Transport committee  The traditional maritime nations, when you look at Canada, the United States, Norway.... Sweden is the first registry. Norway is the first registry. Denmark is the first registry. Germany is the first registry. They're not their second registries. Those countries are strong marit

Transport committee  —it's left up to the rest of the world to try to enforce it. Yes, I did say that. Excuse me.

Transport committee  Yes, but remember, ILO is a minimum standard.

Transport committee  Let's take the Philippines. When a Philippines overseas worker leaves the country to work on a vessel, he leaves with a POEA contract—a Philippines overseas employment—and a lot of times those state the minimum ILO conditions of work. I was an ITF inspector. I inspected foreign s

Transport committee  No.

Transport committee  We've proven that they don't follow the same regulations when they're in Canada. There are two issues at play. The ship gets a coasting trade waiver. That covers the ship. The crew then apply for work visas through the temporary foreign worker program. There are two separate is

Transport committee  That's perhaps an unanswerable question. When you get into international waters, it's covered by international law and the law of the sea. When you get within the 200-mile limit or the 12-mile limit of Canada, the law then changes. However, again, working under cabotage, the crew

Transport committee  Actually, I do, through the International Transport Workers' Federation. I'm an expert for them, for the ILO and the IMO.

Transport committee  When you look at cabotage, the Center for Seafarers' Rights did a survey for us just a month ago, and we looked at United Nations member countries. Of course, we excluded the countries that were landlocked, and then we looked at the countries that had two ports or more. Sixty-sev

Transport committee  I've heard the testimony. My point is that Canadian companies right now, under the current coasting trade system, have an opportunity to move them if they want to. If they don't want to, the foreign ship or foreign company that applied for the waiver is free to move them. There a

Transport committee  It's my understanding right now, and I stand to be corrected, that the only company that has provisions to have containers in Canada for more than six months is Maersk Line, through a special provision. Other containers do get moved around. We see the field of them sitting in Mon

Transport committee  I actually look at this outside of the Montreal-Halifax corridor. A lot of that traffic now goes by train. I know you get into issues sometimes of double-stacking and having to unload to go under underpasses, etc.—the infrastructure. I look at the north, the Arctic sealift that

Transport committee  I can't speak to whether they are or aren't. I know that in the Arctic they do; in certain areas they do.

Transport committee  If I may, I wanted to touch on what you talked about with regard to a Canadian owner who owns a foreign-flag ship who decides to flag his ship outside of Canada. There are many. They do it for many reasons, not just crew costs. They do it for taxation. To flag a ship outside of C

Transport committee  Mr. Badawey, you talked about the St. Lawrence Seaway and especially the Welland Canal. It's an area that I think is close to both of our hearts, since we're from that area. I think this is one area where we agree. When you look at port infrastructures, when you look at the Well