Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure today to speak to Bill C-45. As a Nova Scotian it is particularly poignant. The legislation emanates from a disaster in my province, in fact the Westray disaster in the riding of the hon. member for Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough, the leader of my party.
Almost 12 years ago, on May 9, 1992, the Westray mine disaster in Plymouth, Nova Scotia occurred, killing 26 men. At the time I was actually living in New York. I was listening to national public radio on that morning. It was the first time I had ever heard Nova Scotia mentioned on national public radio in New York during the period of time that I lived there. I remember how it impacted me, the thought of 26 Nova Scotians dying, and we were to learn unnecessarily, in a disaster that could have been prevented. It is unfortunate that 12 years later we are still debating the merits of a piece of legislation that could have been in place a lot earlier to protect Canadians against that sort of corporate malfeasance.
It is interesting to consider the legislation today in an environment where increasingly issues of corporate governance and accountability are being debated and discussed. Most of the time when we are talking about corporate governance and accountability, we are talking about financial issues, dollars and cents issues and accounting issues. We are talking in this case not about dollars and cents but about human lives.
If we consider the principles of corporate governance and the principles of financial accountability and financial corporate governance, the similarities are striking of what we want to achieve. We simply want to see that management and ownership is held accountable and responsible to protect the safety, of workers in this case, from avoidable disasters.
Our party has spoken supportively. My leader, in his capacity as justice critic for our party, has been supportive. Clearly there are some legitimate criticisms of the legislation that it does not necessarily go far enough. I suppose an unfortunate irony of this is that the legislation quite possibly would not have helped address the accountability of the management and ownership of the Westray mine.
In the case of Westray, prosecution of the corporation would have been pointless. The parent company, Curragh Resources, was bankrupt by the time a prosecution could have been started and there was nothing left for a court to fine. No company survived to implement new safety policies.
The power to charge a corporation would have been an empty power in that sense in the Westray disaster. There is a fine line clearly between ensuring reasonable accountability and governance on health and safety issues but also recognizing that there is always the risk of somebody down the management chain acting irresponsibly. There is a fear in Canada today at the board of directors level of various companies that there is going to be an almost unlimited accountability. These issues have to be considered.
There is a fine line effectively in creating an environment within which no Canadian would take the risk of being on the board of a company for fear of being implicated in a proceeding like this, even though they would not have a direct responsibility. Despite those fears, there is no doubt we need greater levels of accountability of management and ownership in health and safety issues.
I would hope that this legislation will help prevent the kind of disaster, such as the Westray disaster which destroyed lives. It took away lives and tore apart families in Nova Scotia in 1992. We would like to see Canadians protected immediately by the passage of this legislation. Hopefully this legislation can play a role in preventing another Westray type disaster in the future.
We should not have had to wait 12 years after the original Westray disaster for this legislation. It is imperative that we as legislators move quickly now, when we have the opportunity, to pass this legislation and do the right thing.
Sometimes in this place when we are talking about legislation it seems a little esoteric, it seems less connected to the lives of ordinary Canadians, but this is not one of those times. This is a time when I am proud to speak to an important piece of legislation. As a Nova Scotian, I feel particularly honoured to have the opportunity to stand in the House and support this legislation.
I want to commend my leader for having played such an important role at justice committee as justice critic for our party over the last number of years in terms of working toward the passage of this legislation. I want to commend him and offer my full support and that of our party for the direction that this legislation is trying to achieve.