Transport Committee on Nov. 27th, 2014

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

So that's 60 a year compared to 12,000, or 1,000 a month, etc.

[Sylvain Lachance]

Yes.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

Very quickly, how would you characterize the trend in dangerous goods then or dangerous good spills on Canadian waters since 2002? Has there been a spill?

[Nicole Girard]

What I can tell you if we are looking under our TDG regulations in terms of accidental releases of dangerous goods is that over the last 26-year period, from 1988 to 2013, 1% of dangerous goods have been involved in accidental releases. So that's equivalent to 100 reportable accidental releases.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

Okay.

Would you say then, given what you've presented to us today, that the response capacity in Canada is sufficient and that we do in fact have a world-class tanker safety system in place?

[Sylvain Lachance]

The system we've had in place since the early 1990s has served Canada quite well. That was following the Brander-Smith report that was published back in the late 1980s, and the regime was implemented in the early 1990s.

The capacity that was identified at the time was 10,000 tonnes. It's worked very well but, like anything else, it could be improved. That's why we've had the tanker safety panel examine the regime, and they have made some recommendations. They found that the regime served very well and it was a good regime, a robust regime. We are moving towards improving that regime further.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

Mr. Hutchinson, as you know, we've had some changes to our coast guard on the west coast. Some of them have been contentious. Would you say these changes have in fact increased safety on the west coast?

[Jeffery Hutchinson]

I can say that the coast guard continues to meet its service standards across the west coast, those changes notwithstanding

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

Did those changes match the rest of the service standards across Canada? Did we meet a higher standard by doing that? Or did we lower our standards accordingly?

[Jeffery Hutchinson]

No, we didn't lower standards. We are meeting the same standards we were meeting before any of those changes were implemented. Those standards are based on the assessment of the geography, the volume of water-borne traffic, and what it takes to respond in different locations.

There are changes, as you have noted. We have also added air-cushioned vehicle capacity on the west coast, which increases our response time in certain incidents. We continue to meet our service standards, which have not been the matter of any of the controversy you referred to.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off, Mr. Hutchinson.

Your time has run out, Ms. Young.

We have time for another round of two minutes each, which includes the question and the answer. I'm going to be cutting everybody off at two minutes, just so you have advance notice.

Mr. Mai.

[Hoang Mai, NDP, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Pelletier, do you work directly or indirectly with the Quebec City marine rescue sub-centre?

[Mario Pelletier]

I am sorry, could you repeat the question?

[Hoang Mai, NDP, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Do you work directly or indirectly with the Quebec City marine rescue sub-centre?

[Mario Pelletier]

I am responsible for the Quebec City marine rescue sub-centre.

[Hoang Mai, NDP, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

So you must be pleased that the NDP has fought to keep the centre open when the government announced that it was going to shut it down.

[Mario Pelletier]

Actually, the position has always been that the centre would not close if we did not have a guarantee that the same services would continue to be provided.

[Hoang Mai, NDP, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

We are glad that it has not been shut down.

I am not sure whether to direct my question to you or to Mr. Hutchinson.

Regarding the fall 2014 report of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, chapter 3, “Marine Navigation in the Canadian Arctic”, I quote:

Overall, we found that the Canadian Coast Guard’s icebreaking presence in the Arctic is decreasing while vessel traffic is increasing.

Can you tell us why the coast guard is not as present as it should be?

[Mario Pelletier]

What I can offer there is that we try to maintain as much presence...if anything we're extending our presence in the Arctic. There are two ways to look at it. It's the number of ship-days in the Arctic or the window that our ships are available. As a matter of fact, the last ship that left the Arctic was earlier this week—or on the weekend—which is later than it has been in recent years.

Vessels need maintenance, as well. That's one of the reasons why sometimes we don't have as many vessels as we would like to have, because we need to conduct maintenance on the vessels. But it's always done after an assessment of the program requirement, the expected traffic, and so on. I can say that this summer we had seven icebreakers operating up in the Arctic, which is our maximum that we've had in recent years.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you.

Mr. McGuinty, you have two minutes

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Thank you. Mr. Chair.

If I could go back to my last round of questions, I just wanted to know this, Madam Girard. You are the director general for transportation of dangerous goods, right?

[Nicole Girard]

That is correct.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

What is your budget?

[Nicole Girard]

My budget, currently, is a little over $20 million.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

It is a little over $20 million. What has it been the last several years?