Mr. Speaker, I was rather amused at the hon. member's long preamble in which he thanked everybody in sight for their co-operative efforts in this bill. He included the Standing Committee on Transport.
I believe the current standing committee had about as much input into this legislation as I will have into the election of the next pope.
There is an interesting coincidence here that we are debating Bill S-4, a bill relating to marine liability, just after the signing of a new international agreement on inter-regional action to eliminate substandard shipping. On March 24 and 25 delegations from 33 marine nations, European commissions, the International Maritime Organization and the International Labour Organization all gathered in Vancouver to discuss the tightening and control of safety, labour and environmental standards of merchant vessels
There was a remarkable degree of consensus on the need to continue stringent inspections and to control vessels, especially bulk carriers and tankers when they enter seaports. There was also agreement in principle on the international exchange of inspection data in order to establish black lists of consistently offending vessels which would then be barred from the ports of all nationals represented at the conference.
International control of the safety of ships received its greatest impetus just 20 years ago with the grounding and break-up of the Amoco Cadiz off the coast of France. This led to stringent European port state control under the Paris memorandum of understanding of 1982. The Paris memorandum of understanding provided the pattern for the Tokyo memorandum in 1993, a memorandum of which Canada was a founding member. Canada subsequently joined the Paris MOU in 1994. Canada and Russia are therefore members of both groups, the only two countries that are.
Under these memoranda any ship which has not been inspected by a co-operating state during the previous six months, most bulk carriers and tankers and all passenger vessels are subject to inspection upon arrival at a seaport. The inspection target for each country in the Paris memorandum is 25%. For the Tokyo memorandum it is 50% of ships in the entire region with most inspections taking place in the wealthier countries, very few in the less developed.
The number of substandard ships plying the seas is mind boggling. Of 29,700 ships subjected to port inspections in 1996, 8% had to be detained in port until they remedied deficiencies. In Canada the rate of detentions for the last two years has been 10%. Deficiencies may range all the way from substandard crew accommodations through defective or inadequate firefighting or lifesaving equipment to structural defects so severe that a vessel is quite literally unseaworthy. The latter of course are disasters waiting to happen.
The names of detained vessels are published quarterly as a warning to other port authorities to give them special attention. These reports are also available to shippers who might wish to be somewhat selective of those to whom they entrust their goods.
Unfortunately rogue vessels operating below standards or at the thin edge of acceptability may offer rates as much as 15% below those of legitimate carriers.
An ongoing problem referred to by almost every national delegation at the conference is the failure of flag states to enforce adequate standards at their end. One delegate compared flag state control to the fence at the top of a cliff and port state control to the ambulance sitting at the bottom. If states offering flags of convenience were diligent or even interested in marine safety, receiving ports would not have to be nearly so diligent and the necessity to detain vessels for repair would be much less common.
However, with most trading nations now subscribing to port control of vessels, it is becoming increasingly difficult for unsafe ships to find a berth. Moreover, the practice of naming and shaming ships that have been detained points fingers at the flag states with the lowest standards and will tend to discourage insurers and responsible shippers from doing business with ships carrying those flags.
On the whole the conference was one of those rare international frolics that actually reached some useful conclusions and which should contribute to greater co-operation and information sharing to the general benefit of all countries.
A cursory overview of the new maximum liabilities set out in Bill S-4 clearly indicates that the minor costs of port inspections compared to the costs of major marine disasters, not to mention the preservation of human lives and protection of the environment, make inspections one of the world's best investments.
With the ever increasing co-operation between maritime nations with respect to safety and marine liability it is important that our liability legislation be harmonized with that of other countries. Bill S-4 accomplishes this. Increased liabilities will add a little to the cost of marine insurance but commercial vessels insured in mutual protection and indemnity associations will probably see no substantive increase in insurance rates because coverage already provided by mutual associations is unlimited. Their rates are already proportionately high. Pleasure crafts are mostly already insured to the levels of liability set forth in Bill S-4, much as private automobiles usually have far more coverage than the minimum required by law.
There is no question that commercial shipowners not covered in mutual associations will have increased insurance costs. The new rates based on the size and frequency of claims will be an encouragement to commercial shippers to maintain a decent safety record. If all major maritime states subscribe to the new regime the costs of insurance which are ultimately borne by shippers through higher rates should be evenly and more or less equitably distributed among the trading nations.
One of the most important features of this bill is that the limit of liability on an oil spill by a tanker not covered by a mutual association will be increased from $120 million per incident to $270 million. That may not be too relevant because I believe that most tankers are in mutual associations and therefore have unlimited liability. For the few cases where there are ships with nothing but their individual insurance policies, that very large increase in the limit of liability is very significant. The oil spill liability limits for smaller ships will also be increased but these increases will be proportionate to their gross tonnage.
All in all, Bill S-4 is useful legislation. The Reform Party supports Bill S-4 even though we are going to have hold our noses with regard to its origin in hog hollow, that other place down the hall.