Thank you to our witnesses for appearing not only in person, but by video conference. We appreciate your submissions.
I want to start by clarifying a few things here. First of all, Bill C-3 relates, as I sort of said in my intervention earlier, to establishing our compliance, our ratification if you will, of the HNS protocol of 2010. In other words, it's going to allow us now to move from what we heard Tuesday is a system of simple general liability in the event of an HNS spill to a much more robust regime of up to about $400 million in combined coverage.
This bill, which originated as Bill C-57 in 2013, actually predates the tanker safety expert panel's work, both on its recommendations on the oil regime, and on its continuing work on HNS. It's meant to plug a gap that currently exists.
Can any of the witnesses tell me what the most expensive HNS spill is on record? Is there one that has exceeded $200 million? We're not talking about oil such as in Exxon Valdez; we're talking about things like vegetable oil, potash, those types of substances. Can anybody name one that's over $200 million?