Mr. Chair, I would like to answer that first. Afterwards, Mr. Landry may want to add to that.
If a disaster were to occur,
it's the operators who have the primary first responsibility. They have to have equipment in place, and they have to have a plan in place to deal with it. In the first few hours it would be the operator. The board has the oversight. So for example in any of these cases it would be the board that would also step in and provide direction, but it would be the operator who would be responsible.
If the event grew to the extent that the operator was having trouble dealing with it, the offshore board would then call for assistance from a regional response corporation. This would bring in more resources from other operators and would bring in more equipment. So again it's a tiered response. You would find more equipment and more support coming in. You would find the coast guard; Transport Canada would be playing a role; Environment Canada would be playing a role; Fisheries and Oceans would be brought in. We do have emergency plans in place at the federal level. As an example, I would mention one in Natural Resources Canada. We do have a series of environmental management plans. Plan 9, which is the one dealing with offshore, was updated last September. So our plan on dealing with offshore emergencies in Natural Resources Canada was updated last fall.
We did actually have an exercise on March 25 of this year. It was before the gulf incident. It was one we conducted jointly with the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board. We simulated an incident, and it was what we call a tabletop exercise, where there was nothing actually happening out in the ocean, but we had a walk-through, a number of stages where different information was brought in, different developments. It simulated an actual disaster to see how the participants would respond to it.
If it were a major one, you would find that Public Safety Canada would get engaged. They have an emergency operations centre. Their emergency operations centre would swing into action, as would ours. We have an emergency operations centre in our department.
You would find a network across government that is there and is in place, and that's how the activities of the various departments would be coordinated.