Natural Resources committee  The Wells inquiry had 29 recommendations.

Natural Resources committee  No. In our context, as I stated in my opening statement, our board has put together a health, safety and environment committee of the board, which focuses on safety and makes sure that safety is paramount in the organization and in all our decision-making. I would see this advisory council helping advise them in their governance oversight of our safety function within the organization.

Natural Resources committee  Right now, as I said in my previous answer, if the legislation or the regulations are violated or an operator operates in non-compliance, it's the operator that we primarily have to deal with because they have an authorization granted by our board. Under this bill, there are duties that are imposed for safety on the operator.

Natural Resources committee  The preface to your question I agree with. I said in my opening remarks that in the absence of this legislation, we put in place a set of occupational health and safety requirements that really ingrain the rights we've talked about and the duties we've talked about that are ingrained in this bill.

Natural Resources committee  That would be correct. The one struggle we would have without this legislation, or a significant struggle, is if we had that errant operator or errant employers who are supporting that operator, right now it's very difficult for us to enforce past the operator level. This legislation, because it has duties imposed on interest owners, operators, contractors, subcontractors, suppliers, etc., all of the various workplace parties that form this complex work environment in the offshore, allows us to enforce at each of those levels.

Natural Resources committee  If I'm understanding the question correctly, you're talking hierarchy in terms of the way the workforce is organized. At the work site, we will issue a licence to an interest holder. The interest holder—

Natural Resources committee  My response honestly is that we assist the governments in providing advice on drafting of regulations and legislation, but we are not the party who actually drafts it.

Natural Resources committee  With helicopters, an example—and this has been in place in both jurisdictions ahead of the recent Transport Canada regulations—is that of restricting flights over sea states where safe ditching could not occur. In other words, a sea state has to be below a certain threshold in order for flights to occur.

Natural Resources committee  I can start with the differentiation of the types of officers. Under this legislation, the boards, through recommending to governments, will have occupational health and safety officers in their employ who will enforce the provisions of part III.1 of the legislation. The special officers are a provision whereby if the board reaches a very serious issue where it's basically incapacitated and not able to act, the governments would have the ability then to appoint a special officer to go over—

Natural Resources committee  Well, it would have to be a joint appointment between the two governments. It has to be jointly agreed between the two governments, and it would be appointed then by the provincial minister of labour, on agreement from the federal government. I can throw out an example. We have some sort of pandemic and all of our officers are sick.

Natural Resources committee  With the prospect of drilling in deep water and drilling for oil, we started about 18 months ago with a very detailed action plan of all the additional things we wanted to have in place ahead of a drill bit turning to the right. We're looking at that from both a safety perspective and an environmental protection perspective.

Natural Resources committee  The expertise we have been acquiring, either by hiring them on staff or having consultants who can assist us, has been around deepwater drilling for oil and oil spill response. They are the primary areas where we've had to beef up our resources and our expertise.

Natural Resources committee  No, I think Scott's answer would be very similar to the answer I'd have given.

Natural Resources committee  I can start from a Nova Scotia perspective. The chief safety officer role has a lot of defined qualification and competency requirements. Typically that individual will be a 20-plus year individual with extensive offshore experience and extensive experience at managing human resources, the people who would be assisting him and advising him.

Natural Resources committee  No. I would say no. This deals strictly with occupational health and safety, which is alongside the operational safety that proposed part III.1 deals with. Now you have safety as an overall umbrella and that discussion could proceed.