Thank you, witnesses.
The overview you've provided us, attached to the clause-by-clause analysis, states very clearly that the intent of the act is to set limits of liability. I guess that's what we're hearing, that there's an upper limit of $400 million essentially. It may be a little bit more than that in terms of the hazardous and noxious substances. We'll get to ship-source liabilities at some point in the future when that bill comes forward.
The expert panel on the ship-source liability regime has suggested as their recommendation 23 that the current limit of liability per incident—they're talking about the ship-source oil pollution fund—should be abolished. The fund should process and pay for all admissible claims subject to the consolidated revenue fund's consent to loans in favour of the ship-source oil pollution fund for amounts sufficient to allow all admissible claims to be paid to claimants.
The loans would then be reimbursed with interest to the consolidated revenue fund from future revenues of levies on oil transported by ship to, from, and within Canada. Would that be an appropriate way, if we can amend this bill, to put in a more effective limit on unlimited hazardous and noxious substance liability?