Thank you.
I won't need two minutes. I know that you all have a lot on your plates. I appreciate the indulgence of all committee members. I'm here under the terms of a motion passed by this committee that gives me the right to speak to the amendments I bring, which are deemed moved, but not to others, so this is a rare chance. I appreciate it very much.
I would just say to Mark Strahl that this is a weird thing that these anchorages are on our coastline, and nobody looks at them and says, “Well, there's a job I've got.” This is free parking. There is no benefit to the community whatsoever. The anchorages are not of benefit to any coastal community. They do detriment to quality of life and to the marine environment, pose threats to the southern resident killer whales from the noise of the freighters, and cause damage to the benthic organisms from dragging anchor. There are multiple issues here. We heard about them from one of the witnesses before the committee.
Specifically to NDP-2, I think what it's doing is drawing attention in Bill C-33, in that key portion where they are already looking, as Taylor has said, at questions of health and security, to the well-being of coastal communities and the security of marine transportation. These vessels, in a storm, can drag anchor. We've had collisions. We've had many near misses. We've actually had collisions in which we could easily have had an oil spill from the vessels colliding. There are numerous examples in real life, not hypotheticals, of where broadening the discretion of what the minister is looking at....
What's being looked at in this question is the environment and the well-being of coastal communities, which I think is really well expressed, including, of course, the health of the people on board. Frankly, it's in no one's economic interest to have these ships just sitting there. It doesn't help the grain growers in the prairies one little bit. The Port of Vancouver doesn't have a good, effective system right now for bulk goods. The two main types of bulk goods, grain and coal, have a history of backing up. As they back up and back up and back up, they sit in the waters of the Salish Sea up and down the coast of Vancouver Island, proliferating in number.
I'm going to shut up there, but anything we can do in Bill C-33 to give more scope to better solutions than the current practices would be much appreciated.