Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise to speak to the bill. I will stick with the Marine Liability Act amendments, because they would have a direct impact upon my riding in the Northwest Territories.
It takes me back to seven years ago when I first came to Parliament and proposed that we change the motto from “from sea to sea” to ”from sea to sea to sea” because the importance of the Arctic waters is increasing dramatically. Within those Arctic waters we need protection. We need to take care of them, and it is a complex issue.
We have in front of us the Marine Liability Act, which in some ways is the end state of protection of waters. The beginning of protection of waters lies with regulation, and right now at the Arctic Council we should be dealing with Arctic shipping regulations as internationally accepted. That is the body that can deal with that issue. In that way we could create regulations that would allow proper vessels to enter into the Arctic. Those are things that we should be doing right now. Those are things that should have the highest priority with the current government and with other Arctic governments.
However, that is not the case. Our environment minister, the chair of the Arctic Council, has chosen to highlight economic development as the main ticket in the Arctic right now, while we need to work on regulations that could protect the Arctic and could set the stage for the responsible use of the Arctic in the future.
Let us look at some of the ways that the Arctic is being proposed for use.
We are going to be shipping oil to Churchill, Manitoba, by tankers, through parts of the Northwest Passage. These are uncharted waters. These are waters that are heavily influenced by moving pack ice. What kind of regulations do we have in place to deal with that? What kinds of policies?
The second stage in most efforts to ensure protection of the environment is good policy, meaning we invest in the right places and make the right decisions in government to slow down the frequency of accidents and try to avoid oil spills. This is the second phase of any protection of waters.
The third phase is infrastructure. Right across the country we have heard that infrastructure is sorely lacking. In fact, in the Arctic we have no infrastructure for taking care of large-scale oil spills. In fact, the science does not exist today to remove oil from ice-filled waters.
What we do have in this situation is a failure to act in a sequential manner to provide protection to waters. Instead, laudably, we are putting liability forward as part of our primary objective. Whatever happens, we are going to ensure someone pays for some of it. That is the goal of the government right now.
However, where is the planning? Where is the planning that actually talks about reducing the potential for accidents that cause liability to companies and upset the system and destroy the environment? Where is that work? That is the most important work here. That is the work that would actually protect waters.
What we have is a situation in which we are bringing forward liability as the answer, and it is simply not adequate.
It is typical of the government to look at simple solutions, especially cost. Concern for taxpayers is always laudable, but without planning, we are really putting the taxpayer in a position to have even greater losses when liability cannot be covered by the insurance claims that companies are allowed to make.
How is that a sensible and practical approach to improving the safety on our three oceans? It is not there. It is not there because we are picking the last piece of the puzzle rather than outlining the whole picture of what is required to protect the waters of Canada's three oceans.
When I asked the minister a question about the scope of this bill, it seemed that she did not understand it clearly. However, it is pretty clear to me that the scope of this bill covers all of our waterways and the potential impact of ships on any rivers that reach the oceans. It perhaps has a greater significance in the Great Lakes area than in northern Canada, but theses are all issues that we need to look at and understand.
All across the north—