Fisheries Committee on April 7th, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Good morning. I now call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 16 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. We'll move in camera for the last 30 minutes to discuss drafting instructions for a particular report—not this one.

The meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to 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 it is restored before resuming.

I will get to introducing our witnesses now.

From the Government of British Columbia, we have Mr. Kevin Butterworth, executive director of the environmental emergencies and land remediation branch of the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy. There are a lot of letters at the end of your name. From the Shipping Federation of Canada, we have Christopher Hall, president and chief executive officer. From the Institut national de la recherche scientifique, we have Valérie Langlois, professor and Canada research chair in ecotoxicogenomics and endocrine disruption.

I'd like to welcome our witnesses.

Before I start, I want to welcome somebody back to committee today. It is my assistant, who worked in Ontario and now works in Newfoundland. She's in Ottawa for a few days. It's Vanessa, whom most people here at this committee will remember.

[Some hon. members]

Hear, hear!

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Now we'll go to Mr. Hall for five minutes or less, please.

[Christopher Hall, President and Chief Executive Officer, Shipping Federation of Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chair and committee members.

My name is Chris Hall, and I'm the president and CEO of the Shipping Federation of Canada.

Our organization was founded in 1903 through an act of Parliament, with the purpose of acting as a national association that represents the owners, operators and agents of ocean ships that carry Canada’s imports and exports to and from world markets. These ships, which are all ocean-going and foreign-flagged, carry virtually all of Canada’s international seaborne trade and therefore play an essential role in connecting Canada’s importers and exporters to the world.

By way of background on myself, I served in the Canadian Coast Guard for several years before moving to the commercial sector, where I was engaged in deep-sea salvage towing, the offshore oil and gas sector and harbour-towing services. Prior to my recent appointment at the Shipping Federation, I held an executive position at a key Canadian port authority.

The first point I wish to make is with respect to the Hazardous and Noxious Substances Convention, the HNS Convention in short. The federation would assert that the HNS Convention should be the sole mechanism for establishing liability for container spills involving such materials.

Much like the International Convention on Civil Liability for Oil Pollution Damage has proven to be a successful mechanism for holding the polluter liable for oil spills, so too will the HNS Convention create the same level of effectiveness for a spill of an HNS nature. This convention will greatly improve the responsibility and accountability of the polluter. To contemplate charging additional fees on the cargo or to the carriers would be both counterproductive and detrimental to Canada’s competitiveness and would undermine the intent of the HNS Convention itself.

I would now like to turn my comments to Canada’s marine emergency management regime. The federation would like to acknowledge and commend the level of commitment from both Transport Canada and the Coast Guard in responding to environmental incidents in Canadian waters. That being said, I believe there is an opportunity to improve the effectiveness of our regime by making it more proactive rather than reactive.

In 2014, the federal government’s Tanker Safety Expert Panel concluded a review of Canada’s ship-source pollution and response regime, which included hazardous and noxious substances. Chapter 3 of that report notes that the management of marine casualties is a complicated undertaking in Canada due to the multiple levels of government that are involved. In some cases, there are overlapping jurisdictions that cause delays and often confusion. As an example, Transport Canada is the lead agency regarding assigning a place of refuge for a vessel, yet the Canada Marine Act grants similar powers to Canadian port authorities. This creates an opportunity for conflict between agencies and delays in decision-making.

The essence of the report’s recommendation is that timely decision-making can minimize marine spills or prevent them before they occur. In order to achieve this, Canada should model its regime on what has been in place in the U.K. and Australia for many years.

Those regimes provide for a position known as the secretary of state’s representative for maritime salvage and intervention—or SOSRep for short. This position is tasked with acting in the public’s best interest and has a range of powers that are designed to mitigate environmental impact through the use of timely decision-making and early intervention. Unfortunately, this portion of the expert panel’s recommendations was never implemented in Canada.

We believe that the recent container spill on our west coast could have been positively influenced under such a system, given the observations made by the ship’s charterer that it was unclear who was in charge and who was coordinating the response efforts. The fact that neither Transport Canada nor our Coast Guard had full and complete jurisdictional control over the evolving emergency created inefficient communications and possibly delays in decision-making, and left the master of the ship relatively unsupported.

The federation urges the federal government to revisit chapter 3 of the Tanker Safety Expert Panel with a view to adopting its recommendations. Such action would greatly improve the timeliness and effectiveness of Canada’s response to an evolving marine incident and create a more proactive system overall. It would also address the jurisdictional gaps that currently exist between Transport Canada and the Coast Guard.

Thank you for your time, and I look forward to addressing your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you.

We will now go to Ms. Langlois for five minutes or less, please.

[Dr. Valérie Langlois, Professor and Canada Research Chair in Ecotoxicogenomics and Endocrine Disruption, Institut national de la recherche scientifique]

Good morning, Mr. Chair and honourable members of the committee.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to appear before you today.

I am a Canada research chair in ecotoxicogenomics, and my research focuses on the effects of environmental contaminants on the health of wildlife.

Because the environmental impacts associated with container spills vary in magnitude, depending on the nature of the contents of the spilled containers, I will give you two scenarios. First, I will talk about oil spills associated with cargo and containers. Second, I will talk about plastic spills.

Scenario 1: Accidental situations that could cause an oil leak during a container spill are not insignificant. Ecosystem toxicity will vary depending on the nature of the petroleum products being transported.

Several chemicals in petroleum products are highly toxic to aquatic species. Recent data produced by my research team have shown, among other things, that the toxicity of oil is similar in cold and warm waters, and that Corexit, which is often used as a dispersant in oil spills, is highly toxic to living organisms when not quickly mixed with spilled petroleum products.

Petroleum products are just one example of thousands of other transported chemicals that can be as toxic to ecosystems as pesticides, drugs and many other substances.

Scenario 2: Our daily use of plastic‑based products has a direct impact on animal health. The more we use these products, the more we produce and the more we transport them. As you know, Canada's recyclable materials or consumer goods made from plastic are often transported by cargo. If the containers spill, large pieces of plastic can choke wildlife, including several endangered whales and turtles.

In addition, lost plastic containers will contaminate the marine ecosystem for a long time due to the high persistence of the plastic in the environment. When plastics break down, they form billions of fragments of microplastics and nanoplastics, which are also known to be even more toxic to living organisms.

For example, we know that nanoplastics affect the reproduction and metabolism of the oysters we produce in Canada. Recent findings published by my research team indicate that nanoplastics also have the properties of accumulating various environmental contaminants on their surfaces. They can therefore act as vectors and become an additional source of contamination for aquatic organisms.

Due to too many permutations of contaminants that may end up in the environment as a result of a container spill, and given the wide variety of ecosystems that all have different biodiversity and are at risk of spills, I have three recommendations.

First, the design of the containers should be modified to improve their watertightness and ensure that they are equipped with a buoyancy, traceability and labelling system to ensure that they are given priority for recovery and remediation.

Second, mathematical models should be developed to better understand the movement of spilled containers and their contents.

Third, regulations should be developed that require ocean carriers to have an effective system in place to recover containers and their contents, and to cover costs related to environmental decontamination.

Now is the time to develop, not a container spill action plan, but a proactive approach to minimize the movement of non‑essential goods by container. This will result in fewer cargo shipments and thereby reduce the risk of toxic contaminants being released into our ecosystems.

Thank you very much for your attention.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you for that.

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

[Kevin Butterworth, Executive Director, Environmental Emergencies and Land Remediation, Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy, Government of British Columbia]

Thank you very much for this opportunity to appear before the panel as a witness for the study on marine cargo spills.

As you know, B.C.'s coastline is one of the most biologically diverse and productive marine environments. Our government is committed to protecting provincial resources from the impact of marine spills.

While regulating spill preparedness for marine vessels is primarily a federal responsibility, our ministry, the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy, is the lead provincial coordinating agency in the event of an oil or other hazardous spill that might impact provincial interests. As such, when a marine spill impacts or threatens the B.C. coastline, we collaborate very closely with the federal government, indigenous nations and the spiller, in unified command under federal lead, to coordinate an effective response to spill incidents. Often, we'll lead or support the environmental unit, which is responsible for assessing the environmental conditions or impacts related to an incident and developing strategies to minimize those impacts.

We've been very encouraged here in B.C. to see the various ocean protection plan initiatives and investments that have been implemented to protect our coast. In particular, we view the collaboration between the federal and provincial governments and coastal first nations, through the northern shelf bioregion response planning framework, as a significant step down the path to reconciliation. We are also encouraged to have worked closely with the federal government in response to the recent Zim Kingston cargo container spill off the coast of Vancouver Island. However, we do think that more can be done about funding for indigenous nations, clarity on cost recovery provisions, development of federal recovery requirements, towing capacity and marine geographic response plans.

In conclusion, given the significant impacts of shipping and navigation on B.C.'s coastal communities, local, indigenous and provincial authorities should continue to be consulted on any actions or changes to the federal marine response framework. We look forward to continuing to work with our response partners to ensure that B.C.'s interests in public safety and the protection of the environment are addressed.

I'm happy to answer any questions or address any concerns that come from your side. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you for that, Mr. Butterworth.

We'll go to our rounds of questioning and we'll start with Mr. Arnold for six minutes or less.

I will remind members that when you're asking questions, if you could, identify which witness you would like an answer from, instead of having everybody look like a deer staring into the headlights. You're losing time doing it that way, so if could you identify whom the question is for, that would be great.

Mr. Arnold, when you're ready, please go ahead.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the witnesses for appearing today.

I'll start off with Mr. Butterworth. When was the Government of B.C. first informed that the Zim Kingston was in trouble?

[Kevin Butterworth]

I don't have the exact date with me, but I can certainly find it and make sure that we submit it to you, if you're looking for a timeline on how that all fits together and if that would be helpful to you.

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

Thank you.

Was it provincial or federal government personnel who arrived first at the scene?

[Kevin Butterworth]

Again, I don't have that information with me.

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

If you could, please provide that.

[Kevin Butterworth]

I'm writing this down.

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

Thank you.

When did government personnel first arrive at the Zim Kingston?

[Kevin Butterworth]

I'm copying these down. I will make sure we get those answers to you.

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

Thank you.

According to the B.C. government website, on October 21, the Zim Kingston “advised Marine Communications and Traffic Services that rough weather had caused the ship to release cargo”. I think the term “release” raises the question of whether the release of the containers was intentional. Do you know if it was intentional?

[Kevin Butterworth]

I do not, and I certainly haven't heard that interpretation of the wording from the website before, so that is interesting.

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

On October 23, two days after the Zim Kingston initially reported problems, the vessel reported that “damaged containers on board had caught fire”. Can you tell the committee what was being done by the vessel's crew or the federal or provincial personnel to prevent the escalation of such containers and chemicals catching fire during the two days between October 21 and 23?

[Kevin Butterworth]

I think a lot of these questions would be better put to the unified command, to the federal authorities who were in charge of that. As I said earlier, we are in a supporting role on this, and they would have those answers at their fingertips.

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

Thank you.

As the provincial body responsible for environmental situations, do you know how much the Danaos corporation has paid for cleanup related to the accident?

[Kevin Butterworth]

I do not.

Would you like me to look into that for you?

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

Yes, please do, if you could.

Are the federal or provincial governments holding any additional funds for the ongoing cleanup?

[Kevin Butterworth]

To the best of my knowledge, on the provincial side they're not. We do have ongoing works along the cleanup areas that do take some of those into account.

Give me one second to look at my notes here.