Evidence of meeting #35 for Transport, Infrastructure and Communities in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was shipping.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:50 p.m.
Conservative
Chungsen Leung Conservative Willowdale, ON
Very good.
One of my colleagues mentioned that some ferries are used for transporting cargo, rail, whatever, Then in a way that comes under the whole shipping industry, whether you transport passengers, rail, cargo. I don't think we normally transport liquid bulk by ferry, but we certainly do it via containerized and palletized bulk.
12:55 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Ferry Operators Association
No, I think that's good. Thank you.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Larry Miller
Thank you.
The last question goes to Mr. Yurdiga, and welcome to the committee.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
David Yurdiga Conservative Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB
Thank you very much.
According to the Transportation Safety Board, over the past 10 years there has been a decline in the number of marine accidents, which include shipping accidents and accidents aboard vessels.
Is this attributed to regulations, safety management systems, or is it an advancement in technology that assists in preventing these accidents?
12:55 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Ferry Operators Association
A safety management system is something that we're promoting and pushing and saying is important and should be implemented everywhere, but people have a tendency to think that because you've devised a system, everything will be solved.
You're dealing with people operating ships. You're dealing with individuals and when you have an accident you're always dealing with issues involving human error. That's often what's happening.
I think the reduction in accidents is often due to training and awareness of issues, and I think that's where you're seeing that. You can regulate and over-regulate a sector. I'm not entirely sure that's always the healthy thing to do. In my presentation I mentioned that if there were one thing we were griping about a little, it is that the regulations are not very clear and on occasion confusing. A review of the regulations is really warranted to make them a little clearer. If that were the case, I think it would help.
So it's really due to training that you're seeing a reduction in the number of incidents.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
Jeff Watson Conservative Essex, ON
Yes, I have a couple of additional questions.
Do ferries have the right to refuse any specific cargo?
12:55 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Ferry Operators Association
They do and they often do, yes.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
Jeff Watson Conservative Essex, ON
That's different from rail.
Based on some of your testimony about the difficulties of voluntary disclosure of truck cargo, Mr. Sullivan asked whether Ms. Legars's industry has a problem with the honesty of truckers.
I want to be clear whether the issue of disclosure is one of honesty by truckers, or are we talking about perhaps not knowing what the cargo is, or the paperwork they carry not being specific such that a truck driver might not know what's on board?
12:55 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Ferry Operators Association
Honestly, it could be any of the three. I'm not pointing a finger in one direction specifically, but in terms of your first question, if we have the right to refuse, the policy for the majority of our operators is that “if you don't know, they don't go”. If you don't know what's in there or you're not sure, they don't go on board, and I think that's important for the safety of our passengers.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Larry Miller
Okay, we're down to a few minutes, so Ms. Legars and Mr. Buy, if there's something that wasn't brought up today that you think the committee should hear, I'll give you a couple of minutes each to do that.
Ms. Legars, I'll start with you.
12:55 p.m.
Vice-President, Shipping Federation of Canada
I don't have a specific message to pass along. We are internationally governed, and it's important for us that it remains so, for consistency reasons. It's a key element, I think, in why the regime is successful, as the stats and very low number of incidents show. The reason, first of all, is that it's international and consistent, not only in the regulations themselves but also in the enforcement. I think that the network enforcement that we have under the MOUs has proved to be a very efficient way to enforce and to make sure that the coastal states have a better grasp of the ships that come to their coasts, and to make sure that the global fleet gets better and better every year.
12:55 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Ferry Operators Association
Just briefly, I provided the example of the three to five kilometre issue. There are some other things that we can certainly talk about, for example, personal liquid oxygen for people who have breathing issues. Technically, that's only supposed to be allowed on a ship if hooked up to a person. The problem is that on some of those trips, the person will have an extra tank available in case there's an issue. Technically, that's not allowed. That's a significant problem.
There are even problems on what an ambulance contains and whether it can or can't go on certain ships. There are a few things with the regulations that we may want to look at, and we certainly would appreciate a review and further discussion with Transport Canada on this.
Transport Canada is going in the right direction with regard to reviewing certain things and making sure that there is a good attempt to look at whether or not some of the regulations are properly done. Further dialogue on this would be helpful.
1 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Larry Miller
Just on your comments there, the one about somebody who uses oxygen, there are lots of people travelling and there must be a practical or common sense solution for that. Obviously, leaving the extra tank behind is not an option, so the different ferry operators must have some kind of protocol to see that they're allowed to bring on the extra tank, but in a safe manner.
Is that a fair statement?
1 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Ferry Operators Association
Yes, the operator will actually look at making sure it's done in a safe environment, and that's what we've seen happening. But if you look at the actual regulation, in the actual rules, it's not supposed to happen. That's where you can have a little bit of concern on that front.
Again, it's always that you have the regulation in writing, which looks nice, and then you have the implementation on the site, which on occasion would benefit with tweaking.
1 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Larry Miller
Thanks again for taking the time to join us here, Mr. Buy and Ms. Legars.
The meeting is adjourned.