Wow, we could be here the rest of the day on that one, but I'll do my best to sum it up for you.
Essentially, the International Maritime Organization, which has been around since the 1950s, is the government of shipping. Canada is a very active member. There are 170 marine states that are members of the International Maritime Organization, and that's where most of the legislation surrounding the safety aspects of shipping originate. It's from there that they are taken into international law.
The decisions of the International Maritime Organization, and as I said, Canada is a very active member of that organization, would eventually finish up in front of Parliament in Canada and, if they are accepted, they will go forward into the Canada Shipping Act. From that point they become law, so whether they are Canadian ships or whether they are foreign-registered ships trading in Canadian waters, the obligation to fulfill the standards that are determined at the international level become compulsory in Canadian waters.
Beyond that, the next level down is the classification societies. These are Lloyd's Register, Det Norske Veritas, and so on. There are about a dozen international classification societies. They will oversee the design and construction of a ship. Throughout the life of a ship, they regularly inspect it for full compliance. Failure to comply fully will draw off trading rights for that vessel.
You go down the slide a little bit, and each flag state is also similarly obligated. The standards for all ships under the flag of that state, and it doesn't matter what the flag is, are the same: they are the International Maritime Organization standards for compliance.
Then you go to port state control in Canada. Port state control inspectors target vessels coming into Canadian waters, depending on the type of vessel and how long it has been since it last had an inspection. If there are any deficiencies on that vessel, Transport Canada has the perfect right to detain the vessel. They absolutely do that.
In terms of the vessels themselves, that's the standard of the vessels. Since the Exxon Valdez incident, double hulls have become mandatory. There are about half a dozen tankers still remaining in the world that are not double hulled. They are not allowed to trade in North American waters. There are some countries that will still allow them, such as India, Pakistan and, I believe,Taiwan. They still allow single hulled tankers to trade in their waters, but nobody else does.
Everything has to be double hulled. All vessels coming into Canada will be pre-vetted before they are accepted to charter oil to a company in Canada. There's a world database of the history of every tanker. Anybody looking to charter a particular tanker has full access to the history of that vessel. If there's anything there that they are not happy with, then they'll pass it off and go to another vessel. It's a very transparent system of ability for anybody looking to charter a vessel to see the history of that vessel before they decide to take it into a time charter.
Last but not least, in terms of the management of those ships when they come into Canadian waters, there are very strict guidelines with respect to escort tug pilot practices. The entire coastal waters of British Columbia are compulsory pilotage and, in the case of tankers, there are two pilots.