Transport Committee on Feb. 11th, 2014

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Okay, but the point is that one of the things they say in their executive summary is that the taxpayer shouldn't be on the hook for pollution caused by transportation of noxious substances or of oil. We “should not bear any liability for spills in Canadian waters”.

You've admitted that greater than $185 million or $400 million, I'm not exactly sure which, would in effect be borne by Canadian taxpayers, whether it's through the government itself—the provincial, municipal, or the federal government—having to pay for a cleanup like the one going on in Lac-Mégantic now, or through individuals, with Canadian taxpayers paying themselves for damages that are beyond damages covered by the liability limits of $400 million.

Why would this recommendation from the expert panel not be a good thing?

[Tim Meisner]

Well, as I said, the expert panel made a recommendation specifically that there shouldn't be limits of liability, and how to do it, and we're examining that recommendation as it pertains to oil.

This pertains to chemicals and hazardous and noxious substances, so their recommendation really wasn't pertaining to this.

That particular panel is currently doing a review of HNS and will make further recommendations to improve the HNS system, and then we can take them under consideration when they conclude their report later this year.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Are we premature with this modification to the HNS system?

[Tim Meisner]

I don't think you're premature, because I think what you're giving Canadians access to under this bill is $400 million should an incident happen. That's $400 million which they don't have access to today.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

We don't have access to HNS today.

[Tim Meisner]

No. There's no regime in place for HNS. This is a first step.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Even though we're a signatory to the—

[Tim Meisner]

Well, the convention hasn't come into force yet.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Okay, so this is a little improvement but it's not the best improvement is what I guess—

[Tim Meisner]

I guess it's all in the eyes of the beholder whether it's—

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Okay—

[Tim Meisner]

It was based on international discussion and....

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

With regard to oil handling facilities and preparedness and prevention, etc., how will Transport Canada go about inspecting these facilities to ensure their compliance with the regulations when there is a new facility being planned or an existing facility is growing or changing?

We've heard from the Auditor General about rail safety that Transport Canada hasn't been doing a very good job of administering the rail safety regime. We want some assurances, I guess, or Canadians want assurances, that this suggestion that there needs to be compliance with a regime for oil handling will actually have, from Transport Canada, enough people, resources, and inspections to actually confirm compliance. How will that happen?

[Sylvain Lachance]

Well, once the regulations are in place, we'll have our workforce. Our inspectors will be equipped with policy procedures, work instructions, and training to go about and inspect the oil handling facilities.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Your time is up, Mr. Sullivan.

Ms. Young, you have five minutes.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

Thank you, witnesses, for being here today.

I'm from Vancouver, British Columbia. This is obviously of high interest both to my constituents and to the rest of Canada.

I think, as Mr. Sullivan has implied, that the regular person has no idea of what is in place and what we're striving to do in developing this world-class system. Might you be able to give us an overview of what's currently in place and what the government is doing towards working on developing this world-class system?

[Tim Meisner]

Just to be clear, when we're talking about a world-class tanker safety system, it's pertaining to the transport of oil by ships. We have developed a framework to define what a world-class system would be, and that framework consists of three components.

The first pillar is prevention measures, doing everything we can to possibly prevent the spill from happening in the first place. Those measures are contained in terms of the Canada Shipping Act, such as safety for ships, safety for crew, and provisions for oil handling facilities, ones that are existing and ones that are included in what's being proposed today. It also includes increased inspectors for inspections of ships, of tankers. It includes a program of national aerial surveillance, where we have an aircraft flying over ships to see that they are appropriately equipped to carry the fuel. Then the coast guard component of that would be to provide a safe navigation system. That's all in the first pillar of prevention.

The second pillar is preparedness and response. We currently have a regime in place where private sector response organizations, funded by the cargo owners, are prepared to respond to a spill, should it happen. That was the subject of the panel's report that was referred to earlier. They were commissioned to review our preparedness and response regime. In December they issued a report with 45 recommendations to the minister as to how to prepare and improve our response capacity in Canada.

Just as an aside, their basic recommendation is going from one where we have a standard capacity of 10,000 tonnes across the country to one that is more locally reflected based on the risk and conditions in a local area.

The third pillar that we have going towards a world-class tanker safety system is our liability and compensation regime.

Again, the first pillar is preventing the spill. The second is being prepared to clean it up if it should happen. The third is having enough compensation for those that may be impacted from a spill in the event it happens. The panel made a couple of recommendations on that one. We also have a separate study that does recommend improvements to our liability and compensation regime for spills from ships.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

Just to be clear, because there seems to be some confusion between oil spills and hazardous and noxious substances, HNS, can you clarify the differences between the two?

As well, what incidents have there been in Canada? Why do you say that $400 million is enough compensation, or enough of a ceiling?

[Tim Meisner]

The two regimes are different. When we talk about world class, we're just talking about oil, such as oil handling, bitumen, oil-going ships. The one that we are proposing today for the Marine Liability Act is very narrow. It's just chemicals or hazardous and noxious substances and just the liability aspect. It doesn't include prevention measures or response measures.

As to why I say $400 million is enough, I won't categorically say it's enough; what I will say is that internationally there's never been a chemical spill that has exceeded that amount in terms of claims.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

Just to be clear, are you saying “never”?

[Tim Meisner]

I believe never. That's internationally.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

What is the average, or perhaps the highest?

[François Marier]

I think it depends on where the spill took place. If you're looking at spills outside of the United States, there hasn't really been a spill that has exceeded even $200 million.

[Tim Meisner]

This is not oil. This is hazardous and noxious substances.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

Right.