Mr. Speaker, we talked earlier about the size of the transporting vessel compared to the tow vessels. They are not even comparable any more. The tow vessels were built to a different standard and for different ships.
I am sure there are colleagues here, or perhaps people in their families, who understand the maritime industries. They would know that it is a different situation when a ship is being towed.
Recently we witnessed one of our frigates become incapacitated. It had to be towed back. It took a long time to attach the tow, and then it broke. Then it had to be redone. These are difficult things to accomplish at sea in any circumstance, never mind with a vessel that is basically not manoeuvrable and relies on tugs and tows to manoeuvre. Tow lines break. It is not like towing a car. To do that, we simply stop, put the chain on again, and away we go. In the case of a ship, it could take days, and by that time the ship could have run aground. If it is in the passage between Vancouver Island and the mainland, it will be on the rocks. They do not have time. That is the problem.
Towing a ship or using tugs to try to move it makes for difficult physics on the water. I could not actually explain it, because I do not know the physics well enough to do so; all I can say is that it is extremely difficult. Anybody involved in the industry would tell us it is extremely hard, and when it goes awry, it is really difficult to get the situation back under control.
If a crosswind was blowing across one of these supertankers and the tow line broke at the stern, the ship would literally turn sideways. It would then go backward. It would literally simply float backward. If it had lost a rudder or lost an engine and was not under its own power when the tow line was lost, control of the ship would be lost, and the other tows would not be able to right it. They might be able to hold it off if they were lucky, but if all the tows could not be restored, that tanker would literally be on the rocks.
Then we would have an immense catastrophe of a proportion that we have never seen in our lifetimes, nor would we ever want to. That is the dilemma. Those are the things we are trying to point out to the Conservatives that they have not taken into consideration.
If northern gateway is approved this afternoon—which, as a betting man, I would say will happen—the Conservative really need to fix Bill C-3, and they ought to do that in the Senate, since it will be out of here at third reading.