Madam Speaker, I believe the member for Calgary West was in the House earlier. I may have the wrong riding, but I believe it was the member for Calgary West.
Bill S-17 is probably not the most high profile piece of legislation before the House. It certainly is not the most glamorous. Probably very little attention is being paid to it. Nevertheless the marine liability act is an important piece of legislation. Members of the New Democratic Party have some concerns at this point in the debate but will be supporting the legislation.
Marine legislation is very fragmented. It now falls within a number of different acts over many years. Many of the acts are outdated. They are certainly not in line with current processes and international law or the kind of legislation enjoyed by other countries. It is very important that we are debating marine legislation today.
My riding of Vancouver East contains a very large chunk of the port of Vancouver. As someone coming from the west coast, marine legislation is something that I recognize is of great importance. Members in my caucus, including the member for Halifax West, the member for Dartmouth and all other members from Nova Scotia, have placed a great amount of emphasis on the need for marine legislation, particularly in terms of creating a shipbuilding capacity in Canada. We have had a long and very rich tradition in Canada of a marine industry, of building ships, of creating jobs.
I want to say for myself from the west coast and my colleagues from the east coast that this is something we think is very key to who we are as Canadians, that is, to improve upon our capacity to produce economic wealth, prosperity and benefits from our shipbuilding industry.
The legislation before us today, although it does not deal specifically with a need for shipbuilding, does cover some important areas that need to be dealt with.
Bill S-17 seeks to unify under this piece of legislation the various bits and pieces that have been fragmented over the years. It attempts to modernize these laws and to keep Canada in line with international conventions. This is something we certainly support. It is not only generating new legislation. It is making sure that the legislation already in place is relevant and up to date and that it deals with the concerns we have today.
Bill S-17, as I have said, covers many areas that are already enshrined in law. These include, for example, the limitation of liability for maritime claims, the liability and compensation for pollution and the liability for carriage of goods by water. These laws are generally now re-enacted in this bill with some minor changes to incorporate international conventions and supreme court decisions.
There are other aspects of the bill that will also be clarified and these are certainly things that have been outstanding and needed attention. We are very glad to see that they have been addressed in this bill. They have to deal with personal injuries and fatalities.
There is no question that the experience and the evidence has shown that at the present time under the existing legislation, which is now very updated, there is a lot of confusion that can arise because there is a very ambiguous and blurred line between federal and provincial legislation and responsibilities. This has obviously caused a lot of problems. The area of federal-provincial jurisdiction is something that we struggle with in this country. It is something that we need to address through legislation. It is positive to note that this bill will end what has been a confusing circumstance in terms of federal and provincial responsibilities.
If the bill is passed, clear outlines will be set regarding the relatives of those who die as a result of marine accidents in terms of the claims they can make and to whom. For everyone in the House, just on the basis of common decency and respecting what happens to people when they have lost someone close to them, a member of their family, in some sort of marine accident, to have a procedure that is efficient, humane, respectful and understandable is something that is very important.
We are very pleased to see that this now has been included in the legislation and that it will help people who are faced with these kinds of tragedies and accidents. God knows we have all had experiences of having to deal with a bureaucracy after someone has had a serious accident or has died. We know what it is like to have to go through the paperwork and make the claims. It can be a very difficult thing to do when you are in a grieving process.
The fact that this legislation will bring some clarity to the matter is an improvement. It hopefully will help those family members who are dealing with a very difficult circumstance as a result of someone who has died or who may have been in an accident.
Another important aspect of the bill and, in fact, probably one of the more critical things, which may not have gotten a lot of attention, is that Bill S-17 will also prohibit shipowners from contracting out liability for loss of life or personal injury.
The current practice, one used for many years, is that within Canada it is very common for shipowners to insert a clause into contracts of carriage that removes the shipowner's liability. What does that mean? What has been the impact of that?
It reminds me very much of the situation we faced with the Westray mine disaster, an example of corporate responsibility that was completely without consequences because there was not any clear legislation to say that individual corporate executives and the corporation itself are liable for their negligence and for the people they put at risk. As members of the House know, members of the New Democratic Party have been a very powerful force, along with members from other parties, in bringing forward legislation to say that corporate executives and corporations must be held criminally responsible for any negligence or any criminal act.
This particular feature in Bill S-17 addresses this same kind of principle. It clearly talks about the kind of contracting out that took place in the past. Let us imagine trying to contract out one's liability, saying “It is not really mine as a shipowner. I will pass the buck to someone else. I will pass on the responsibility to someone else”. Again, the fact that the bill will remove that kind of situation is an improvement.
In this day and age we are in an environment that is increasingly dominated by multinational corporations, by huge organizations that are in some instances nameless and faceless. The sense of corporate responsibility and the sense of accountability for people who are trying to deal with the system are sometimes very far removed. In this respect this one particular clause in the bill is a move in the right direction in saying that there must be corporate social responsibility, that the idea of hiding oneself behind a third party will not fly any more.
These exemptions, for example, are already null and void in the United States, France and Great Britain. There is no question that we should not be left behind on this issue. Canada must act on this matter now because we do not know when a disaster may occur. We have to be prepared. We have to make sure that legislation is in place that clearly protects victims and families of marine accidents and clearly shows the lines of responsibility in terms of where wrongdoing has taken place.
I have spoken on aspects of the bill that we support. We think there are improvements, but it is only fair to say that we also have concerns. It is appropriate to lay those on the table and to be clear that we also have some questions about the bill. As the bill proceeds through the House, we would like to see some answers.
There is one clause that certainly does concern us. After some research and some questioning of Transport Canada bureaucrats by our caucus, we have not really found any of the answers we are looking for. We are very concerned with the fact that the bill would prevail over the Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act if there were any inconsistencies or conflicts between the two.
Whilst we are willing to support the bill at second reading, I want to say that members of the New Democratic Party and our critic in this area, the member for Churchill, want further answers in committee. We want to know how the bill might affect important environmental legislation and we want to know what the various scenarios and possibilities are. We want to be assured that the bill will not override very important environmental protection in other legislation that exists.
In conclusion, members of the New Democratic Party feel generally positive about the bill. We think it is an improvement over what we have now. It will be a piece of legislation that captures together the bits and pieces and the patchwork of existing provisions. It will modernize the provisions for protection around liability. It will clearly outline better corporate responsibility, which we think is important, and it will give better protection to those who travel by marine vessels or who are involved with them.
We therefore support the bill in principle but with the caveat that if the government is concealing some answers in terms of the concerns we have about other environmental and protection legislation, then of course we will look at the bill again and not be so accepting. However, at this point we support it in principle.