Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for inviting Western Canada Marine Response Corporation to make a presentation to this committee.
WCMRC is one of four Transport Canada certified oil spill response organizations in Canada, and we're the only one on the west coast. We began operations in 1976 as an industry co-op under the name Burrard Clean. At the time, our duty was to provide spill response within Port Metro Vancouver’s waters. Following the Exxon Valdez incident in 1989, the Canadian government established the public review panel on tanker safety and marine spills response capability. The panel’s final report included 107 recommendations that ultimately informed amendments to the Canada Shipping Act in 1995.
The changes created an industry-funded, government-regulated spill response regime for all of Canada’s coastal waters. WCMRC became the only dedicated response organization for the west coast. Three other response organizations operate on the east coast. Our state of preparedness is funded by membership fees from shipping and oil-handling companies that operate along the west coast and from bulk oil cargo fees.
Any vessel larger than 400 tonnes calling on a B.C. port is required to have a membership with WCMRC. Any oil-transporting vessel over 150 tonnes is also required to pay membership fees. This includes tankers, barges, and refuelling vessels. In total, we have nearly 2,200 members. However, if a vessel is transiting Canadian waters and not calling on a Canadian port, they are not required to have a membership with a response organization. In the event of a spill, the responsible party is required by law to pay 100% of the cleanup costs up to the liability limit.
In order to demonstrate to Transport Canada that they are in compliance with the law, vessels must have a shipboard oil pollution emergency plan, and oil-handling facilities must have an oil pollution emergency plan. Both groups must also have a certificate outlining their arrangement with a response organization, proof of financial responsibility, and the name of the person authorized to implement the plan.
Under the amended Canada Shipping Act, response organizations in Canada require certification by Transport Canada. Response times, capacity, and planning standards are laid out in the Canada Shipping Act. The planning standards are not an indication of how long a response would take; they are meant to determine performance requirements. Actual response times would typically be less.
As a Transport Canada certified response organization, we need to demonstrate our ability to respond to spills on a regular basis to maintain our certification. Transport Canada personnel attend and participate as auditors in certification exercises, while other agency personnel participate in actual response roles. In addition, WCMRC also participates in member exercises, annual joint exercises as part of the Canada-U.S. joint contingency plan, and cross-border exercises with mutual aid partners in Washington and Alaska.
Response organizations in Canada are required to have equipment to handle a 10,000-tonne, or 70,000-barrel, spill. WCMRC currently has 2.6 times as much equipment in place. Tiered response times are also defined by the Canada Shipping Act, which stipulates planning standards for spills within designated port boundaries, primary areas of response, and enhanced response areas. Currently Port Metro Vancouver is the only designated port on the west coast. Response organizations are also required to submit an oil spill response plan to Transport Canada every three years.
To meet these requirements, we have warehouses located in Burnaby, Duncan on Vancouver Island, and up in Prince Rupert. We also have 11 equipment caches strategically located along the B.C. coastline. We have a fleet of 31 response vessels and a booming capacity of 32,000 metres, two and a half times the mandated capacity. We train up to 200 responders every year, including first nations fishermen and marine contractors.
In the event of a spill, our organization is contracted by the responsible party to clean up the spill on their behalf and under their command. The Canadian Coast Guard monitors response operations and takes command if the polluter is unable or unwilling to respond. The operation is complete when we can no longer find product to recover and Environment Canada and the province confirm our assessment.
WCMRC has successfully responded to both light and heavy oil spills. We have a range of skimmers that can handle both types of product. The Canada Shipping Act planning standards suggest that on-water recovery operations take no longer than 10 days, and shoreline cleanup operations are completed within 50 days.
If a spill were to occur in or near a transboundary area, a response from two countries would be required by the agencies of the two nations. Joint spill response between Canada and the U.S. is governed by the treaty, the Canada-U.S. Joint Marine Pollution Contingency Plan. Together, the U.S. Coast Guard and the Canadian Coast Guard manage the implementation and maintenance of this treaty. They exercise response strategies every two years.
WCMRC also maintains mutual aid agreements with response organizations in Canada and the U.S. These mutual aid agreements are formal contracts between ROs to lend assistance across jurisdictional boundaries when required. We currently have mutual aid agreements with NRC, Southeast Alaska Petroleum Response Organization, SEAPRO, and Association of Petroleum Industry Cooperative Managers, APICOM, as well as an operational agreement with Eastern Canada Response Corporation, ECRC.
As you are all likely aware, the tanker safety expert panel released a report late last year called “A Review of Canada’s Ship-source Oil Spill Preparedness and Response Regime – Setting the Course for the Future”. The panel proposed 45 recommendations of which WCMRC is supportive, particularly the move to a risk-based regime. We support the idea that spill planning and the response resources allocated to prepare for spills should be based on risks specific to a geographic area.
In May of this year, the federal government announced new measures that act on recommendations by the tanker safety expert panel. These measures include establishing new area response planning partnerships for four regions, including the southern portion of B.C. Oil spill prevention, preparedness, and response in these four areas will take into consideration the area’s geography, environmental sensitivities, and oil tanker traffic volumes. The measures also propose amending legislation to provide the use of alternate response measures such as chemical dispersants and burning spilled oil during emergencies, and to clarify the Canadian Coast Guard’s authority to use and to authorize these measures when there is a net environmental benefit.
Finally, the measures propose strengthening the polluter pay regime by introducing legislative and regulatory amendments that will enhance Canada’s domestic ship-source oil pollution fund. These amendments will remove the fund’s existing per-incident liability limit of $161 million in order to make available the full amount for a single incident, which is currently around $400 million. It will ensure that the compensation is provided to eligible claimants and the recovery these costs from industry through a levy.
As part of the move towards a risk-based regime, WCMRC is developing a digital geographic response planning tool to coordinate our response activities. This award-winning application is shared and accessible to all WCMRC responders, allowing us to coordinate and map the locations of our available vessels, equipment, and personnel. The app displays data in real time so that we can quickly identify priority areas that may require a protection strategy based on potential sensitivities, topography, surrounding infrastructure, and known threats and hazards. It also houses a database of site-specific response plans, which provide information on booming strategies and staging points.
That concludes my prepared remarks.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.