500 containers annually.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies, BC]

Thank you for that. I think it paints a picture that there are a lot of successful trips as opposed to accidents.

Ms. Fox, I'm going to ask you a question that relates to what my colleague Mr. Arnold said previously when he asked you some questions. I think you referred to some recommendations and said that 86.8% had been responded to affirmatively.

[Kathleen Fox]

Yes, Mr. Chair. I was referring to the number of marine recommendations that the Transportation Safety Board has issued since we were created back in 1990. We've issued 159 marine-related recommendations and those are to the regulator, Transport Canada, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and other change agents. Of those 159, 86.8% of the responses for the marine recommendations have received our highest rating of fully satisfactory.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies, BC]

What happened to the other ones? What kind of recommendations have you made that haven't been received or haven't been adopted? Can you give us a general comment on that? We have about three minutes here.

[Kathleen Fox]

In fact, other recommendations have been outstanding, some of them even since the 1990s, related to marine. A lot of them right now are focused on fishing safety, relating, for example, to the carriage of life-saving appliances, stability assessments for smaller and mid-sized fishing vessels, and fatigue management training for watchkeepers. As a result of the Nathan E. Stewart grounding and sinking off the coast of B.C., we issued two relating to fatigue management and fatigue training for watchkeepers, who are regulated by the marine personnel regulations.

We ask the change agent—typically it's Transport Canada or it could be DFO—every year to update us on the progress they're making on actioning those recommendations. We assess that action and then we publish it on our website. We're just about to publish the latest reassessment exercise in the coming weeks.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies, BC]

Are you confident that the remaining 13%—it was at 86.8%, so about 13%—are going to be addressed in the future by the actions within the department?

[Kathleen Fox]

In some cases, the regulator may not agree with the recommendation and we may agree to disagree, Mr. Chair, but we always track them. If we feel that the residual risk is sufficient, we keep them active. If we feel the residual risk is lower but we're not ready to close the recommendation until it's fully satisfactory we may make it dormant, but we always follow up on an annual basis.

Some of them are harder to implement than others, because there may be resistance from the industry or there may be costs involved, but we continue to pursue those and highlight them in any investigations where the same issues resurface.