That's a good question. In a way, yes it is. Some of the themes that have come up in this legislation—and I suspect a lot of this was formulated before I became commissioner—are familiar to me because they came through the inquiry process.
Yes, there are some things that dovetail. There were a lot of things, of course, that I wouldn't be involved in because I wasn't involved in offshore installation safety, although I did learn a bit about it during the process, and this deals with all sorts of aspects of offshore safety.
I would make one comment about safety offshore. If you think about it, the oil operators as much as anybody else want to see and have a safe operation, because if it's not safe, and if accidents and tragedies occur, they are very much under the gun. So they want to see it. I think the history worldwide has been that, in recent years particularly, oil operators have ensured safety in their operations. It was described by people in the industry to me in the hearings that in the last say 25 years—let's say since Piper Alpha in the North Sea—safety on the installations has improved hugely.
Where I think danger might lurk is not on the operators' own installations, but when contractors perhaps are engaged to do certain work over which the operators have a lesser degree of control. For instance, there have been two tragedies with helicopters in the Newfoundland and Labrador offshore. One was in 1985 when six people died after a helicopter crashed into the ice and disappeared. Then of course there's the one we're all familiar with when 17 people died and only one person was saved. These were done by contractors.
Now I hasten to say that the cause of the 17 deaths and the tragedy off Newfoundland four years ago didn't emanate from within Canada, in my view, and I can elaborate on that if anybody wants me to. Nevertheless it happened.