Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I join my colleagues both in welcoming you to committee and in thanking you for being here.
This has been a very interesting review of this legislation. I am encouraged by your responses to my colleague's question at the beginning of the questioning when you mentioned things like the fact that ambiguity has been addressed and that jurisdictional uncertainty will decrease. Certainly, that speaks to the hierarchy of responsibilities which I think has been addressed in the drafting of this legislation.
We've also noted that this has taken a long time. It has taken at least 10 or 12 years to get this legislation to this point. One of the things I've picked up on from you, Ms. Pike, is I think your statement was that fundamentally you didn't think there would be any big changes, but there would be more teeth with the legislation in place.
We heard last week from one of the witnesses that industry has been developing its own health and safety standards where current health and safety legislation has been insufficient or somewhat non-existent. I want to get a sense from you of what steps were taken by industry and the regulators to ensure that the offshore workers were better prepared and equipped to deal with health and safety issues during that time when we didn't have this legislation.