Mr. Speaker, I want to make a few comments with regard to the Canada Marine Act.
The parliamentary secretary has outlined the objectives of the act. The objectives are very noble and I certainly congratulate the parliamentary secretary for setting them out in legislation. It is time that our ports were more self-sufficient, self-determining in their goals and objectives and in financial accountability. I want to place on the record my support for the parliamentary secretary's outline of the objectives of the bill.
I have received representation with regard to this issue a number of times since I arrived in Ottawa. As a person who represents a rural constituency in Lethbridge, Alberta, we usually do not talk about the seaway too much, or oceans, travel or marine life at all because we always are worried about having enough rain for the crops, never mind worrying about oceans, lakes and seaways.
Pilotage on the Great Lakes has been brought to my attention. There are certain shipping lines that travel the lakes day after day, week after week, month after month. The captains of those boats are very aware of the travel patterns. They know how to be safe on the lakes and they know how to move from one port to another and avoid any kind of disaster or cause any difficulty in making their way and taking their cargoes of grain, coal or other materials from one port to another.
As I understand it, in the past it was compulsory that they take on pilots at some of the ports. These pilots, either one or two or three, board the boat, find themselves a comfortable seat but the captain is still in charge. He knows where the boat is going. The pilots really do not contribute at all to that passage.
The concern is the major cost that is incurred by that pilot entering the boat, taking a nice comfortable chair, riding from one port to another and supposedly fulfilling his or her commitment in determining what is a safe route and the best way to go.
I can see that this may be necessary when foreign boats comes into the seaway, perhaps from the European continent or some other country. When they enter the seaway it is new territory or it is territory they may only travel a few times each year. Under those circumstances the regulations should require that those vessels should take on pilots as it ensures safety on the Great Lakes. It ensures that the correct route is taken and that the necessary requirements are met. I do not understand all of those requirements.
I do see the case for a shipping company-the hon. minister and the parliamentary secretary certainly know the companies to which I am referring-that is consistently on the lakes and has been for years. They have experienced captains. Perhaps that is another requirement. Perhaps the captains have to travel the lakes so many years. After they have been travelling the lakes and navigating the ship on the seaway for some many years, they have the right to be their own pilot. Maybe some regulations could be put in place to deal with that issue.
Why should the shipping company incur the extra cost of pilots when they are not needed on the boat at that time? It is a major cost to the industry. Certainly it employs somebody and creates a job. I understand that some of these pilot jobs are passed on from one family member to another. There are three or four families in their third or fourth generation of pilots so it is an industry for them.
Under the regulations the shippers on the Great Lakes have to use them. They have a guaranteed income, a wonderful thing, and I know they would not want to upset that. In practical terms it just does not seem right.
I recommend to the parliamentary secretary, the minister and the government that they look at this and maybe set up categories of where the requirements of a pilot are necessary and where they are not necessary. That makes some common sense as I see it.
I am making a judgment, maybe as a prairie gopher. I do not understand all of the things that happen in terms of navigation on the Great Lakes. But after standing back and looking at it in a common sense way, in terms of efficiency and the shipping companies not incurring costs that are not necessary, I think that would be very right.
As a farmer in western Canada, some of the grain I grow travels on the Great Lakes. It is moving on those boats. The Upper Lake Shipping Company, for example, moved some of my grain on the Great Lakes. I guess I am paying something extra because of the pilotage cost that is built into the system.
I certainly appreciate the new objectives that have been set out for the port authorities. It is good that is being done. They sound excellent. The accountability that is built into it is certainly supportable and of merit.
I ask the minister to have a second look at pilotage when regulations are designed to look at what is right and what is not right.
The third objective that the minister set out in his remarks is that the new act will be more responsive to the users. That is a good objective. It is the consumer, the user that really needs it, not the government. It should not be a bill for government. It should not be a bill to protect the bureaucrats of the system and enhance their jobs. It should not be a bill to protect the pilots. It should be a bill that enhances the opportunity of the users, that allows them to be
efficient, to keep the costs down and to have safety as their utmost responsibility. I believe that is built into the bill.
I would like to thank the House for the opportunity to speak to this bill. On that basis I am prepared to support it as an individual member from western Canada.