Mr. Speaker, in my riding, we have a huge shipyard that is as big as the one in the riding of the hon. member for Saint John. I pay attention any time the issue of shipping is raised because of its connection with shipbuilding.
My riding is right across from Quebec City, on the opposite shore of the St. Lawrence River, on which there is a lot of shipping. So, we in Lévis want to see as many ships as possible. But at the same time, we want to make sure that, should an accident occur, these ships will not harm the environment. Bill S-4 deals with liability for shipping accidents and oil pollution damage.
Personally, I was not in favour of looking for ways to delay passage of this bill, essentially because this bill should have been passed a long time ago. Why has it not been passed into law yet? Because last year, Prime Minister Chrétien decided to call an early election because he feared the impact of the Employment Insurance Act reform on people in the maritimes. That was not a bad idea, since the government majority fell significantly from what it was in the last Parliament, and had he waited until the fall, he would probably have ended up with a minority government.
It may have been a good move for the Prime Minister, but not for this bill to amend the Canada Shipping Act, which was first passed in 1932. The changes will be implemented in stages because the government is not quite ready to put all the new provisions into effect. The government has decided to make the changes required in two stages, and this part covers only what the government is almost forced to do as a signatory to the 1976 international convention, which was to come into force in 1990, but whose implementation was later postponed to March 31, 1996, at the latest. But the government negotiated an extension which took us to this year.
In the end, having signed an international convention, the government can no longer delay passage of this legislation. When someone does something because he can no longer postpone it, it shows how little he cares about it. The government does so because it is obliged to, because other countries on the international scene have already done so, and it is among the last stragglers, so now it is acting in order to save face. I am shocked by this. The people of Lévis whom I represent, the workers at the Lévis shipyards, are also shocked by the low priority this government gives to shipping. The message it is sending to them is discouraging.
In 1993, the Liberals were so hot to gain power that the Prime Minister's current chief of staff was a Liberal candidate in Quebec City. All the candidates in that region signed an undertaking stating that they found this issue so important that they were going to hold a summit on the future of the shipyards and of shipping as a whole. He was not elected, of course. Perhaps that is why nothing has happened in the area of shipping since then. The government stalls. Then, if the polls seem favourable, an election is called and shipping is forgotten altogether.
This is the most neglected sector in the area of transport. It seems to be the last to get any attention, so much so that the former president of the Canadian shipowners, Mr. Bell I think, waited until after the election to reach his decision, not wishing to get involved in politics.
He had been in that position for a dozen years or so. He commented: “Things are going so badly. They change ministers just about every two years, in transport and for shipbuilding. We cannot figure out where we stand. Things are going so badly that I have decided to step down, because the message I am getting is that this is not an important issue for the Liberal government”.
Almost a year into the second Liberal mandate, the Senate finally turns up with this. I am like everybody else. I will not go on any longer on this point, or the parliamentary secretary will be rising to bring me back on topic.
Generally things are not at their fastest in the Senate. When the Senate is faster than the House of Commons and the Liberal government, that means the latter are very slow indeed. It would be almost impossible to get any slower. When the senators push the government to pass something, things are happening. Things are going awry. It has come to that. This is almost a distress call.
We will of course support this bill and help it through as quickly as possible so there are no problems and to avoid any incidents. We know what the Irving Oil disaster cost taxpayers. There were other incidents in the St. Lawrence. There was the Exxon Valdez . Twice ships have run into the Quebec City bridge. Fortunately, hulls were not damaged and there was little oil spilled. We managed to avoid any catastrophes. Is the government going to wait for an environmental catastrophe to happen before introducing a bill?
The Senate is sending the Liberal government a wake-up call.