Transport committee  I have an additional comment. I think Mr. Grégoire, in his report, suggested the change in the composition of the boards, but he also recommended a national pilotage committee. I think that was meant to cover any issues that came up, with respect to experience on the board.

Transport committee  I think our concern is that right now, the responsibility for regulation is with the authorities. That's going to be transferred over to Transport Canada, so one would assume, normally, that you would go where the resources and the authorities are and increase those in Transport

Transport committee  It's been a long time since this act has been reviewed. I think everybody here will agree that we've got to get moving on this. Time is of the essence. We have no issue with its moving quickly in this bill.

Transport committee  Yes, there is. As we pointed out in our presentation, it's the intention through this bill to transfer all of the costs of administering the regime to industry. We don't know of any other activity-specific area where this is done. Certainly, I don't think it's done in any other i

Transport committee  First of all, any foreign ship coming into Canada has to take a Canadian pilot. Your concern there is.... I don't think you have to worry about that.

Transport committee  I don't think this bill introduces any competition into the pilotage regime in Canada. I think Simon would agree with me there.

Transport committee  Yes, if you're talking about the tariff process, I just want to say that industry, at the end of the day, pays for everything. If an authority in the past had a loss one year, industry would end up paying for the next year. I don't think the amendments here are going to make a h

Transport committee  As I mentioned, our only concern would be the administrative costs of Transport Canada being transferred to the industry. I think we're not dissatisfied with the fact that they don't have to go to the Gazette to publish a tariff.

Transport committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. We are a national trade association. Our members are the owners, operators and agents of ships trading between Canada and overseas ports. Their vessels operate in all four pilotage authority areas in Canada from coast to coast. These ships, operating inte

Transport committee  I think it's the former, mostly because of efficiency, but certainly the amount of cargo has increased. You have ships sitting there for lengthy times waiting for cargo.

Transport committee  I always say that with marine transportation there are a lot of players. We have the truckers, the railways, the terminal operators, the grain elevators, the ports, the ships and the longshoremen. There are a lot of players there, so it's difficult to nail it down. When the gra

Transport committee  Madam Chair, I have an answer for Mr. Sikand on the icebreakers.

Transport committee  There are 15 icebreakers: two heavy icebreakers—one of them, Louis S. St-Laurent, is 49 years old—four medium icebreakers, and nine light icebreakers, which are multi-task and don't work well in heavy ice.

Transport committee  I think they're reliable, yes, but there's so much more we could do with that system. With the information that the....

Transport committee  Karen, do you want to answer that?