Evidence of meeting #10 for Natural Resources in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was workers.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Assistant Professor of Humanities and Author, University of King's College, Nova Scotia, As an Individual
I agree with both responses: a review every five years, yes, and an ongoing commitment to adapting.
NDP
Linda Duncan NDP Edmonton Strathcona, AB
Great.
Actually, Ms. Pike, that is a good point. A five-year review does not preclude the governments and the regulatory authorities and so forth from reopening and seeking amendments. Good for you for raising that.
Professor Dodd, you raised my favourite topic. I used to be an environmental enforcer. I'm a broken record on this: it's fine to have good legislation, but if you don't have a commitment and a strategy for effective enforcement, then it's of little value. It wasn't me who first said that. It was a former Conservative member of Parliament in the Mulroney regime which actually tabled the first enforcement compliance policy. In their environmental legislation, they required that the provinces, if they wanted to claim equivalency, had to have equivalent enforcement compliance policies.
I want to thank you for raising that issue.
Perhaps I could have a comment from all three of you. Do you think that even if it wasn't added into the legislation, it could be a topic for consideration, if there is a five-year review and every five years thereafter, of the requirement for an audit now before the legislation is even in effect, of the capacity for staffing and skills? This is to be sure that we can implement the legislation to the level that you hope.
Assistant Professor of Humanities and Author, University of King's College, Nova Scotia, As an Individual
That sounds fine to me.
Chief Executive Officer, The Maritimes Energy Association
It sounds interesting, and I'm sure it's something that the boards can probably provide to you quite readily.
Atlantic Director, Unifor
To add to that, I was just reading about the aforementioned international regulator conference. The latest one was in June of this year, when the CEO of the Australian regulator spoke. She was very strong about the need to have training expertise and properly resourced regulators. I suggest all of you have a look at her remarks. They were very good. Equating worker safety with the environment is quite worthwhile if we're looking at trying to advance what we have here in Canada.
NDP
Linda Duncan NDP Edmonton Strathcona, AB
That's great feedback.
I think it was Professor Dodd who made a point—and this is invaluable not only for offshore work, but certainly also for what we're seeing in train traffic, and so forth—about ensuring that the rules and the regulations they're under, and the procedures, be directed at preventing incidents. We don't just have changes, wait for a disaster, and then have a knee-jerk reaction. I appreciated that. Actually, I think all three of you made recommendations for future legislation, i.e., there could be changes, but even without additional legislation.
I just wanted to ask if the three of you also provided submissions to the governments of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. We're told they have already signed off on legislation so it's very awkward for the federal government to bring forward any amendments. I'm wondering if any or all three of you proposed any of these issues to those two governments, what the response was, and if you think they would be open in the future to strengthening the legislation along the lines you were suggesting.
Chief Executive Officer, The Maritimes Energy Association
We did make our position known to the Nova Scotia government. We did not present to the Newfoundland and Labrador government. For the most part, our member companies are in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, although they operate, obviously, in both offshore jurisdictions.
Yes, I basically presented the same as what I've said to you here.
Assistant Professor of Humanities and Author, University of King's College, Nova Scotia, As an Individual
I did not present.
Atlantic Director, Unifor
I did. We made recommendations around the right to refuse, because the consultation documents actually had a watered-down version compared with what we have now.
We also recommended the advisory council, which we're pleased to see, and an independent safety officer, which we felt was critical. Obviously we recommended the stand-alone safety authority.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Leon Benoit
Thank you, Ms. Duncan.
We now have Mr. Zimmer, followed by Mr. Julian, and Ms. Crockatt.
Go ahead, please, Mr. Zimmer.
December 9th, 2013 / 5:05 p.m.
Conservative
Bob Zimmer Conservative Prince George—Peace River, BC
Thank you, everybody, for appearing at the natural resources committee today.
I have a question for Barbara specifically. As I've said at committee before, I worked in the oil and gas industry when I was a young guy, about 19 years of age. Since then the industry has changed quite dramatically, although it was safe even at that particular moment. I think 1985 was when I entered the industry.
I saw a dramatic shift from what I considered to be already safe to extremely safe. We had safety officers who would go around regularly to monitor and make sure practices were done the way they were supposed to be done. I saw a dramatic shift.
What can you say to speak to that, you know, from the days of the Ocean Ranger and that? Have you seen a considerable shift in safety since then?
Chief Executive Officer, The Maritimes Energy Association
I think I see a shift in safety. It just continues on a year-to-year basis, both onshore and offshore. In the energy industry in general, the oil and gas companies have driven that.
One of the things that, as we go around—remembering that our membership is the supply chain—we have supplier information sessions for wind projects, for the Maritime Link Muskrat Falls project, or for one of the offshore projects. One of the things that all of the procurement people will say up top to any of the contractors, anybody in the supply chain, when we are taking a look at bids, is that number one on the list is safety. If you do not have a safety culture, if you do not have the proper registrations, if you do not have the people who are properly trained, then you're not going to get a contract. You're not going to be on the bidders list.
I think it continues to improve. I've seen it going from a sort of lip service to really being the culture of safety, from the industry, the actual operators, and now we're seeing that in the supply chain. If you go to the larger companies that are involved in the supply chain, their safety programs in their offices and on their work sites are improving dramatically. That's beginning to ripple down into even the smaller mom-and-pop operations.
Conservative
Bob Zimmer Conservative Prince George—Peace River, BC
Right.
Can you explain a little bit about...? You talked about incentive. You mentioned going from lip service to where it was something you had to do as opposed to something you wanted to do.
Over the number of years that I was in the industry, and now as a member of Parliament, I've seen it shift from where you had to do it because you had to, to where you really wanted to do it. It became part of the company mantra, in a way, that ultimately, because of worker safety, things would be better. It was even better for the bottom line. It was really better all around.
Can you explain the incentive, in terms of a company perspective, to the safety regime we have today?
Chief Executive Officer, The Maritimes Energy Association
One of the things that has been mentioned to me, not only by operators but by the larger contractors, is that it's not only the job to make sure that every person who goes to work in the morning comes home safe at the end of the day—that is ultimately important—but the other thing is that the bottom line, the cost, of not having applicable culture safety, of not having those safety rules, is astronomical. They will say that on a regular basis. Whether that is because of increased costs for benefits, for insurance—just those losses—in the end it's about making sure everyone comes home safely, and it does affect the bottom line.
Assistant Professor of Humanities and Author, University of King's College, Nova Scotia, As an Individual
May I speak to that briefly?
Conservative
Bob Zimmer Conservative Prince George—Peace River, BC
I actually have a question for you, Ms. Dodd, if you don't mind. My time is limited, and I have a question for you.
Certainly my sympathies go out to your family for what you have lost. I have had members of my family in the industry and haven't lost them. They've come home safe and have felt safe.
I want to ask about your family. Does your family still work in the industry? How do they feel with regard to the same question that I asked Ms. Pike about incentive? How have you seen safety change in the last 30 years in the industry? Do you have members of your family that can attest to that? What's your position on what you've seen?
Assistant Professor of Humanities and Author, University of King's College, Nova Scotia, As an Individual
One of my brothers used to teach hydrography at the University of Southern Mississippi, so he worked through that side of the industry. Otherwise nobody in my family is working in the industry. My father was in the air force, so on the search and rescue side we always kept kind of plugged in there.
On the changes, it is very hard to imagine that things could be worse than they were in 1982 on the Ocean Ranger. There is no polite word for how bad that was in terms of the mismanagement of that rig, and not just around basic operations of that oil rig and into the evacuation problem.
I would like to say something about the costs.
Assistant Professor of Humanities and Author, University of King's College, Nova Scotia, As an Individual
The actual cost to the ocean drilling and exploration company was that they paid $20 million in lawsuits.
Conservative
Bob Zimmer Conservative Prince George—Peace River, BC
I'm sorry. I need to finish my question because I'm out of time here.