“April 28 is a day to remember Canadians who were injured or killed on the job. I extend my condolences to families who have lost a loved one and to workers that continue to suffer from workplace injuries and illness.

“Workplace safety is a concern for all Canadians and their families. Over 1000 Canadians are killed at work each year and many more are injured. Although we have some of the strongest safety standards in the world, we must do more to support our workers – We must reverse the recent cuts to safety monitoring and require employers to comply with safety standards designed to prevent injuries and loss of life.

“The fact is that any workplace death or injury is preventable. Today, on Canada’s National Day of Mourning, let us act together to ensure that every Canadian can get home at the end of a working day, safe and sound.”

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The Old Harry site, though, is actually in the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board area and would be the first ever development of petroleum resources inside the Gulf of St. Lawrence, which is one of the most biologically productive areas of Canada’s coastline and is uniquely susceptible to threats from oil and gas accidents or disasters because its counter-clockwise current would take any oil around to absolutely all of the provinces in the area, which as he mentioned, is a multi-jurisdictional area, with Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador.

This piece of legislation deals solely with worker safety in the offshore for both the Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia boards. In fact, it is not objectionable, even though it does not go far enough to ensure those workers have an independent safety board. However, when speaking of independence, we have now had the downloading of environmental reviews to these very boards, and they have shown a pattern of consistent bias in favour of developing oil and gas, and in that, they have a conflict of interest when trying to protect the public interest, environmental concerns and the interests of fisheries and fishermen’s organizations throughout the region.

I ask my colleague if he thinks the time has come to have a look at these accords and these acts and see if we should separate out regulatory functions from offshore petroleum promotion functions.

Geoff Regan: Mr. Speaker, it seems to me that what ought to govern in these questions about what happens in the Gulf of St. Lawrence is science and evidence.

We know the history of the government. It seems to prefer policy-based evidence to evidence-based policy, and really, these decisions ought to be made on the basis of science and evidence.

I suppose on the one hand, the answer to the question depends upon how these boards are structured, who is on them and so forth. Those are important questions in terms of the kinds of decisions that would be made.

I think I have made clear that in relation to this legislation my argument has been that there ought to be a separate independent body dealing with health and safety and that area of regulation. I also know my hon. colleague is well aware of the way the Liberal Party has opposed the many negative changes that the Conservative government has made to harm, really, our environmental legislation in this country.

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I would like to underline that although the Minister of Natural Resources talked about how this bill would make environmental progress, there is none of that in the bill. I would like to know if my hon. colleague would agree with me that it falls far short of the independent safety board that we really need, because in practice, these offshore petroleum boards are not unbiased; in practice, they operate to promote offshore oil and gas.

Would my hon. colleague agree with me that the legislation before us is indeed better than nothing, but falls far short of what we would all like to see, based on the recommendations of Mr. Wells?

Jack Harris: Mr. Speaker, the member is absolutely right: it is a good step forward, but it falls far short, particularly in terms of recommendation 29 with respect to independence.

The member is also right in saying that although the minister talked about environmental issues, there is absolutely nothing in this legislation that deals with the environment. In fact, that has been another criticism of the offshore oil and gas regime, particularly with respect to even having access to the environmental monitoring that ought to be taking place. That monitoring is not done by independent monitors; in fact, researchers and academics are denied access to the oil platforms for the purpose of even counting birds, doing basic studies, or following up on baseline studies that might have been done years ago.

As a result, we have a situation in which the people who are expected to follow the regulations are the ones who are doing the monitoring. It is not being done by somebody independent. That is the situation in the environmental field, and unfortunately that was also the situation with respect to offshore safety when it came to the lack of regulations: the standards were being set by government, but how to do it was left up to the industry.

In this particular case, we still have a problem in that the same regulator is dealing with both aspects of offshore operations, and we believe that is wrong.

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