Evidence of meeting #140 for Transport, Infrastructure and Communities in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was pilots.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Ron Liepert Conservative Calgary Signal Hill, AB
Welcome, everyone. I have to preface my questions by saying that I represent a riding in Calgary, so my knowledge of the marine business is pretty darn limited. If my questions end up being on the dumber side of the day, I apologize in advance.
I was actually going to pursue exactly what Mr. Hardie was asking. In the presentations, the only “caveat”, if I can use that term, was brought up by Mr. Burrows around this flexible labour model. I'm assuming that the associations do not necessarily agree with Mr. Burrows. Is that fair?
Conservative
Ron Liepert Conservative Calgary Signal Hill, AB
Okay.
Can I assume then also, Mr. Burrows, that the reason it isn't included in the legislation is that there wasn't agreement that the government could come forward with? Is that also fair?
President, Chamber of Marine Commerce
I guess you'd have to pose that question to the government about why they didn't—
Conservative
President, Chamber of Marine Commerce
I think it's clear that we don't have unanimity. Obviously, the status quo from some interests' perspective needs to be protected. I understand the labour point of view, but from a competitive point of view, we continue to need modernization. This is one area where we will be advocating strongly in the future for further modernization.
Director, Legislative and Environmental Affairs, Shipping Federation of Canada
If we could—
Conservative
Ron Liepert Conservative Calgary Signal Hill, AB
I'll ask the association, then: What is your rationale for not having more open competition for what you do?
Capt Simon Pelletier
If you look around the world, this is the model that exists everywhere else. Why does it exist like this? It's to make sure that people who are conducting a ship are not linked, or they're independent, let's say, from any undue pressure, commercial pressure or anything else. That's the best way to ensure that safety will always be the first thought a pilot has.
If you look around the world, very, very few countries have tried a model with competition or different labour models working in the same compulsory pilotage zone. Every time the prices went up, the costs went up, and in some places the safety went down. From those very few examples we have from around the world, that's what happened.
Conservative
Ron Liepert Conservative Calgary Signal Hill, AB
What about the U.S.? Is it a similar model to ours?
Capt Simon Pelletier
The U.S. is a similar model. There's no competition. There's always one group of pilots providing pilotage service in a single port.
Liberal
Director, Legislative and Environmental Affairs, Shipping Federation of Canada
With regard to your question, perhaps I could add one other angle very quickly.
Aside from competition, the discussion in 10 years might be on the labour model, and we wouldn't want to lose the occasion to address that issue right now in the current system in order to improve the competitiveness and the cost-efficiency of the service. So it's not only about the labour model; it's also about addressing the current efficiencies and working together with the pilots to do that. That's why, when we talk about the principles, the cost-efficiency and the responsiveness to users....
Take the example of double pilotage. We don't need to address labour models in order to address the issues and have a good look at double pilotage—for example, the need for double pilotage in winter. Bill C-97 will give us the tools, we hope, to look at efficiencies and address some of the competition issues.
Conservative
Ron Liepert Conservative Calgary Signal Hill, AB
We had the airlines in the previous day because of the changes that are happening with CATSA. One of the concerns they expressed was the downloading of administrative costs. Is there any concern among industry here with the downloading of administrative costs?
President, Shipping Federation of Canada
Yes, there is. As we pointed out in our presentation, it's the intention through this bill to transfer all of the costs of administering the regime to industry. We don't know of any other activity-specific area where this is done. Certainly, I don't think it's done in any other industry.
Conservative
Ron Liepert Conservative Calgary Signal Hill, AB
That leads me to the question that I think is important in this whole discussion, that we've again seen a situation where the government has brought in a hodgepodge of everything and lumped it into the budget bill. It seemed to me that since you have your own act, wouldn't it have made more sense to discuss these changes thoroughly through a freestanding piece of legislation versus in the bowels of the budget bill. What's your view on that?
President, Shipping Federation of Canada
It's been a long time since this act has been reviewed. I think everybody here will agree that we've got to get moving on this. Time is of the essence. We have no issue with its moving quickly in this bill.
Conservative
Capt Sean Griffiths
No, we support the Minister on these changes and we're looking forward to royal assent of these new amendments so that we can get on with it. We have a lot of work to do. It's going to take a lot of time, but we need to work very closely with Transport to ensure this is done successfully so we have a piece of legislation going forward that we can all live by.
Liberal
Vance Badawey Liberal Niagara Centre, ON
I have one quick question. I'd like to give you folks an opportunity, based on all the questions and some of the questions I had asked earlier. I know that Ms. Simard has some more comments to make as well, but I'll give you the opportunity to jump in and fill in the gaps on some of the questions that have been asked.
