Transport committee  Mr. Chair, and committee members, thank you for having invited the Shipping Federation of Canada to testify before you this morning about part 4 of Bill C-3, the safeguarding Canada's seas and skies act. The federation, incorporated by an Act of Parliament in 1903, is the repres

Transport committee  Currently all the shipowners are covered by insurance, but for the HNS there is no.... Basically when you have no specific regime, the fallback regime is the one integrated under part 3 of the Marine Liability Act, and your liability is capped depending on your tonnage, and depen

Transport committee  No, that's not an issue, because first of all, the risk is very low, so you know you can be insured for that specific risk. Of course incrementally you have to pay more, but because it's something that is marginal, it doesn't double your insurance costs. It's a kind of marginal i

Transport committee  That question is for me?

Transport committee  Yes, that's the case.

Transport committee  It will be on a ship-by-ship basis. Each ship will have its own insurance and it will cover up to the limits of liability of the convention on civil liability for ships, which is currently incorporated via part 3 of the Marine Liability Act, because in shipping matters the liabil

Transport committee  Without C-3 it will depend on the size of the ship because it's on a tonnage basis.

Transport committee  I would have to go back to it because you have a gradation depending on the size, so it's kind of complicated, but I can send you a table after this hearing. It's lower than the HNS convention.

Transport committee  Actually this general liability convention is being upgraded and amendments to the limits will come into force in 2015. It's been amended by a tacit amendment recently, and the upgrade will come into force in 2015, so I can send you upgraded limits in this note as well.

Transport committee  From an international shipowner's perspective, I guess it would have an indirect effect in terms of response in case of a spill at the terminal. But for us it's something that is indirect, and we didn't comment on that in our letter because it's not our direct liability or respon

Transport committee  No, I don't have any knowledge of such a big spill that would have happened. So what we know is that this limit hasn't been reached and is far from having been reached yet.

Transport committee  Yes, and also, remember that if over time, say 10 years from now, the international community, including all the signatory states, believe that this limit should be upgraded, there are provisions in the conventions to do that quickly.

Transport committee  Under the conventions, yes, a shipowner's liability is capped. Then you have this international fund that is capped as well, so, if you don't have enough money, what do you do? Well, it's not in the convention; it is for each country to decide what they will do. One solution is,

Transport committee  I would say that, from our standpoint, Canada is overdue to be able to ratify the HNS convention and implement it because it's the first building block of the system. I might be afraid that this would be pushed back. Waiting to have a whole regime after the tanker panel finishes

Transport committee  From our perspective everything is here. Maybe in a couple of years Canada will want to move further, but for the time being, everything is here.