Good morning. My name is Sonia Simard.

I am appearing today on behalf of the Shipping Federation of Canada.

Our objective is to provide the perspective of shipowners on some of the marine amendments contained in Bill C-86.

Although we are grateful for the opportunity to appear before this committee, we are indeed concerned with the very fast pace at which the bill is proceeding right now. Yesterday we submitted a brief to this committee in which we outlined some of our concerns with Bill C-86 and proposed some specific amendments.

More specifically, we recommended, first, that the marine transportation amendments be extracted from Bill C-86 and addressed as a stand-alone bill in order to ensure that there is sufficient time to proceed with a proper examination of the proposal.

If this is not done, we would urge this committee to proceed, at a minimum, with some specific amendments. Today we are addressing, more specifically, division 22 of Bill C-86.

That division provides the minister and the Governor in Council with additional powers in relation to regulation for protection of the environment. The shipowners and vessels we represent are committed to safe and sustainable transportation, so our concerns with the proposals are not with the objectives. We support the objectives, but we are asking for specific amendments to ensure that we have the proper safeguards around the new powers that are proposed.

Going into a little bit of detail, clause 690 of Bill C-86 would enable the minister to issue interim orders in the marine mode for any type of risk to marine safety or the marine environment that he or she views as requiring immediate action. These orders could remain in effect for up to three years without any of the basic safeguards provided in the normal regulatory process, such as consultation with affected stakeholders or regulatory impact statements that we do when we have regulations.

In our opinion, the proposed framework for interim orders in the marine mode is much broader than what we have found in other Canadian legislation. We have more detail in our brief, but just to make a summary of the common features we have seen in other Canadian legislation, usually ministerial interim orders are for a type of risk that meets a threshold, and that threshold is generally “significant risk” or “immediate threat”.

Furthermore, the lifetime duration of an interim order in the legislation we have seen is more tightly constructed. Those ministerial orders can stand alone for 14 days, after which time the Governor in Council must approve such interim orders and then extend the power by either one year, as we see in most of the legislation, or two years, as we see occasionally.

When we looked at the interim order framework being proposed here, we found it to be much broader. That's why what we have proposed is not an objection to the interim order, but rather, specific amendments to ensure that we find the proper safeguards around those interim order powers.

The second element we have outlined in our submission relates to clause 692 of the bill. I believe you have discussed this with the witnesses before. That's the power of the minister to vary Governor in Council recommendations. Again, we find powers to vary a regulation outside of the normal regulatory process. Because of the same concerns I have mentioned, we have also in our bill proposed specific amendments to ensure that we have proper safeguards.

The issue here is not whether or not there is a need to act fast. We understand that those situations happen. We just want to make sure we have proper safeguards around those powers.

On the other elements, we have brought more comments on division 22, but as we are running out of time, I'll ask you to refer to them in our brief.

The one point I would like to make in finishing is the fact that we unfortunately haven't been able to fully review the proposed amendments to the Marine Liability Act, but we will continue our review and we intend to submit comments in front of the Senate.

Thank you for your attention.

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