:
I will call the meeting to order.
Thank you, all, for coming today.
I will skip over the usual pleasantries and try to accelerate the process here, because we're running 15 minutes behind and we're tight for time. We have three 40-minute segments in this meeting, the third of which is the clause-by-clause, which we would like to complete today.
In the second segment, we have with us our minister, who is supposed to be joining us at 11:40 for 40 minutes.
Our first panel, of course, is here with us, consisting of the Newfoundland and Labrador Oil and Gas Industries Association and Charlene Johnson. We also have Unifor local 2121 and Mr. Dave Mercer.
Each of you is given up to five minutes to speak. You can speak in French and/or English. Translation is available, as we know by now.
I will jump right in.
Ms. Johnson, why don't you start us off for five minutes, please?
:
Thank you so much, Chair and committee members. Thank you for the opportunity to address this committee today.
My name is Charlene Johnson. I am the CEO of the Newfoundland and Labrador Oil and Gas Industries Association, more commonly known as Noia.
Our association represents member companies that are involved in the offshore oil and gas supply and service sector. Noia members are very diverse. They include those who operate supply vessels and helicopters, human resource agencies, safety and environmental companies and even those involved in the hospitality industry, which also receives numerous spinoffs from the offshore here.
I appear on behalf of those members to offer my comments on Bill , an act to amend the Offshore Health and Safety Act.
This is my second time speaking with the natural resources parliamentary committee about this issue, and I certainly thank you for the opportunity. My remarks are reflective of my comments when I presented to the Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources back in February.
I would like to note that Noia was appreciative of the actions of the Senate and similarly appreciative of the Department of Natural Resources for acting quickly upon the Senate passing the bill and providing an opportunity for Noia to provide comments on new regulations. This is exactly the type of expediency we were hoping for, and I hope the legislation and regulations can be passed and enacted before the end of the calendar year.
Noia has spoken a lot, including to many federal officials, about competitiveness and timelines. As I appear before you, my message remains the same. The process to institute new Atlantic occupational health and safety initiative regulations for the offshore has taken far too long. It is another symptom of the disease of delay that has permeated our industry and hindered our growth.
Thankfully, in this current situation, the actions of those involved in the offshore, including offshore operators and the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board, coupled with the protections provided by the Atlantic Accord and the Accord Implementation Act, have ensured that safety has remained a priority in the offshore oil and gas industry.
The industry is already carrying on with performance-based standards and international best practices to ensure the safety of workers. While the regulatory process has taken long, we have comfort in action taken by all of those who participate in this industry and their commitment to safety. That has been, and I believe, will always remain paramount; however, we need to complete this process and similar processes more quickly.
To give a quick example of industry safety, which the offshore is a leader of in Newfoundland and Labrador, both Hibernia, the oldest facility, and Hebron, our newest facility, had loss-time injury rates of zero in 2018.
With that said, I would like to point out that the Nova Scotia Occupational Health and Safety Advisory Council was appointed in March 2019, and, to my understanding, has been meeting twice a year. The corresponding committee for offshore Newfoundland and Labrador is not yet established. In the best interest of everyone, this should be corrected as quickly as possible.
The international industry monitors the speed of our processes, and protracted delay influences their interest. Continual delay, inconsistent regulation and the ever changing and ever moving goalposts impact decisions to participate and invest in the Canada and Newfoundland and Labrador offshore. We need to overcome these significant hurdles.
In that light, Noia is supportive of efforts to advance and complete this process, and supports Bill , yet, while we need to get this done, it needs to be done right. We do not wish to see a protracted process, but we also do not wish to be back to this process again in short order. I believe the process undertaken by NRCan in the last two months can accomplish just that.
Additionally, we need to ensure that the occupational health and safety regulations we enact now avoid unnecessary duplication with other legislation. Most importantly, we must not lower any standard of health and safety in the offshore.
In essence and to conclude my remarks, Noia supports the completion of this process in a timely manner, one that includes a holistic approach to offshore regulations and considers the demonstrated commitment of the industry to ensure the safety of each and every individual who works offshore in Newfoundland and Labrador.
Thank you, and thank you again for your time.
:
Thank you and good afternoon, honourable members of the Standing Committee.
My name is Dave Mercer. I'm president of Unifor local 2121 and a member of the Newfoundland and Labrador oil and gas industry recovery task force.
On behalf of Unifor members in the energy sector, I would like to thank the members of the Standing Committee on Natural Resources for inviting me again for the second time to comment on Bill , an act to amend the Offshore Health and Safety Act
Unifor represents nearly 800 workers in the offshore oil sector, including members of local 2121 who work on the Hibernia and Terra Nova FPSO. Our members in the offshore industry know first-hand the importance of the sector to the economy of Newfoundland and Labrador and just how much of an impact the COVID-19 crisis has had on workers in this province.
Since the crisis began last spring, more than 400 of our members have been laid off from the oil industry. They are part of a group of thousands of workers who work directly in the offshore oil and gas sector who have been laid off. There are possibly thousands of jobs in the industry and service supply sector that have been lost as well.
From the very start of this crisis, Unifor has tirelessly advocated for measures to kick-start the recovery of the offshore oil and gas industry while ensuring the return of decent, good-paying jobs to the province. The members of Unifor recognize the immense importance of the Offshore Health and Safety Act, which was introduced in 2014 to clarify a maze of offshore regulations, fill in gaps between federal and provincial jurisdictions and to provide offshore workers with the protections that are at least equal to those that exist for onshore workers.
We therefore agree with Senator David Wells—
I'm sorry, can you hear me? Something keeps coming up.
We therefore agree with Senator David Wells that to allow the transitional regulations to lapse at the end of 2020 has been a dereliction of duty by the current federal government, which has had six years to develop and implement permanent regulations. This is particularly the case in light of the tragedies that offshore workers have experienced in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador due to the absence of sufficient health and safety regulations in the past.
All of you are probably familiar with the collective trauma experienced with our communities after disasters such as the Ocean Ranger and Cougar Flight 491 Well, today we're right back where we started. Our members in the offshore sector have worked within a regulatory void for over four months with no occupational health and safety regulations to protect them.
While we understand this is a complicated process to implement permanent regulations, the offshore industry has advanced far beyond where it was in 2014, and it is more important than ever to have updated regulations in place to protect our members. Six years is more than enough time. I'm glad to see that the Senate amended the bill to reflect the idea. This should be the final extension for the deadline, and permanent regulations should be in place by the end of the year. Unifor also supports the requirement that the Department of Natural Resources submit a progress report to the Senate by June 15 outlining a clear implementation schedule.
I urge Parliament to pass Bill as soon as possible so that the transitional regulations are revived, even if only until the end of the year while permanent regulations are being sorted out. Our members in the offshore industry work in a unique environment with significant safety challenges, and many workers had to lose their lives for the health and safety regulations to get to where they are today.
However, I'll also ask the government to do more to investigate how these regulations can be strengthened as part of the development of permanent regulations to ensure that companies cannot simply shirk their responsibility to conduct preventive maintenance and repairs by pausing operations as they have done during the COVID-19 crisis. In March, Unifor submitted detailed recommendations to strengthen these regulations as part of the stakeholder consultations. Unifor believes that solutions to health and safety issues are best resolved with full participation of workers' health and safety representatives of the joint health and safety committees in all workplace activities related to occupational health and safety. Workers have a right to know about hazards in the workplace. They have a right to fully participate in workplace health and safety, and of course, workers always have the right to refuse.
Because offshore work is so remote, workers are not always protected by the intersection of workplace occupational health and safety inspectors who may be hours or days away. The offshore workplace is one where the internal responsibility system, or IRS, must be strong. We believe that the amendments we are proposing to the regulation enhance the IRS by giving the workplace joint health and occupational...and the worker representatives more tools to work with helping employers solve sometimes very complex safety issues while protecting—
:
I can start, Dave, if you want.
In terms of the safety of the workers offshore, I don't see any impact in the interim four months or even until we get to the end of the year. The Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board, which regulates the industry, is in the process of issuing—and it may have done this already—an addendum to each of the offshore operators' authorization basically indicating that each operator must continue to follow the provisions that are contained in the transitional offshore regulations even though they have expired.
CAPP, the Canada Association of Petroleum Producers, actually went above and beyond that and developed six industry best practice documents. They have now become actual codes of practice that the C-NLOPB has adopted.
I'm not fearful for the safety of the offshore workers, but it just comes down to the fact that something as paramount as safety really shouldn't be taking seven or eight years. It's time we get it done and move on. We always look to international best practices. We want the best, most modern safety regulations there are for people working in very remote, harsh environments.
I'm confident that all the safety measures are still in place as per the operation authorities of these operators. It's more, as I said in my opening remarks, just another thing that takes so long to get done in our offshore. Especially when it comes to safety and the offshore, it shouldn't take this long.
:
Wonderful. Thank you very much.
First of all, Ms. Johnson and Mr. Mercer, I would like to welcome you to committee today. It's great to have you both here. I know how difficult this past year has been for the industry. I really want to compliment you on the stellar job you've been doing in keeping the industry going in Newfoundland and Labrador, but most of all for supporting so many workers who have been affected by COVID.
I have just a couple of questions. First of all, with regard to the bill, is there anything in this bill that is of tremendous concern to you that you want to make us aware of up front?
Ms. Johnson, I'm wondering if you can clarify for the committee what the jurisdictional issue is with regard to offshore oil and gas exploration and development in Newfoundland and Labrador—whether it's federal and provincial as equal partners or whether either of those partners can act unilaterally in doing what needs to be done within the industry.
I'll leave it at those two questions, Mr. Chair. If there's enough time, I do have some others.
:
Yes, my understanding of the way the process works is that the federal government is doing all of the drafting of the regulations, and it is keeping the province informed. My understanding is that there is some consideration for allowing the general public and the province and associations like ourselves to see the draft at the same time. I'm not sure if that is the case. I know that's one of the things being considered by the department to streamline and speed up this process so we can get it done in a year.
As for COVID and its impacts, Dave, you might be able to speak to this more. We've seen, as with everyone and every industry, that many people are pivoting in different ways and it's really advancing things by years that we didn't know could have been done before. There are some great examples because companies have already been focusing on digitalization and moving staff onshore who used to have to be offshore. You may be aware that Exxon have a control centre onshore now. Those are folks who would have had to be offshore before are now home in their beds every night. From the safety perspective, that's positive.
I think some of this got advanced because of COVID. In this sense, some positives come from COVID as well, but just generally, COVID has had a significant impact on our industry because of the reduction in demand for the oil product and then, of course, the resulting reduction in price. I won't get into that here today because that's not about safety, but there's a page long list of deferrals and delays and cancellations that have happened in our offshore that have resulted in the thousands of layoffs Dave referred to in his opening remarks.
Dave, maybe you can get into more specifics about COVID and technology.
I want to thank both of the witnesses for appearing today—Mr. Mercer and Ms. Johnson. I should note that Ms. Johnson and I, along with Ms. Jones, served in the House of Assembly of Newfoundland and Labrador, so we have experience with each other in another forum. It's good to see you both here today.
First of all, I want to note that it's been almost 30 years, or will be almost 30 years, since offshore safety was actually put in the hands of the C-NLOPB, the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board, and taken from the provincial and federal departments of labour that were formerly in charge of occupational health and safety in the offshore. That has been very disappointing to the unions from day one, in my experience, as I was in the House of Assembly when that was done in 1992. It was not until 2014 that there were actually enforceable regulations put in place.
These are the first attempts to do that in an enforceable way to provide the protection of the right to refuse unsafe work, to be able participate and have a say in the situation, and to have the same level of protection as you would have onshore.
It's particularly concerning that this has taken so long. I wonder if we had in place an independent offshore safety board, as recommended by Justice Wells of the Offshore Helicopter Safety Inquiry, whether there would be this delay of six or seven or eight years since 2014 to get these regulations in place.
Could both Mr. Mercer and Ms. Johnson comment on that, because Justice Wells asked for a separate, powerful, independent, knowledgeable body equipped with expert advice that would be devoted only to ensuring that the offshore health and safety regime were adequate.
Would that be in place now if we had that separate board? What's your opinion, Ms. Johnson and Mr. Mercer?
Good morning, everyone.
I’m addressing this committee from my home on the island of Newfoundland—the ancestral homeland of the Mi’kmaq and Beothuk Peoples.
[English]
Not only that, it's also one of Canada's three proud oil-producing provinces.
I want to thank members for supporting our request to expedite the passage of this important legislation.
This issue is important to me. It's personal. It's about an industry that has brought so many benefits to my province. It impacts the workers here—my neighbours, my friends—who work in our offshore. I remember vividly the industry's nascent days. I was a young fellow working for Premier Brian Tobin some 20-odd years ago when the first platform, Hibernia, was under construction. Hopes were sky-high after so much despair about the cod fishery collapse in 1992. Today, it is a proud and mature industry, one that has accounted over the years for 30% of our economy, one out of every 10 jobs and 10% of employment. In fact, the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador relies more on its royalties from oil than even the governments of Alberta and Saskatchewan.
The opening of the offshore industry in the Atlantic has created jobs and wealth for Nova Scotians, too, prior to and during the recent decommissioning of its two gas projects.
This, right now, is about the health and safety of the workers who built those great projects. This is about protecting them.
When I spoke about Bill to members of the Senate in February, I was struck by a remark from Nova Scotia Senator Jane Cordy. She said that when you live on the ocean, you understand the strength of the ocean.
The power of the sea is by no means lost on many of us. The president of ExxonMobil Canada told me that there is no harsher environment on the planet in which his company operates than Newfoundland's offshore.
The sea is powerful. That power also has tragic consequences. Two tragedies stand out for me. The first is the sinking of the Ocean Ranger, when all 84 on board perished during a terrible North Atlantic winter storm in 1982. I remember delivering the newspaper the next day and the size of that headline.
A royal commission led to new safety measures then; yet in 2009, tragedy struck again. A helicopter ferrying 18 workers to an offshore platform plunged into the ocean and only one—miraculously—survived. A judicial inquiry was struck that led to the passage in 2014 of the Offshore Health and Safety Act. The government of the day set up an interim safety regime, while giving officials five years to finalize permanent regulations. That deadline was extended by two years, and now we're asking for a new extension that would give us until the end of this calendar year to complete this work.
I know some members are ready to scream and shout “failure” over these delays, and frustration. I will tell you that it is warranted and shared. I'm frustrated. I said so during the Senate hearings and I'll repeat it again today: It should not have taken this long.
Consider this. One of our officials told senators that the original five-year schedule was ambitious, even if everything went like clockwork, because this is a complex process. We're talking about three governments and two independent regulatory bodies. This is how our offshore works. It's a joint management framework. The Atlantic Accord act clearly outlines areas of responsibility and stipulates decisions that require joint ratification. Therefore, you can't go it alone.
In addition, we've undertaken broad consultations with stakeholders, including industry—especially unions—all needing to find common ground on regulations filling some 300 pages. These regulations incorporate, by reference, 173 domestic and international standards, which are contained in documents totalling more than 15,000 pages.
Then it had to be put into legal language, in both languages. Toss in elections, a pandemic and a major interruption in 2017 when officials fixed parts of the 2014 interim regulations that were causing problems for the industry. All of that set us back.
Now, some will criticize these delays, and that is fair. Some of you may say that we can't blame the pandemic for all of this, and that is true to a certain extent. However, think of how long it took this committee, and how long it took Parliament, to figure out how to function in a pandemic.
All of our technical advisers at the federal and provincial levels, with their respective occupational health and safety departments, have been on the front lines of the COVID response.
However, it is misleading to say that this government doesn't care about workers. I mean, nothing could be further from the truth. These are my neighbours. These are the people who have built our province into what it is. Workers are at the heart of everything that we do here.
We're finalizing a world-class safety regime, and at the same time supporting an industry still hurting due to the pandemic and brutal 2020 oil market conditions. The reality is that not since the time of Brian Mulroney and John Crosbie has there been more done for the offshore by a federal government—by this government.
In 2019, $2.5 billion went to Newfoundland and Labrador as part of the renewed Atlantic Accord agreement. There has been close to $400 million to support workers and to lower emissions in the offshore during a pandemic. What industry has been asking us for years, we have done: reducing the time for exploratory drilling assessments from over 900 days to 90 days, without losing an inch of environmental integrity.
Just last week, I announced 16 projects funded through the offshore component of the emissions reduction fund. These are projects that can use carbon capture, that use wind and other renewable sources of energy that could power the industry's operations, projects that will lower emissions. In the face of challenges, we've had our workers' backs, and we continue to have their backs to protect them.
Mr. Chair, I am proud, as a son of Newfoundland and Labrador, of what we have achieved since this industry began to take root in the 1960s. The offshore industry has made life better for Newfoundlanders and Labradorians. It has kept families from separating in order to find work on the mainland.
[Translation]
We must protect these workers. The best way? By adopting a world-class security regime. I believe in it and I support it.
Bill will go a long way. I urge you to also support it.
I’m joined here today by my officials: Glenn Hargrove, Assistant Deputy Minister, Strategic Petroleum Policy and Investment Office; and Tim Gardiner, Senior Director, Offshore Petroleum Management, Strategic Petroleum Policy and Investment Office.
I’m pleased now to take questions.
Thank you very much.
, I think your boom mike went down. The last part of your comments weren't clear.
Let me start by asking you a question.
Charlene Johnson, from Noia, was here before you, and she talked about the disease of delay around this issue in the offshore. It's been six years since December 2014, of course, when we actually needed to move this legislation forward. Six years is a long time for the federal government to get some regulations firmly in place, and we have failed in that—the government has failed.
The question, of course, is why did we fail?
I think even more failure is on the horizon. When you talked about the initial government bill coming here, the Senate wanted two years to get this done right, and two years would be a long time from now. It's not the end of 2021, but the end of 2022.
Can you explain the delay once more, and can you also tell us if you support the Senate amendments that were brought forward to limit it to a one-year timeline and have those regulations done at the end of this calendar year, 2021, please?
:
I thank the honourable member for his question.
It did take too long. There's no question about it.
This isn't in whatever notes were prepared for me, but I will say this and I think most Newfoundlanders and Labradorians would agree with me. The offshore has never figured very highly on the national lens or the national scope. I remember, in fact, in our first full year in office, there was a contingent that attended CERAWeek in Houston, as the member well knows. NRCan officials were there. The minister was there. I believe our premier of the day was there, as well as associate ministers and premiers from other provinces. It was a big celebration of Canadian energy. As NRCan made its opening remarks on behalf of the Canadian contingent, it spoke of the great oil producing provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. There was an awkward pause as every Newfoundlander and Labradorian in the room waited for their province to be recognized as an oil producing province. It was not.
There is an institutional bias that I obviously have fought very hard to make sure to rectify, although to be fair to my colleagues, by the time I had arrived at NRCan, I think that lesson had been learned. I don't cast aspersions on either party. I think this is just sometimes the Ottawa mentality. The bottom line is that Newfoundland and Labrador is the third and very important oil producing province. Therefore, it deserves the same attention and is wanting of the same attention, particularly on things that are as important as safety regulations.
The regulations themselves are complex. As I said, they total near 300 pages. Let me reassert that when it comes to the lives and safety of the men and women who work in our offshore, you don't take shortcuts. We owe them that to keep them safe.
You consider the domestic and international standards—
:
I thank the honourable member for her question. As she knows, yes, all parties and both chambers of Parliament have worked expeditiously on this bill while doing their due diligence. In a minority Parliament, what we're seeing on this—people should know—is co-operation and collaboration and regular communication on the things that are really important.
It extends beyond this House. It extends, as the honourable member for Labrador knows, to joint management and the Atlantic Accord. It's something that just about every Newfoundlander and Labradorian, certainly ones of my age who remember the fighting days of the 1980s and the 1990s, knows ensures that joint management exists. That is a real and fulsome relationship, with true joint management of the offshore resources between the Government of Canada and the Government of Nova Scotia and the Government of Canada and the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador in their respective jurisdictions.
When it became clear in the fall of 2020 that the final regulations wouldn't be completed by December 31, 2020, our government and the Newfoundland and Labrador government and the Nova Scotia government each took legislative steps to extend the transition period so that workers would be protected under the existing occupational health and safety framework that existed.
If there is anybody out there watching with any doubt in their mind, every worker was looked after. We made sure that the transition period existed. It was at that point, for the federal government, that in order to signal our intent, this bill was introduced in the Senate on December 1. The bill was amended; passed by the Senate in mid-February, when it was introduced in the House; and in a similar time frame now, it's come to this committee. So things are moving.
I once again want to commend members of this committee on all sides of the House for the priority they've given this.
I'm pleased to have an opportunity to speak to Minister O'Regan this morning.
Thank you for joining us.
I share with you, of course, the memories of the Ocean Ranger tragedy and the Cougar helicopter tragedy. I attended the hearings of both of those inquiries. In fact, I had standing at the offshore helicopter inquiry run by Justice Wells. I know how important offshore safety is to everybody, but only in 2014 did we have enforceable regulations for safety in the offshore in the same way they occurred on land, so it's very important that they be in place.
I understand that they're complicated, and it takes time to get these put in place, even though 300 pages is not really a lot for regulations. Nevertheless, what galls me and I think many people is the fact that this regime was allowed to lapse on December 31 of last year. The regulations since then are unenforceable in the same sense that they were. That's spelled out in the legislation itself. No one can be convicted of an offence under the regulations if it occurred between January 1 of this year and whenever this law is put into place. By the way, we want to put them in place as quickly as possible, and we support that.
Can the minister explain how it is that these offshore safety regulations were allowed to lapse in the Newfoundland and Labrador offshore? It wouldn't happen to any other regulations. Is this a case of someone being asleep at the switch or not realizing the importance of these regulations in the Newfoundland and Labrador offshore?
Is there any further discussion?
Shall Clause 3 carry?
(Clause 3 agreed to)
The Chair: Excellent. Thank you.
Shall the title carry?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
The Chair: I didn't ask if there was any debate on that. I took a leap of faith. Thank you.
Shall the bill carry?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
The Chair: Excellent. Thank you.
Shall the chair report the bill to the House?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
The Chair: I think that's it because we didn't make any amendments to the bill.
Madam Clerk, I believe we have taken care of all of our business.
That was highly efficient everybody. Thank you. I'm very grateful.
With no other business today, I will see everybody on Friday when we will pick up where we left off on our study. Enjoy the rest of the week, and we'll see you Friday at 1 o'clock.