Fisheries Committee on April 5th, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Good morning, everyone. I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 15 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted on January 20, 2022, the committee is resuming its study of marine cargo container spills. This meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the House order of November 25, 2021.

Interpretation services are available for this meeting. Please inform me immediately if interpretation is lost and we’ll ensure that it is restored before resuming. The “raise hand” feature at the bottom of the screen can be used at any time if you wish to speak or alert the chair. When you are ready to speak, click on the microphone icon to activate your mike. Please speak slowly and clearly. When you are not speaking, your mike should be on mute. I would remind you that all comments by members and witnesses should be addressed through the chair.

I’d also like to remind all participants that screenshots or taking photos of your screen is not permitted.

I would now like to welcome our first panel of witnesses. From the Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation and Safety Board, we have Kathleen Fox, chair; André Lapointe, chief operating officer; and Clifford Harvey, director of marine investigations. We will now go to whoever is speaking from that group.

I want to welcome our members who are attending by Zoom.

I also want to wish Mr. Perkins a quick recovery from his recent diagnosis. I don't know if he's doing that for our benefit, to let us know that he is sick, or if he's really coughing.

We'll now go to our first speaker, for five minutes or less, please.

[Kathleen Fox, Chair, Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation and Safety Board]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I will be the only person speaking for the TSB until we get to the question period.

Good morning, Mr. Chair and members. Thank you very much for inviting the Transportation Safety Board of Canada to discuss the important topic of marine safety and, specifically, cargo container spills.

Our mandate, and our sole purpose, is to advance transportation safety in the air, marine, pipeline and rail modes that are under federal jurisdiction by conducting independent investigations, identifying safety deficiencies, causes and contributing factors—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Ms. Fox, we have to stop for a minute because we're not getting any translation.

Could you start from the beginning, please, so that everybody can hear it in the language of their choice? We'll start the clock again.

[Kathleen Fox]

Mr. Chair and members, good morning. Thank you for inviting the Transportation Safety Board of Canada to discuss the important topic of marine safety and, specifically, cargo container spills.

Our mandate, and our sole purpose, is to advance transportation safety in the air, marine, pipeline and rail modes that are under federal jurisdiction by conducting independent investigations, identifying safety deficiencies, causes and contributing factors, making recommendations, and publishing reports.

The issue before the committee today is related to the loss of marine cargo at sea. There have been four occurrences in Canada of lost cargo containers reported to the TSB in the last 10 years, including the Malta-flagged Zim Kingston. The TSB is currently investigating the October 2021 fire on that vessel, which occurred not far from Victoria, B.C. Initial indications were that the fire broke out after damage to containers on the deck that contained dangerous goods. As this is an ongoing investigation, we're not able to comment on the details, other than to say that it is in the examination and analysis phase.

There is significant attention being paid internationally to the issue of cargo container losses after a few notable incidents. For example, two separate investigations were launched into the January 2019 occurrence when the Panamanian-flagged MSC Zoe lost 342 containers in severe weather while transiting the Wadden Sea between Germany and the Netherlands. At that time, it was the second-highest number of containers lost overboard in heavy weather. It has since become the fourth largest, after the Japanese-flagged One Apus lost 1,816 containers in 2020 and the Danish-flagged Maersk Essen lost 750 in 2021, both in the mid-Pacific Ocean.

The International Maritime Organization has the issue of “loss of shipping containers” as one of many maritime safety issues it's tracking. The TSB participates in the IMO's working group on casualty investigations, and we expect to be able to share lessons learned with that group once our work on the Zim Kingston investigation is complete. The TSB also participates in the Marine Accident Investigators' International Forum, a network of investigation bodies that discuss lessons learned in casualty investigation. We have received support from peer agencies in the early stages of the Zim Kingston investigation.

More broadly, marine safety continues to be top of mind for the TSB. We are in the process of updating the TSB's watchlist, which outlines the key issues that need to be addressed to make Canada's transportation system even safer.

The current watchlist includes one marine-specific issue: commercial fishing safety. It has been on the TSB watchlist since its inception in 2010. Every year, however, the same safety deficiencies on board fishing vessels continue to put at risk the lives of thousands of Canadian fish harvesters and the livelihoods of their families and communities. Fishing continues to be one of the most dangerous professions in Canada. There were eight fishing-related fatalities in 2021, just under the five-year average of 10 fatalities.

Other multi-modal watchlist issues also affect marine safety including fatigue management in vessel operations, safety management and regulatory surveillance.

Since the TSB's creation in 1990, the board has issued 159 marine-related recommendations to regulators and the marine industry. As of September 2021, 86.8% of the responses to these marine recommendations have received the board's highest rating of “fully satisfactory”. However, there is still much that can be done to improve marine safety, especially with respect to the issues that underpin our watch-list.

We're currently in the process of completing our annual reassessments for outstanding recommendations. The results will be available on our website in the coming weeks and will also help inform the next TSB watch-list, which we will publish later this year.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We're now ready to answer your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Ms. Fox. That was right on time, actually; it was perfect timing.

We'll now go to questions, of course, from the members.

We'll go to Mr. Arnold first, for six minutes or less, please.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for your presentation this morning. Could you tell us when the Canadian Coast Guard was first aware of the issue with the Zim Kingston?

[Kathleen Fox]

Mr. Chair, I'll refer that question to Mr. Harvey, who is the director of marine investigations. I will remind the committee, though, that there are limited details we can provide at this time, given the ongoing nature of the investigation.

[Clifford Harvey, Director, Marine Investigations, Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation and Safety Board]

Thank you, Ms. Fox.

I will comment that the Transportation Safety Board was notified of the occurrence on October 21 when the Zim Kingston first lost containers. Subsequently—

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

My question was, when was the Coast Guard first aware of the situation?

[Clifford Harvey]

Mr. Chair, I don't have that information. That's a question that's perhaps best directed towards the Canadian Coast Guard.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Your—

[Kathleen Fox]

If I may just add, these are the sorts of timelines that we create as part of a sequence of events as we conduct our investigation, and it would be part of the final report when it's published.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

You have that information, but you can't share it with this committee today.

[Kathleen Fox]

I don't have the details, and Mr. Harvey may not have the details in his hands. That's why we suggest that the question go to the Coast Guard; however, the answer to the question will be part of the investigation and will be part of the final report. It's part of the sequence of events.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Thank you.

Can you tell us what volume of the hazardous material or chemicals in the two lost containers has not been recovered?

[Kathleen Fox]

Go ahead, Mr. Harvey.

[Clifford Harvey]

Again, those are details that are part of the ongoing investigation about the contents of those lost containers overboard.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Danaos is the corporation that owns the Zim Kingston. Can you tell us how much Danaos paid for cleanup related to the incident, and is the Government of Canada holding additional funds from Danaos for the cleanup?

[Kathleen Fox]

Mr. Chair, again, with due respect to the committee members, there's a lot of detailed information that is being asked about that investigation, which is an ongoing investigation. We may not have the details at hand, or we're not at liberty to release the details at this time because it is part of an ongoing investigation. Some of that data needs to be validated before we're prepared to release it publicly.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

I really question, with respect to you as well, what we may be able to obtain as committee members today if you cannot speak about the investigation because it is ongoing.

What was being done by the vessel's crew or federal resources to prevent escalation, such as the containers and chemicals catching fire, during the two days between October 21 and October 23?

[Kathleen Fox]

Mr. Chair, unless Mr. Harvey has specific information he can provide, that is part of the ongoing investigation.

I don't mean to repeat it, but I'm going to have to. We can talk generally about cargo spills, how we conduct investigations and what information we may have about what's going on internationally, but when it comes to the specifics of an ongoing investigation, there are a lot of details that we cannot share at this time until we validate them.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Thank you.

I'll try to be a little more general, then. In your opinion, are there deficiencies in the government's response capabilities to incidents such as the Zim Kingston? Have there been lessons learned to improve future responses?

[Kathleen Fox]

Mr. Chair, this is the first investigation we're conducting that is specific to a cargo loss. The reason we're investigating is the subsequent fire. We have seen three other occurrences in the last 10 years related to cargo losses, but it is a fairly rare occurrence in Canada, and we did not conduct a full investigation with public reports in those cases because they didn't meet the criteria that we use under our policy on occurrence classification.

I think we'll be in a better position to address your questions once we've completed our investigation, but we're still in the very early stages, as I said.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Thank you.

Are you going to be able to identify gaps in the response plan and program of the government? If so, it looks like it will be after this committee has completed its study.

[Kathleen Fox]

Mr. Chair, what I can tell you is that, in any marine occurrence, we do look at the initial response, and there are other marine occurrences where we've looked at the initial environmental response. I'll give you the example of Nathan E. Stewart in 2016.

We typically look at the timelines for the arrival of first responders and the initial environmental cleanup. We typically go in the 24- to 72-hour range, depending on the occurrence. We have identified issues in the past, but not specifically related to cargo containers going overboard. That would be part of this investigation.