Natural Resources Committee on Dec. 2nd, 2013

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you, Mr. Regan.

We'll start the first five-minute round with Mr. Allen, Ms. Crockatt, and the New Democrat member, Ms. Duncan.

Go ahead, please, Mr. Allen, for up to five minutes.

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

Thank you, Chair, and thank you to our witnesses for being here today.

Just to get to a little higher level, if I understand correctly, we're talking about, roughly, a 264- or 270-page bill. If I recall correctly around 200 pages of this is devoted to things we would typically see in an occupational health and safety act. It reads with the setting up of the committees, the processes, the meetings, the identifying of the dangers, and all the appeal mechanisms. That's generally what this is for the majority of the bill.

Is that correct?

[Jeff Labonté]

It's correct. It's incorporating existing practices.

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

It's occupational. That's great.

With that in mind, we have gone through 10 years of this process, and you have indicated quite a number of things we have had to do, and we have gone a long way. I appreciate your comments with respect to being open to the ideas in the Wells report and having that discussion.

However, as a committee I guess we would have to be very thoughtful and very conscious of making any substantive amendment to this, because I would suspect that anything that would have to be amended in this bill would have to go back to the provinces.

[Jeff Labonté]

Correct.

While I won't debate the will of Parliament to determine what is legislation, any amendments in the bill that are of a substantive nature will have to be reflected in the provincial bills for them to take force and then for the new regime to be in place, if you will, for the occupational health and safety in the workplace in the offshore.

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

Thank you.

I appreciated your comments when you said that the chief safety officer can shut down something if there's a dangerous operation. My experience on construction projects was always that way, even though the safety officer reported to the project manager who was on any specific site. Essentially, they had a tremendous amount of power. If there was a danger out there, they could actually shut the installation down. I'm glad you said that, because that can happen here.

This bill also clarifies that role. As you pointed out in your comments, it can't be the CEO and it can't be any other officer. It has to be a stand-alone officer. That increases the transparency.

How would the person be selected, and roughly how long would a person serve?

[Jeff Labonté]

That's actually a question that my colleague who will be following me will be able to best lay out, in terms of the tenure of the safety officer. Each of the boards is slightly different in their composition.

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

Okay. We can ask them that.

You did say one thing, though, in your comments. You said, “an operator satisfies”...“also be granted the power to allow regulatory substitutions”.

Do you have an example of what one of those substitutions could be in that case? Has there been any case previously where not having this power caused some issues offshore?

[Jeff Labonté]

One of the examples I could speak to is when a worker arrives and punches the time clock and begins, if you will, on the job. They're physically standing in St. John's, and they are then transported, frequently by helicopter, or by ship, to the operation. When they get on that helicopter, they fall under the jurisdiction of the Minister of Transport, who is responsible for the safety of passengers while in transit on any vehicle in Canada, whether it's by air, ship, rail, train, you name it.

For most of us when we get on a helicopter, we may not need an underwater breathing apparatus. We may not need very special training. We may not need special circumstances that would allow us to be a passenger in that aircraft. But in the offshore, it has been established that there's a requirement that people have the appropriate training, that there is appropriate equipment. There are special requirements that are different from the regulations that support a person in transit in a helicopter.

This is an example where the layering of additional requirements has occurred. Should there be a new technique for survival, or breathing, or any other aspect that would be provided that's better than, or at least as good as, the existing one, then the chief safety officer may, in that instance, choose to accept the substitution.

There are really two things at play here. One would be adding to something, so allowing that more can be done. The other example would be changing from one thing to another, to accept it for being equivalent.

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

The CSO is someone who could actually make that decision. Before, I guess it would have been a haphazard type of thing as to who would have made that decision.

[Jeff Labonté]

If I could be more upfront about it, I think it's more that regulations and regulation-making take a fair bit of time. Frequently new techniques and new technologies emerge, and you want to be able to accept things when they occur, long before perhaps the regulations catch up to spell out that you need a certain piece of equipment.

The chief safety officer would know by common practice and by standards technologically that are used in different countries in different circumstances that a new technique is there. Even though the regulation spells out that you have to wear a certain vest, a new vest is on the market and is actually safer. They may make that substitution without waiting for the regulations to be amended to accept the new vest, if you will.

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

That's very helpful.

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you, Mr. Allen.

Now to Ms. Crockatt for up to five minutes.

[Joan Crockatt, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Thank you very much, Chair.

I want to thank the officials for coming. It's always great when we can have you here to ask questions directly. I appreciate that.

First, I want to follow up on Ms. Block's comments earlier on the development of Canada's offshore resources being essential not only to residents of Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia, but to all Canadians. The public needs and wants to be assured it's being done with appropriate regulations so they know it's being done safely.

I think this is a critical piece of legislation. You talked about Bill C-5 having the most strident workplace and environmental standards. I'm wondering if you can tell us how the standards that are included in it compare to those in other countries.

[Jeff Labonté]

I'd have to say that we compare in a number of ways.

One of the ways that Canada sets itself among the appropriate peers globally, and we would consider those to be Norway, the United Kingdom, Australia, and others, is that much of our regulatory regime and the regime behind it is focused on safety. It's focused on the environment. It's focused on responsible resources.

It is something in which we use a lot of goal-oriented regulation, if you will. We spell out what we desire as the outcome, as opposed to saying that you must do this, you must do that, which is usually termed prescriptive regulation. Our regulatory system has the ability to evolve and to stay current. The previous comment on substitution is an example of that.

Certainly, when some of the studies and some of the reviews were done after the tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico, Canada's system was compared by a consulting firm for the U.S. department with the U.K. and Norway. Among the three other peers, we were seen to be the most substantive in what the system covered and the most thorough in terms of our approach to regulation and our approach to looking at these areas—

[Joan Crockatt, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Of the top countries in the world?

[Jeff Labonté]

Of the top countries in the world.

[Joan Crockatt, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Okay.

Is it fair to say that our health and safety regulations are superior to those of many of the countries with which we're competing and to those of suppliers who are actually supplying Canada?

[Jeff Labonté]

Well, I would certainly say there are certain countries that do offshore and have what appear to be less stringent regulations and regimes, but for the most part, there is sometimes a lack of transparency and specificity in their regimes, such as, for example, Nigeria and some of the countries that are producing offshore.

I'm always careful not to say that we're better than or less than, but certainly we feel very strongly that our regime stands up to scrutiny. It's transparent. It's clear. Everything is laid out. It spells everything out. There's a consultation process when we make changes. There's input and there are intervenors and processes that allow us to continue to move forward.

There's a broader community globally of all the regulators. My colleagues from the boards may speak to this. Best practices are shared among the international regulatory forums. Annually, there is an exchange between the head regulatory agencies around the world that are responsible, and they make recommendations for improvement in areas of interest to address.

[Joan Crockatt, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Getting back to the Wells inquiry, there is a component here whereby workers can refuse to take transportation if safety is a consideration. Is that correct? Can you elaborate on that for us?

[Jeff Labonté]

Yes. Workers may refuse to step onto an aircraft or a ship and be transited to work if they feel that it's unsafe.

[Joan Crockatt, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Do they face reprisals? How is that different from what was the case?

[Jeff Labonté]

Well, we're enshrining that in law.

It's certainly a practice that if there are concerns, there are committees now that look at these issues and ensure that there's a regular dialogue about the length of the flights. There is a high order of scrutiny, if you will, given the tragedy that occurred, so it's now being written into the statute as it's proposed.

[Joan Crockatt, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

My time is probably coming short, so can I ask you about incident Nimbyism? I think that in some cases it becomes easy for someone to say, “This isn't my area and it's not my responsibility.” How is that addressed in Bill C-5?

[Jeff Labonté]

Well, it's addressed at the simplest level by saying that the operator of the facility is responsible, period. Then there are processes that are established from a governance point of view and that allow workers to be part of the decision-making with the chief safety officer and the officials from the board, who regulate, as well as the company that operates, so it's a consultative open conversation around concerns about safety.

Those things can be, quite frankly, ideas and discussion about how to make things safer. They can be concerns about how we've seen a number of people experience muscle injuries or smaller forms of injuries and how we need to consider whether those systemic issues are to be addressed with designs of protocols, facilities, techniques, and things that are going on. Then there are broader things about what people are concerned about.