Fisheries Committee on Jan. 20th, 2022

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

That's precisely it, Mr. Cormier.

The motion makes room for a study, not a guess or a suggestion. Once we have heard from the various stakeholders and witnesses, the study will bring a range of things to light. We are hearing concerns from people in the community.

In my opinion, this motion is a priority. I hope that it will be unanimously supported by the members of the committee. There is really an imminent danger of loss of quota, particularly for fisher owners. That is what concerns us most.

We agree with you, and I hope the whole committee agrees with you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you.

Go ahead, Mr. Morrissey.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

Mr. Chair, could we have a brief suspension? This motion just came in. It's a good motion, but I just want to make sure that I fully understand where this is going. Maybe we could have a few moments' suspension so we could discuss it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

We'll suspend for a couple of minutes and get back to it after that time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Is there any further discussion on the motion?

(Motion agreed to on division)

Thank you, Madame Desbiens.

Madam Barron, you're next on the list, even though you weren't here the other day. Mr. Bachrach had put his hand up to put one forward, but we just didn't get to him in time, so you get to do it yourself.

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

That's great. Thank you, Mr. Chair. That answers my question. My question was whether it was put forward in the previous meeting, so that's great.

The motion we are putting forward has been resent. Just to clarify, Mr. Chair, have you received a written copy?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Is it the one that you put forward for your notice of motion?

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

Yes.

There's a slight change, which I'm told was resent in written form. I want to confirm that you have received it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Yes. Tina has given me the thumbs-up that everybody has received it.

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

That's great. Thank you very much.

Here's the motion that I'm bringing forward:

That pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), the committee undertake a study of marine cargo container spills on Canada's marine environment with regard to (i) the environmental impacts of cargo container spills; (ii) improving response times and efficacy to cargo spills; (iii) addressing jurisdictional gaps to improve collaboration with volunteer, charitable organizations, provincial and territorial agencies, municipalities, and Indigenous communities during spill responses; (iv) improving polluter responsibility and financial accountability; that no fewer than four meetings be allocated for this study; and that following this study the Committee present a report to the House.

To clarify, Chair, can I provide the rationale now?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Yes, you can.

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

Thank you.

This is a motion that I'm happy to bring forward. As many of you know, there was a recent cargo spill off the west coast of Canada with the Zim Kingston. Unfortunately, this recent spill in October resulted in 109 containers falling into our waters, and 105 of them—I should confirm that number—yes, 105 have sunk. We saw debris and containers washing up onto our shores.

Now, this is not an isolated incident. We had another spill in 2016, and three years after that we saw styrofoam items that should not be in our waters washing up on our shores.

The reason for bringing this motion forward is that we have seen that approximately 3,000 containers have fallen into the Pacific waters between September and December of last year. This is going to continue to increase, unfortunately, as transportation increases in our waters and as we inevitably see the impacts of climatic events within our oceans. With climate change, we're inevitably going to see storms like the one that caused the Zim Kingston spill.

We also heard from Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council president Judith Sayers, who wrote to transport minister Omar Alghabra to say, “The ongoing incident involving the container ship Zim Kingston has brought to light numerous shortcomings in the overall marine emergency response capacity for the west coast of Vancouver Island.”

This motion is attempting to address that issue so that we can understand how we can better provide a response to these spills and protect our coast and our waters.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Ms. Barron.

I see that a couple of people have their hands up for comments. Go ahead, Mr. Kelloway.

[Mike Kelloway, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

To MP Barron, thank you for this study. It's clearly defined, point by point by point. I'm appreciative of the context, the verbal context, and your study really highlights it quite well. I'm actually very interested in the study as well. With gratitude, I want to thank you for putting it forward.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Kelloway.

Next is Mr. Hardie.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

I would again ask for the clerk's advice on the scope of this particular study, because a lot of the regulations, etc., with respect to the safety of cargo handling, etc., would fall into Transport Canada, whereas of course the response is clearly an issue that would come to this committee in terms of the activities of the Canadian Coast Guard and the liaison with community groups up and down the coast.

It would be a shame to see a worthy study like this ruled out of order by the Speaker if we've strayed too far into somebody else's mandate. A reading of this or an opinion by the clerk might be useful at this point.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Go ahead, Tina.

[The Clerk]

I can confirm that, yes, the committee can study this matter for sure, but when we present reports and the Speaker finds that we're reporting on a subject that goes outside the mandate of the committee, it could be indeed ruled out of order.

We rely on our analysts. I see Thai and Michael with us today. They can certainly give some guidance as to the responsibilities of the department and the mandate.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

I don't know if Michael or Thai have any comment.

Go ahead, Michael.

[Michael Chalupovitsch, Committee Researcher]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

With regard to the scope or mandate of the committee, it's not my role to decide that; it's for the committee to decide in a vote. The oceans protection plan is run out of Transport Canada. However, DFO and the Canadian Coast Guard have a role to play in response to marine cargo incidents, just as the previous member explained. That's as far as I could guide the committee on that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Michael.

It touches on several departments, but the Minister of Fisheries certainly has some responsibility. The Coast Guard falls under that, as well as a lot of the responses. If it were up to me, I'd say yes, do the study, and if we report to the House and the Speaker deems it inadmissible from our committee, maybe we can argue the other way. As Mr. Kelloway and Mr. Hardie indicated, it seems to be a good study to do.

Are there any other comments?

Go ahead, Mr. Hardie.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Perhaps what we could do is carry out the study with the scope as is, and then when it's time to go through the report, try to identify areas where we may be stepping over a boundary and deal with it through edits to the report or whatever, or referral to the transport committee if necessary. I agree with everybody else. This is a worthy study and it's certainly worth looking into. I would hate to see it tossed out as being out of order.

We could maybe do some patches, fixes, hacks or whatever is required at the end of the process to make sure that everything works.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

That's where we'll lean heavily on Michael and Thai down the road.

I don't see any other hands up, other than Ms. Barron's.

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

I just wanted to clarify something. I appreciate the comments and the thoroughness of discussing how this looks moving forward.

I'm open to looking at how that might be presented in the end, as long as the work is done. The reality is that there's overlap between many of the committees, but the scope of what we're looking for through this motion falls very much within this committee. I would love to see us dig into this work and get things moving forward around it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Ms. Barron.

Seeing no more hands up for discussion, let's move to the vote.

(Motion agreed to)

That gets us to the end of our first list, so I'm going to ask people to use the “raise hand” function again to move on with further motions.

Go ahead, Mr. Perkins.