According to the Canadian Maritime Law Association, the maritime lien is designed rather broadly in order to protect suppliers. According to them—and I say "them" because they of course represent their clients—it could happen that supplies were not ordered by the ship's owner or agent, but rather by a charterer or someone else. Under those conditions, the ship would be subject to the maritime lien. This is one of our concerns. I also believe, as my colleague Mr. Rysanek indicated, that by introducing a maritime lien for suppliers in Canadian law, we are moving away somewhat from international law, but are closing the gap with the situation in the United States. That is at the heart of most of the problems. At the Port of Montreal, if a ship is put up for sale by order of the Federal Court, American suppliers get paid before everyone else, and Canadian suppliers might not be paid back their receivables. We must re-establish a certain fairness between the situation in Canada and that in the United States.
