Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill S-2.
I would like to congratulate my colleague from Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel who spoke earlier this afternoon. I want to tell him how much I appreciated his comments and how true I found them to be.
What I believe once again is serious. I believe it is a sad thing to see this government introduce bill after bill dealing with a very specific problem. The idea is good, but as soon as the opposition parties bring forward amendments to improve the bill the government says nothing and refers the matter to the parliamentary secretary. As far as he is concerned, everything coming from the opposition has to be dealt with in a very negative way. This is a serious problem.
This afternoon I listened to Alliance members and the member for the New Democratic Party. As I had not debated this bill, it gave me an idea of what should have been included in it. Listening to the opposition parties does not mean one is an idiot, but rather it shows that one is intelligent. They had good ideas, they were on the right track, but they stopped halfway there.
Stopping halfway is serious because this bill deals with a particular problem. We do not rewrite the same laws every year, I believe they are made to last a few years. Why stop halfway in dealing with a problem that really had to be addressed in order to have, in the end, something tangible and forward looking?
I think that, as my colleague was saying, this government is arrogant. It is not a word to be used lightly, but I am sorry to say that this government is indeed arrogant. We were all elected by the people we represent. They told us to represent them, hoping we would pass on to the government their wishes and their suggestions for a better society. I see that they did not get the message, or if they did they did not understand it. It is very sad.
I think we are all people of goodwill, whether we belong to the Canadian Alliance, the NDP, the Progressive Conservative Party or the Bloc Quebecois. Sometimes I wonder if the Liberal government has the same goodwill.
It is too bad that we just had an election because Canadians already feel that this government is not listening to them. It has been only five or six months since it was elected. Imagine how out of touch it will be in three or four years. We will have passed bills that will have done nothing for the advancement of Quebec and Canadian society.
This bill dealing with marine liability validates certain bylaws and regulations. It was introduced in the Senate on 31, January 2001. Current Canadian legislation relating to the marine mode of transportation includes several regimes governing the liability of domestic and foreign shipowners and shippers, and their responsibility for damage to property, environment, or loss of life or injury to others during maritime activity and therefore dealing with the economic and legal consequences of maritime accidents.
The environment is an issue that is very important to me and I will be addressing several parts of this bill that are related to it in various ways. I will finally get the opportunity to talk about threats to the environment. We no longer have the right not to protect the environment for current and future generations.
This is a serious threat to our planet. We cannot afford to make any concession where the environment is concerned. I think we ought to take every known measures and every measure soon to be discovered to fight against any threats to the environment. We have to face some serious threats like oil spills at sea or close to the coast.
The bill would consolidate existing marine liability regimes, fatal accidents, limitation of liability for maritime claims, liability for carriage of goods by water, liability and compensation for pollution damage, into a single piece of legislation which would also include new regimes concerning shipowners' liability to passengers and apportionment of liability applicable to torts governed by the Canadian maritime legislation.
The bill would retroactively validate certain bylaws made under the Canada Ports Corporation Act and certain regulations made under the Pilotage Act. The validating provisions are of a strictly housekeeping nature and are unrelated to the marine liability regimes set out in the bill.
I would like to talk about the description and the analysis contained in part 1 dealing with personal injuries and fatalities. Those provisions are set in clauses 4 to 14.
It follows a decision made in 1993 by the British Columbia Court of Appeal where the court found that relatives of persons killed in marine accidents could sue under part 14 of the Canada Shipping Act.
Part 1 of the bill would generally re-enact the provisions concerning fatal accidents that currently appear in part 14 of the Canada Shipping Act, revising them to give effect to the various Supreme Court of Canada decisions. More specifically, part 1 would update Canadian maritime law to reflect developments in provincial fatal accidents legislation and to confirm that maritime wrongful death and injury claims may be made against persons as well as ships.
Part 1 would apply only in respect of claims for which a remedy would be sought under Canadian maritime law, as defined in the Federal Court Act, or any other law of Canada in relation to any matter falling within the class of navigation and shipping or dealing more precisely with clause 5. Any action based on part 1 of the bill would be barred for two years.
This would improve legislation but would not solve the new problems users would be facing. The Bloc Quebecois agrees with this part, whose aim is to permit the dependants of a person injured or deceased to recover damages and interest. We agree with these measures, but we could have been, as my colleague has said, more attentive to what the witnesses said when the bill was being examined in committee.
I will also address part 2, that is clauses 15 to 23, which set out the apportionment of liability. It involves the application of the principle that if several people or ships are liable each is apportioned part of the blame, and if it is impossible to determine individual degrees of fault all are equally and jointly responsible.
The claimant may initiate proceedings for negligence in shipping matters in Canada. First, the common law defence of contributory negligence prevents a claimant from recovering anything if the defendant can prove that the claimant's own negligence, even in the slightest degree, has contributed to the damages.
Second, a defendant who is found responsible for paying a claimant damages is then prevented from claiming a contribution from other persons. It really concerned these clauses; it improved them and the problems. It also made it possible to link this new apportionment of liability with the Quebec civil code, which had always recognized these rights.
At the federal level, however, apportionment legislation such as currently exists at the provincial level has never been enacted, except with respect to damage caused by collisions between ships. It is important to have this vision so that this problem may be really linked with provincial jurisdictional distribution.
Also, the Quebec government with its civil code has always been further ahead. I am not saying this because I live in Quebec: I think this has been recognized throughout Canada with many issues. The civil code, which was updated a few years ago, has really been updated to respond to what is happening. That is what is important to legitimize, to allow the apportionment of liability in part 2 which includes clauses 15 to 23. We agree in principle with this apportionment of liability in part 2.
I will also deal with part 3, which includes clauses 24 to 34. It covers the “Limitation of liability for maritime claims”. This is very important. I believe it is very important to ensure the apportionment of liability, whether financial or by units of account or special drawing rights issued by the International Monetary Fund under the London convention of 1976 and the Canada Shipping Act, with an extension to cover the liability of dock, canal or harbour owners.
I would also like to point out that claims arising from a ship in collision will be limited to two years. This is in subclause 23(1). However, a court with jurisdiction to deal with such an action could, in accordance with the rules of the court, extend the two year time limit to the extent and on the conditions that it thought fit. As well, the court could extend the time period for arresting a ship if satisfied that the two years had not afforded a reasonable opportunity to arrest the ship within the waters of a province or of Canada.
It is a very important provision, because these things could take a long time. These legal actions took a long time to settle. Ships could be tied down and, before everyone could agree on some kind of settlement undue extentions could be granted. We all know how long judicial proceedings can be.
This clause would speed up the determination of liability and the processing of maritime claims. That is what is called limitation of liability for maritime claims.
As my colleague pointed out, this provision could have been improved upon further. I think that we in the Bloc Quebecois will support this aspect in relation to part 3. Given all we have heard in the past, legal actions that went on for years on end, witnesses that came before the committee urging us to take action and to take all necessary means to do so, I think the government is not going far enough.
I know that my time is quickly running out. As I said at the beginning of my speech, I also want to talk about the environment. As we know, it is a very important issue. It is just incredible how many environmental disasters we see around the world. We hear about ships accidentally discharging their cargo into the environment. We can see how unacceptable this is from the ecological point of view. It will be years and years before all the flora and fauna, all the shore areas affected by spills can recover and finally get back to the way they used to be.
We know that many species are endangered. There are endangered birds and marine species. It is very important to ensure heavy vigilance. I believe we can no longer allow these companies to travel about the planet anywhere they want, doing anything they want.
As for the $100 million figure for the fund, I will take the example of the incident on the coast of France a few years ago. Initially this was to cost a few million dollars but in the end the figure was escalating; $100 million is very low. This bill ought to have given a far higher figure. We have absolutely no idea today what it will cost to restore what we have destroyed.
Far be it from me to alarm the people listening to us today. That is not my intention. I have never wanted to do that, but we must be responsible. As responsible persons we must tell oil companies which have a major responsibility that they must assume their responsibility.
Under the heading “Payments into the Ship-source Oil Pollution Fund”, clause 93 and the following clauses say that ship owners must pay 30 cents per metric ton “in respect of each metric ton of oil in excess of 300 metric tons imported by ship into Canada or shipped by ship from any place in Canada in bulk as cargo”. This levy set as of March 31, 1999, will be adjusted annually. I believe it is generous. This bill is generous toward the oil companies.
These days, for the past year and a half to two years in fact, we have experienced spiralling costs. The government says it is not responsible. Oil companies say they are short of money but they are making record profits. I will not tell the House what people back home are saying. In the Saguenay we have words to describe this kind of people but I will not say what they are because it is not parliamentary. Allow me to think and say that it is indecent. Let us talk about how much money the oil companies are making on the back of the poor.
You must have poor people in your riding, Mr. Speaker. You have farm workers, taxi drivers, school bus drivers. All these people need a car to go to work. Do you not think it is very hard for them?
In the Quebec City area I paid 89 cents for a litre of regular gasoline. It is a lot. What is it going to be this summer? They say that during the holidays people are not cost conscious. I believe it is indecent to think that way.
As mentioned by my colleague, the Bloc Quebecois will support the bill with some reservations. I believe it could have been improved to show that we were finally going to do the right thing.