Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, thank you very much for the opportunity.
I suppose it's pretty obvious why I'm here. We build pipelines. We're interested in building them. But there's a lot more to the pipeline business for us than a couple of jobs putting some sticks of pipe in the ground.
A pipeline is an infrastructure link. It's a utility in effect, which links the upstream, the downstream, and the eventual place in which the extracted material is processed. For us, it means linking thousands of high-paid, high-skilled jobs in, say, Fort McMurray, with thousands of high-paid, high-skilled jobs in Quebec City, if energy east goes through, or in Saint John. We're really interested in this bill.
A failure to build pipelines has a net restraining effect on the industries that depend on it. If you don't have a pipeline, you can't stack up natural gas or oil or something else, in the hopes that somebody will find a way to get it to market. Pipelines are, and remain, the safest means of transporting hydrocarbons.
I don't want you to take my remarks to be a suggestion to just build them because that would be great for us. The truth is, we live here. The railroads that occasionally takes oil through the centre of most towns in the west—I'm from the Prairies—go through the centre of our communities. These are our jobs, but we're not prepared to sell out the environment for the sake of a couple of paycheques.
When I looked at the bill, I looked at it like you would look at a collective agreement. When you vote on a collective agreement, you vote on a number of things that are in there. There are some things I really like; there are some things I'm okay with, and there are other things that I thought maybe could be clarified a bit. At the end of the day, and on balance, what is being proposed here is at least a reasonable compromise that may well serve us in the long-term future.
Do some of the provisions require some clarity? I'm a lawyer, so I love to read this sort of stuff. I don't see an enormous issue of principle between the parties. I think the issues here are about deconflicting, enhancing, and otherwise looking at this body of amendments and trying to move it forward.
I have some suggestions. First of all, there are a number of provisions that require the National Energy Board, should it so choose, to do some things. One is to always use the best technology available. We agree. You should use the best technology to build the stuff, but the National Energy Board shouldn't specify what that technology is.
Furthermore, we agree and would support the National Energy Board being resourced appropriately to get the right people to do the right things at the right time.
With regard to the provisions that would allow the National Energy Board essentially to take command and control of an incident, I looked at that and thought about it for a while. In one of my other lives I was a naval officer. It is difficult to imagine sometimes, when you're sitting at a desk in an office a long ways away from the guy who's standing there with water coming down in a number of places, how much more difficult it is to make the right decision for the people who are on the scene.
To some degree, the pipeline operators may be in a better position to make decisions than the National Energy Board. Having said that, there should be a provision for the National Energy Board to be able to step in if people are not appropriately dealing with issues.
On the issue of absolute liability, the $1 billion, I don't see in there the removal of the common-law right to sue beyond the absolute limit based on fault or whatever else.
We're supportive of the polluter pays principle, and perhaps some of the discretionary things that are within the bill are appropriate in the circumstances. Sometimes we need to rely on people like the National Energy Board to make reasonable and rationed decisions, and we need to give them some discretion to do that. A suit of clothes that fits you perfectly before you gain 10 pounds needs to be let out occasionally. Maybe the National Energy Board can be the tailor for that.
Those are my remarks. I'll answer questions you may have.