Natural Resources Committee on Dec. 9th, 2013

[Dr. Susan Dodd]

I would want to look at this more carefully. I think Chief Justice Hickman was responding to a circumstance that pertained to the early 1980s as the regulatory regime was taking shape. The problem he had was that the various powers were pulling apart.

I think Wells is referring to a completely different scenario,and given the Cullen report and even things that the Americans have had to do in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon gulf oil spill, I think a strong case can be made for an independent stand-alone safety organization.

If you talk to the people who work in health and safety for the offshore both in Nova Scotia and in Newfoundland, I bet you they would say that even given the flawed regulatory regime they've been working with up to now ,they could have done more if they had had more resources. You people know better than anyone else: you can have good laws, but if you don't have the resources to implement them....

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Speaking of the resources, but more to the point, what I wanted to get to was your point about political will. You've obviously been looking at this for quite a while. What's your sense of how you maintain that political will in the absence of disasters? Obviously, we want to refer to the Norwegian model, so to speak, of not requiring disasters to prompt us to do things.

You've talked about the idea of conferences on local hiring and training every three years. Are there other ways that come to your mind on how you maintain that political will?

[Dr. Susan Dodd]

I think it's ludicrous for our governments to think we can police these organizations. The technology moves too quickly, and we don't have the financial power to police them. If it turns into a conflict relationship whereby we're deluding ourselves into thinking we can effectively police them, I think it would be embarrassing for everyone.

I think the relationships have to be continuously forged. I don't have any further specifics, but again, the advisory council sounds like a good place to start, continuing to engage these organizations as fully as possible in the interests of the electorate.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Does anybody else want to answer that question about how you maintain the political will?

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Go ahead, Ms. Payne

[Lana Payne]

I think structures matter, particularly when we're talking about safety, and I think tripartite structures matter. We can't assume as workers that we know everything about safety, and we certainly can't assume as employers that we know everything about safety. That's why we have workplace safety committees. Everybody comes together. They bring in what's happening in the workplace, talk about it, and they find a way to try to make it better.

You actually need that at different levels, not just at the workplace level, but at the regulatory level as well. You have a place to come to do all of this.

I agree with the need to come together every three years to talk about regulation. I think that's a great idea. In Newfoundland and Labrador, they are now finally starting to do safety workshops with everybody in the room, post-flight 491.

Also, if you're not communicating almost on a regular basis, and finding a way to communicate, which is why structures are important, then what happened with the Ocean Ranger in terms of a design flaw just happened with the S-92.... This is many, many years apart, and we are still facing the exact same problem.

In the case of the S-92, it was studs. We knew there was a problem with those studs, because we almost had a crash the year prior in Australia, in which this problem was discovered. It was fixed there, and a directive went out to the manufacturer of the helicopter saying that they need to change these studs. Instead of it happening immediately, the regulators involved gave people a year, I think, to change these studs, instead of having immediate action, and because they gave them that amount of time, we lost 17 workers in the offshore.

These design flaws are still a problem, and we're not able to quickly react when something happens in one part of the world to make sure it doesn't happen somewhere else. Communication, as Commissioner Wells said throughout his report, with everybody involved in the industry is key, and structures are one of the ways in which we can achieve that.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you, Mr. Regan.

We'll go now to Ms. Block, followed by Mr. Allen, and then Mr. Cleary.

You have five minutes each, please.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

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.

[Barbara Pike]

I'm not sure about industry so much as what the regulators have done in setting up occupational health and safety committees. I was involved in one 10 years ago, probably, in a meeting in Newfoundland. At that time I was in another position with a think tank here in Nova Scotia. I was asked to attend a meeting in Newfoundland which brought together occupational health and safety committees, as well as regulators from Norway, to talk about occupational health and safety and the committees and the various reporting and risk assessments.

Those committees have been set up, and they have had various safety forums in Newfoundland with the workers, and also here in Nova Scotia, depending on what ship they're working on, but on the rigs, on Sable, and on Deep Panuke, when it's commissioned, and also on those in Newfoundland. That's really what they've been doing, and they continue to.... My experience has been that the staff at the boards are in constant touch with other international regulators and will learn from them. There's a clear exchange of information constantly.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

Thank you.

We know that Bill C-5 mandates the involvement of workers in the safety processes. We heard again last week that workers can benefit from being actively involved in health and safety in those processes, in other words, helping to create the culture of safety that we've spoken about. I believe that goes well beyond reporting dangerous work situations or conditions, or refusing to work if they feel there is a dangerous situation.

I'm wondering if each one of you could speak to this and share how important you think it is that workers are involved in the health and safety processes and moving beyond those two issues that I cited.

[Barbara Pike]

It is critically important that workers are involved, to see that what they do makes a difference. Again, it goes back to we can have as many regulators as we want, as many safety officers as we want, as many rules as we want, but unless it's instilled and unless people truly believe it, then they're not going to live by those rules.

I'll use an example. I was at a conference in Moncton on TransCanada's energy east project. Suncor was there as well. People started buzzing to go up because three of their workers were driving from one site to another, stopped to get gas, and when they were filling the windshield washer tank, they spilled a bit, and they had to report that as an environmental spill. Most people wouldn't even think about it, but that's how strongly it has to be enforced. It's not only that workers have the right to refuse, but workers are also going to have to understand that they can be reported if they don't follow the safety rules.

That is where you get a culture of safety, and that goes into all of it. I can walk into a member company's parking lot and I can tell you whether they have a culture of safety in that workplace or whether they're just paying lip service to safety. It comes in everywhere, from how they park their cars, to how things are set up, to what signage they have around their office buildings.

[Dr. Susan Dodd]

I'm not happy with the way I responded to the question about political will earlier. The political will is always rooted in the community, and for the community to be able to express the level of acceptable risk. Right? You can't eliminate risk.

The final decision on the level of risk should rest with the community. The only way for that to happen is if there's effective communication about the work conditions. The only way that can happen is if workers are involved in the safety committees.

I think the question of political will is rooted in the safety committees and having workers directly involved in discussing with everyone else. That's how to develop a safety culture.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you, Ms. Block.

Mr. Allen, for up to five minutes.

[Mike Allen, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses for being here today. I appreciate your testimony.

Ms. Dodd, I appreciated very much your personal story, the very helpful journey you've had on this, and sharing that with the committee, .

When you look at it from that perspective, you said some of these things take a long time to change for various reasons. We talk about governments, and then back and forth between the provinces and the feds on this. We've been 10 or more years in the making of this one. We've already had the mirror legislation passed in the two legislatures in the provinces.

I'll start with Ms. Payne.

In spite of the comments with respect to the overall regulator, and I'll get to that in a moment, do you see any reason that we shouldn't move forward with passing this legislation now rather than creating another football going back and forth?

[Lana Payne]

Oh, God, no, you have to pass it. We can't go back.

I just think we could be so much further advanced if the full commitment had been there when we started this process. You can imagine where we would be now, 10 years later, I think, in terms of lessons learned.

I agree, too, that workers have to be part of the process. That's a no-brainer. But in Commissioner Wells' report, and I think this is key to this question of laws are important, we could also be doing things without having you tell us that this is the law. If there was enough will among stakeholders, you could really build a lot of great best practices.

Commissioner Wells talked about what he referred to as the Swiss cheese model of safety. You probably have heard about it before. Workers certainly are one of the ways we can stop and plug some of the gaps that we can see, if they're properly engaged and if there are proper communications in that regard. There's no reason there can't be more dialogue happening among stakeholders. We should not need to have a government statute that says that this is what should occur. As adults we should be doing this anyway. There are enough examples in the world. Yet in order to get the parties to take it seriously, it seems we do need to have legislation and structures to support that happening.

So, yes, you need to pass it, is the short answer.

[Mike Allen, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Are there any other comments from the other two?

[Barbara Pike]

Oh, pass it.

[Dr. Susan Dodd]

Yes, and also have a stronger commitment to research and development that I do not think will come out of industry spontaneously.

[Mike Allen, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Okay, thank you.

I'd like to take it to the chief safety officer. When we had our witnesses in last week from the offshore boards, as well as the representative from the operators, and when you read through the bill, it is clear the safety officer has a lot of power, which is awesome. Basically, they can shut it down if they see anything that is a clear or present danger to anybody.

Do each of you three agree that's very clear in the provisions of this agreement, that they can shut it down as an independent safety officer?

[Lana Payne]

It's clear. Actually, in Norway a worker can shut down the rig, based on their legislation. I think it's important that the safety officer has that kind of power. Whether or not he'll use it is another matter.

[Barbara Pike]

I think it's important they have that power.

[Dr. Susan Dodd]

There's another place where political will can come in. In the event that someone does shut down an operation, they should be supported in that.

[Mike Allen, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Okay, thank you.

One of your comments, Ms. Payne, was on keeping up, and sometimes it's hard for government, even legislatively. It took us 10 years to get to where we are today, and keeping up is always going to be a challenge, even in regulatory. The chief safety officer can actually do some substitutions. I think you said they're interfacing with Norway and others all the time so that they're learning the best practices, the safety equipment, all those types of things, so if there's something new and better that's coming along, they can actually do a substitute, rather than waiting for the regulation.

How helpful is that?