Will we experience a spill of the same magnitude in this country? The short answer is, we might. We have experienced ship-source oil spills in the past. Names like the Arrow (1970) and the Kurdistan (1979) come to mind. As does the name Nestucca, a barge that spilled some 875 tonnes of bunker C over Christmas 1988. In January, 1989 oil began coming ashore in the pristine Pacific Rim National Park, on the west coast of Vancouver Island.
The spill from the Nestucca, albeit small, showed Canadians that the response capability of the Canadian Coast Guard was inadequate. At the time, it seemed clear to most observers that spill response capability had been accorded a low priority by the government here in Canada and that the Coast Guard had not learned from earlier incidents, such as the Arrow and the Kurdistan.
Why do I tell you all this? Well, it has been said that "those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it" and repeating it, I fear that they are.
The Report of the Office of the Auditor General
Politically, Canada is a confederation of states, with jurisdiction over various areas divided between the federal and various provincial governments. The subject matter of navigation and shipping is an area of federal jurisdiction. Like most private businesses, the business of government also has an auditor. The Office of the Auditor General of Canada audits federal government departments and agencies, most Crown corporations and many other federal organizations. The Office reports publicly to the House of Commons on matters that the Auditor General believes should be brought to its attention.
Shelia Fraser's ten year term ended on Tuesday of last week, May 31, 2011. When asked which of her audits over the course of the decade she most remembered, not surprisingly she made reference to the audit regarding the Quebec sponsorship scandal. The audit though that she did, that I will most remember, is the one released in the Fall of 2010 regarding oil spills from ships.
The Report of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development to the House of Commons in the Fall of 2010 is available on the website of the Office of the Auditor General, at www.oag-bvg.gc.ca
The Report is divided into 4 chapters; chapter 1 deals with oil spills from ships.
Why is this important?
Geographically, Canada is a coastal nation. It has the largest coastline of any nation in the world and is bordered by three of the world's oceans - the Atlantic, the Pacific and the Arctic. Of its 10 provinces and 3 territories, only two are landlocked. According to the Auditor General, Canada's ocean regions are a vital part of the country's economy, providing employment and a way of life for about seven million people. Those of us living here in Central Canada, occasionally tend to forget those facts.
The consumption of vast quantities of oil is one of the necessities of our modern industrial society. Transportation systems here in Canada function primarily on oil and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. At the same time our industries continue to require petroleum and petroleum derivatives as energy sources and as raw materials for common products such as plastics and fertilizers. As such, the threat of pollution is not likely to disappear in the near future.
Prevention of oil spills is certainly the most logical method of reducing the problem. And in recent years, technology, equipment, policies and procedures have all contributed to a decrease in the frequency and impact of oil spills. What we are left with though is human error and it has been said that some 97% of all shipping accidents are attributable to human error. People remain the weak link in the chain!
According to the Auditor General, between 2007 and 2009 a total of about 4,160 pollution incidents involving spills of oil, chemicals or other pollutants into Canadian waters were reported to the Canadian Coast Guard. Of these 4,160 incidents, some 1,580 involved oil spills from ships, ranging from pleasure craft and fishing boats to barges, cargo ships and tankers.
No two oil spills are exactly alike. The behaviour of oil on water and our ability to contain it are dependent on the type of oil involved, the location and volume of the spill, weather conditions and a host of other factors. The most effective clean-up methods vary from spill to spill and may even vary over the total area affected by a single spill. A wide range of ‘state of the art' clean-up equipment is therefore important.
But perhaps the most effective tool available to any clean-up contractor, public or private, is pre-emergency planning at the local level. In short, preparedness.
Contingency plans define the action which must be taken in response to a spill. Training programs need to be designed to ensure that properly informed and equipped crews are prepared to move into action as soon as the spill is reported. And spill managers need to have expert knowledge to hand regarding the resources available to them, both their own and that belonging to others, and the local areas that are potentially most sensitive to damage by oil.
Oil spills, although an ever present threat, do not have to become disasters like the Deepwater Horizon incident last year.
The tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground on Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound, in Alaska the Easter weekend of 1989. That spill shocked North America, Canada included, and after an Emergency Debate in the Canadian House of Commons, the then Prime Minister, Brian Mulroney, announced the creation of a Public Review Panel. The Panel, chaired by a Vancouver lawyer, was given the mandate to review, and evaluate, amongst other things, Canada's ability to respond to marine oil spills in Canadian waters. The conclusion that the Panel reached after conducting 31 days of public hearings across Canada was that the capability to respond effectively to a spill of any significant magnitude did not exist anywhere in Canada.
I am happy to say that was then. Today, Canada has an oil spill response capability in which the industry plays a key role. South of 60 degrees north latitude, industry funds 4 private response organizations that maintain a capacity to respond to marine oil spills of up to 10,000 tonnes. This capacity can be bolstered by transferring (or cascading) resources from across the country, and also from outside the country, as and when needed. Canadian responders, for example, were activated in response to the Deepwater Horizon incident. And within the US itself, the U.S. Coast Guard diverted a large quantity of oil spill resources from around the country to the spill site, and particularly from the various Captain-of-the-Port zones on the Gulf of Mexico itself. Oil when moving on the water and in the water column has a tendency to disrespect jurisdictional boundaries!
In short, there have been significant improvements in spill prevention and response capability here in Canada since the Panel's final report in September 1990. Sadly, there have also been failings; failings, now identified by the Office of the Auditor General of Canada.
Back in 1995 operational portions of the Canadian Coast Guard were transferred from the Department of Transport to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. Today, Transport Canada sets guidelines and establishes the regulatory framework for preparedness and response to ship-source oil pollution. Transport Canada also certifies the four private sector response organizations. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans/Canadian Coast Guard is the lead federal agency for responding to marine oil spills and is responsible for ensuring that an appropriate oil spill response take place. Then there is Environment Canada, which is the federal department tasked to provide environmental advice when the oil spill happens. Dividing the responsibility for response across these three separate federal government departments has meant that the federal government's oversight function is fragmented and has over the course of the last decade or so, at best, been asleep and/or at worst, broken down.
The Auditor General focused on the subject(s) of preparedness and response.
The Auditor General found that while Transport Canada reviews the private sector response organizations to verify that they remain ready to respond, there is no process in place today to provide any assurance that the federal component of the oil spill response system, i.e. the Canadian Coast Guard, is ready to respond effectively.
The Coast Guard's national emergency management plan dates back to 1998 and is today in need of an update. Regional plans are based on the national plan but because the regional plans have been updated at different times they are not consistent across the country. The Coast Guard recognizes that the plan needs updating. Pre-emergency planning is an evolving process, one that requires regular review and updating. Lessons learnt from responding to incidents, good or bad, is a vital component of any preparedness plan.
The private sector, as part of its certification process is required to conduct a series of ship-source oil spill response exercises. While the Coast Guard participates in some of those exercises, Coast Guard headquarters in Ottawa does not have a process in place to oversee exercising and could not assure the Auditor General that the various Coast Guard regions are following and implementing the national program for ship-source oil response exercises.
The Coast Guard has not conducted a comprehensive assessment of its response capacity since 2000 and is therefore unable today to determine how much oil spill response equipment it should have and whether the country as a whole, taking into account the response capacity of the private sector, has the appropriate capacity to address the risks.
When a ship-source spill occurs, it is important to respond appropriately to both minimize the impact to the environment and to ‘manage' the costs of the response. Monitoring and assessing responses to spills are therefore an important component for ensuring that responses are both appropriate and effective. The Auditor General found that the results of the Coast Guard's response efforts are poorly documented which in turn affects the Coast Guard's ability to accurately predict trends and know how well it is achieving its objectives of minimizing the environmental, economic and public safety impacts of marine pollution incidents.
The Canadian Coast Guard, as the lead federal agency responsible, fulfils its role in 3 different ways. Firstly, by acting as the federal monitoring officer to ensure that the polluter's response to the spill is adequate. Secondly, by managing the response itself in the event that the polluter is unknown, unwilling or unable to take on all or some of the required response obligations and thirdly, as a resource, in the event that someone else, such as a provincial government or off-shore drilling operator, calls on the agency to obtain their advice and/or equipment when responding to an oil spill.
Using a common system for emergencies contributes to standard response and operational procedures and reduces the potential for miscommunication when responding to incidents, across provincial/national borders. The private sector response organizations, like a number of other entities in both Canada and the United States, use a response system that is based on the Incident Command System, originally developed in the US in the 1970s. The Canadian Coast Guard, in comparison, does not. It's system is called the Response Management System and concern was raised that these two different systems when brought together in the event of a multi-party response to an incident could impact coordination of the response.
Transport Canada, the Canadian Coast Guard and Environment Canada have all agreed with the recommendations of the Auditor General.
On May 18, 2011 Prime Minister Harper named his new cabinet. The Departments of Transport, and Fisheries and Oceans/Canadian Coast Guard got new Ministers. Environment Canada kept the Minister named back in January, Peter Kent, the MP for the riding of Thornhill, here in Ontario. The Minister of Transport is now Denis Lebel, a Quebec MP from the riding of Roberval-Lac Saint Jean and the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans is Keith Ashfield, an MP from the riding of Fredericton, New Brunswick. How quickly Transport Canada, the Canadian Coast Guard and Environment Canada can respond to the recommendations of the Auditor General will be largely dependent on how well their Ministers can "manage" the need, in conjunction with the Treasury Board of Canada, in light of the federal government's stated effort to find spending cuts over the course of the next five years.
