Natural Resources Committee on March 26th, 2015

[Jonathan Timlin]

Yes, sure. I suspect I'll be unpacking boxes for the first week.

I mentioned earlier my passion for engaging Canadians, for helping Canadians understand our processes, and for ensuring that Canadians are aware of the work the board does on their behalf to protect the safety of the public and protect the environment. I intend to be out speaking to municipalities, community groups, first responders, people on the ground, and aboriginal groups as well, absolutely, so that I can help them understand the work we do, answer any questions, and bring any information back to the office as part of the chair's broader initiative to continuously improve the board.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Guy Caron]

You have about two minutes left.

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

Two minutes?

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Guy Caron]

Yes. These are five-minute rounds. You can share if you wish.

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

Do any of you have any other questions?

[Ryan Leef, Conservative, Yukon, YT]

Yes, we all do.

[Joan Crockatt, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

May I?

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

I'll pass it over to Joan.

[Joan Crockatt, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I think that Canadians are very interested in hearing about Keystone XL because it's been in the news so much. I suspect this new bill will impact Keystone XL, should it ever go ahead. I'm wondering if you could please enlighten us as to how this new bill will affect that pipeline.

[Jonathan Timlin]

Thank you very much, Ms. Crockatt. I would be happy to answer that question.

You will know that the bill includes a provision around absolute liability. There's a $1-billion absolute liability limit that would apply to companies operating one or more pipelines that, individually or in the aggregate, have the capacity to transport at least 250,000 barrels of oil per day. Certainly my understanding is that Keystone XL would exceed that amount, so the absolute liability limit would apply.

Indeed, other provisions in the bill would also require the company to maintain financial resources at a minimum to meet its absolute liability limit. It's the law of general application. But the provisions are quite clear: those companies that meet the threshold will have that $1-billion absolute liability limit apply.

I would also add, because I know that it's been a point of some discussion in the media and elsewhere, that the bill provides for that $1-billion absolute liability limit for companies that meet that threshold, but it provides for the development of regulations to establish absolute liability limits for every other pipeline company that the NEB regulates.

[Joan Crockatt, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Thank you very much.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Guy Caron]

Ms. Charlton, you have five minutes.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Thank you very much.

We had a bit of a discussion around social licence. so I just want to get back to public accountability and transparency for a bit. Under this bill, you have pretty broad powers to investigate an accident, and there's some latitude in how you proceed with those investigations.

It's not clear to me from reading the act what your responsibilities are with respect to making the public aware of your conclusions of those investigations and whether there's a report back to Parliament. How do you disseminate the information to the public? Will there be any criteria set by you as to when you launch an investigation? Will those criteria be public? I wonder if you could just spend a minute on that.

[Jonathan Timlin]

Thank you very much, Ms. Charlton.

Indeed, I'll be happy to answer that.

I listened to the testimony a couple of days ago from the officials at NRCan around investigation powers. The powers to investigate an incident exist in the act today and are not being amended as a result of this act, insofar as there's going to be one additional change. The one additional change relates to abandoned pipelines. Currently the definition of “pipeline” in the NEB Act doesn't apply to abandoned pipelines. The board's jurisdiction ends when the pipeline has been granted an order to abandon. What this bill did was look through all the different provisions of the bill where the government felt there was a need to have board oversight over abandoned pipelines and added those to the various provisions.

One provision it added the oversight function to was with respect to the ability to do investigations, so we have the ability to conduct investigations into incidents involving pipelines as defined currently under the bill, but also abandoned pipelines.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

But what is the mandated reporting out of your investigations?

[Jonathan Timlin]

Well, there's an investigation in every incident. Every time there's an incident, there's an investigation. We work closely with the Transportation Safety Board that—

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

What do you report out and how?

[Jonathan Timlin]

On the reporting of investigations, I'm certainly aware that large investigations are reported out on our website.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Okay. So you don't report through the minister to the House in any way?

[Jonathan Timlin]

Our annual reports provide information as well about the work we do and the investigations we've done.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

When you say that “large investigations” are reported on your website, what's your criteria for “large”?

[Jonathan Timlin]

I'm going to look for some assistance from Dr. Steedman, because he and I had chatted about this yesterday.

[Dr. Robert Steedman]

It would be normal for the board to publish the result of any safety investigation and certainly all the large ones that have been done. The Transportation Safety Board has the first right of refusal to investigate, and if they don't, then we do. Smaller ones might be aggregated into our environmental and safety protection dashboard. We now post everything online.

In one way or another, anything that's relevant to safety and improved practices would be posted. Often we may send out technical bulletins to the industry at large. If, early in an investigation, an important finding is encountered that we think is relevant to safety, we may issue a notice to companies, for example. Those are all posted on our website.

[Josée Touchette]

In addition, we have the annual report of the board that is made public, and as we file our departmental results report we also provide information in there on the activities that have been undertaken by the board.

Our chair, Peter Watson, wants to make sure that as much information is available online...so we are looking at improving our website to add additional information in that regard.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

So it's not just a reporting of “we investigated incident X”? It will be much more detailed than that?