Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources
Issue 9 - Evidence - June 15, 2010
OTTAWA, Tuesday, June 15, 2010
The Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources met this day at 7:16 p.m. to study the current state and future of Canada's energy sector (including alternative energy).
Senator W. David Angus (Chair) in the chair.
[Translation]
The Chair: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources.
We are continuing our study of Canadian offshore oil and gas exploration and drilling, the current status of operations, and applicable regulatory rules and regulations.
[English]
Ladies and gentlemen, we are dealing with these emergency hearings on the offshore drilling industry off the coast of Canada in light of the terrible events in the Gulf of Mexico starting on April 20, with a view to educating Canadians about the actual state of our offshore oil drilling industry. There seemed to be an apprehension that we had hundreds of rigs drilling on the West Coast, the East Coast and in the Arctic, and of course that is not the case. There seemed to be a public opinion poll that as many as 51 percent of Canadians were calling for a cessation of all offshore drilling. It seemed to us that before any such action was taken, we should at least inform folks as to the state of play. We have had a number of hearings to date.
We are privileged this evening to have with us witnesses who have been extremely patient while the Senate has been doing what I call end of session business and votes in the chamber, and here we are, only about two hours late. Thank you, witnesses, for your patience.
Our witnesses are from the Canadian Coast Guard and the Eastern Canada Response Corporation. Although we had it set up as two panels starting with the Coast Guard and then going to the response corporation, in light of the late hour and the fact that, after we hear the evidence, we still have to consider the report that we have before us, I have asked the witnesses to as one panel. I think there is an element of East Coast camaraderie amongst them in any event.
[Translation]
I would imagine that no one objects to having the four witnesses appear as a single panel, with each testifying in turn. We will begin with the Canadian Coast Guard officials.
We have with us Deputy Commissioner René Grenier, accompanied by Alex Li, Safety and Environmental Response, and Chantal Guénette, Manager, Environmental Response.
I would like to extend a very warm welcome to our committee.
[English]
From the Eastern Canada Response Corporation, we have James Carson, President and General Manager, who is here on his own for the corporation, which has been mentioned by many witnesses before today. You all play a very important role in the Canadian offshore oil and gas exploration industry, an industry that is a significant part of the Canadian GDP.
Before jumping to conclusions in what could be seen as an overreaction to the Deepwater Horizon incident, we want to make sure that the public and the government know exactly what is going on.
[Translation]
We will begin with Mr. Grenier, Deputy Commissioner of the Canadian Coast Guard.
[English]
René Grenier, Deputy Commission, Canadian Coast Guard: It is only proper that the ECRC and the Coast Guard are here together as the regime is part of a government and industry partnership. We will put that into action right now.
The Chair: I think it will be helpful to us if you could elaborate on that because I understand there is an element of government collaboration with the corporation Mr. Carson heads.
Mr. Grenier: Thank you for inviting us to discuss Canadian Coast Guard's readiness to assist in marine pollution incidents related to offshore oil and gas drilling.
As a special operating agency of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada, the Coast Guard helps the department meet its responsibility to ensure safe and accessible waterways for Canadians. The Coast Guard has played a key role in ensuring the sustainable use and development of Canada's oceans and waterways. Clearly, in light of these mandates, oil spill response in Canadian waters is of primary concern to our organization.
I would like to provide you with some historical facts. Following the Exxon Valdez spill in June 1989, Canada's federal government appointed the Public Review Panel on Tanker Safety and Marine Spills Response Capability. The panel's final report, known as the Brander-Smith report, was submitted in October 1990 and concluded that Canada, at that time, was not capable of responding effectively to spills and mitigating their environmental consequences.
This report was the catalyst for legislative changes to the Canada Shipping Act in 1993 and resulted in the establishment of Canada's Marine Oil Spill Preparedness and Response Regime in 1995. The regime was established to respond to ship-source spills. However, other governments and agencies have benefited and can benefit from this preparedness capacity, including offshore platforms.
The regime, still in place today, is under the responsibility of Transport Canada and governs oil spill response in Canadian waters. The regime was created through legislation to ensure that the potential polluters pay for industry's preparedness capacity and is built on a partnership between government and industry.
The industry, through a bulk oil cargo fee, funds the preparedness capacity of private companies called response organizations. There are four response organizations in Canada. Together, industry provides the capacity to respond to its own oil spills. The geographic area of response covered by the four certified Canadian response organizations include all waters as defined by the Canada Shipping Act in the Great Lakes, Hudson's Bay and on the East and West Coasts. It does not, however, include those waters located north of 60 degrees.
On the government side, the Canadian Coast Guard is the lead federal response agency for all ship-source and mystery-source pollution spills into the marine environment. This specifically includes spills on or into water by ships, or spills on water in connection with the loading or unloading of pollutants from ships at oil handling facilities.
The Chair: Excuse me, sir. Is it fair for us to conclude or understand that oil drilling vessels fall under the definition of ``ship'' for the purposes of your jurisdiction, or is that a separate thing?
Mr. Grenier: When the drilling rigs are drilling, they are not under our purview at all, only ships when they travel from a port to wherever they go to drill.
The Chair: I would like you to clarify at some point your purview if there were an oil spilled in a circumstance like the one in the Gulf of Mexico.
The other question is with regard to the Ship-source Oil Pollution Fund chaired by Alfred Popp at the moment. Would you tell us whether that fund would apply in any way to any such incidents?
Mr. Grenier: I will get into that later. The fund you are referring to is for ships and tankers. It is not for offshore rigs at all. They are separate. Perhaps Ms. Guenette can give you an explanation of how the fund for the ships works.
What I am trying to say is that the Coast Guard is focused on ships; it is not focused on oil rigs. Of course, if we were asked, we would certainly be in support of any organization during a response.
The Chair: By the way, the Coast Guard has gone through many structural iterations during my active involvement in the maritime industry in Canada. At one time, it was directly under Transport Canada, then it was half under Transport Canada and half under Fisheries and Oceans and then it was independent. I remember when Bill O'Neill was the commissioner, with Captain Turner and others. Who do you account to now?
Mr. Grenier: I have witnessed some of the changes being with the Coast Guard for 37 years, so I know all the people you just referred to.
We were under Transport Canada until 1995, at which time we moved under the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. In 2005, we became an SOA, Special Operating Agency, within DFO. We are still part of DFO, except that we are more stand-alone. We have our own budget and so on, but we are still part of DFO.
The Chair: Is the minister who is accountable for Coast Guard issues the DFO minister?
Mr. Grenier: Yes, and the Commissioner of the Canadian Coast Guard.
The Chair: Who is the commissioner?
Mr. Grenier: It is changing. It is George Da Pont until June 28, at which time Marc Grégoire from Transport Canada will take over. I am currently between bosses.
[Translation]
In normal situations, where a ship owner adequately responds to its spill, the coast guard simply plays a role of monitoring and oversight. However, in the event that a ship owner is either unwilling or unable to respond, or is unknown, the coast guard will act to ensure an appropriate response, either using our own equipment or through private companies, including response organizations.
As for the waters located north of the 60th parallel, the Canadian Coast Guard is the primary responder for ship- source spills.
As you may be aware, the National Energy Board, an agency of Natural Resources Canada, regulates the oil and gas production industry in Eastern Canada and has established two offshore boards: the Canada-Newfoundland board and the Canada-Nova Scotia board.
Primary responsibility for ensuring an appropriate response to an oil pollution incident from an offshore oil platform rests with the offshore boards. However, the operators of the offshore platforms off Newfoundland have agreements with one of the four Transport Canada-certified response organizations, the Eastern Canada Response Corporation, to provide response capability in the event of oil spills from the offshore platforms. In addition, the coast guard has agreements with the two boards to provide assistance to the extent of our capacity should it be required.
In the Arctic, the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs is responsible for regulating Canada's oil and gas operations, including granting licences for drilling in the Beaufort Sea, and is therefore the lead agency for ensuring an appropriate response to oil spills in Arctic waters. As stated earlier, the coast guard has a preparedness capacity in the Arctic and would provide assistance when requested or required.
Although our mandate is preparedness and response to ship-source pollution incidents and not to oil offshore companies, the coast guard stands ready to provide response assistance in the event of any marine pollution incident in Canadian waters.
We work with our industry partners and the certified response organizations to ensure we are prepared to respond to oil spills through exercising and training activities on a regular basis.
As you can appreciate, the coast guard is a major contributor to the federal marine response capacity. Our preparedness capacity includes planning, training and exercising, and the provision of equipment, personnel and operational management for containment, recovery and clean-up, including preventive measures.
The main elements of the coast guard's preparedness activities are outlined in a national contingency plan, which establishes the framework, approach and operational precepts we use to respond to a marine pollution incident at the regional, national and international levels. This plan provides details regarding training and exercising, response procedure and management structure, the National Response Team concept, cost recovery, equipment maintenance, spill reporting and various agreements with other departments and agencies.
[English]
Specifically, the Coast Guard maintains more than 80 response equipment depot sites across the country, 19 in the Arctic, that include containment, recovery and storage capabilities, as well as a cadre of 80 dedicated, trained responders. Other Coast Guard assets, such as fleet vessels with trained fleet personnel, could also be tasked to assist.
In addition, other government departments, including the Department of National Defence, Transport Canada, Environment Canada and Public Safety, would also have a specific role to play in accordance with their mandate and would therefore be engaged as required.
Obviously, a response must be commensurate with risk. As such, Coast Guard's response capability is based on the principle of ``escalation.'' A response begins at the regional level and involves local Coast Guard and industry resources. Should the required response effort exceed regional capacities, additional resources from other Coast Guard regions would be brought to the spill site. Similarly, industry resources, mainly response organization resources, can also be cascaded to the affected region.
In addition, should national resources prove insufficient, agreements are in place to obtain international assistance. In ratifying international treaties addressing marine pollution, Canada supports the principle of mutual aid for response to marine pollution emergencies. As in the case of the Gulf of Mexico, the United States Coast Guard has been in constant contact with us since the beginning of the gulf spill to explore the availability of Canadian Coast Guard resources. In response to their identified need, the Canadian Coast Guard has already provided 3,000 metres of offshore boom, and we continue to stand ready in case future support is required.
Similarly, in the Canadian Coast Guard, response organizations have strategically placed equipment depot sites across the country and a cadre of trained responders that could be deployed to the incident scene. Response organizations are part of a global response network, an international group of responders who have agreed to offer mutual aid when available.
Let me assure this committee and all Canadians that, when facing a major spill from an offshore platform, the Coast Guard would provide all available resources to assist our federal partners, industry partners and international partners to minimize damages caused by the spill.
[Translation]
The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Grenier. We will now move on to our next witness for their presentation.
[English]
We will hear from Mr. James Carson of the Eastern Canada Response Corporation.
James Carson, President and General Manager, Eastern Canada Response Corporation (ECRC): Mr. Chair, Mr. Grenier has stolen a little bit of my thunder, but I will go through my opening statement. I would like to give you a brief overview of Canada's oil spill response regime and, in particular, ECRC.
The present network of four private-sector funded and operated response organizations significantly improves Canada's marine oil spill response capabilities. This network was the result of extensive consultations and negotiations among the petroleum and shipping industries, environmental groups, the Canadian Coast Guard and Environment Canada.
The regime in place provides an improved response capability by having full-time employees, trained contractors, state-of-the-art response equipment, predetermined response strategies developed in partnership with government agencies and with prepositioned equipment in response centres.
Each response centre can achieve increased response capability through the use of its inventory and the cascading of additional equipment and response personnel from other response centres. Response contractors supply additional response personnel, services and equipment as needed.
The network of four certified response organizations are funded and operated by the private sector. The costs are borne by the petroleum and shipping industries that require the services of a certified response organization.
The Chair: This point is key for us to understand. Because of the inter-relationship of your organization with government, could you just elaborate, not only just how the shareholding works, and name the other three that exist in addition to your own? Is it a common ownership deal?
Mr. Carson: I will come to that. Specifically, ECRC is one of four response organizations certified by Transport Canada Marine Safety as a response organization under the Canada Shipping Act. As a certified response organization, ECRC can provide an arrangement to ships and oil handling facilities that require an arrangement under Canadian law.
Our mission is to maintain a state of marine oil spill response preparedness that is consistent with the legislation and capable of providing a real response at an affordable cost to our members. We also seek to provide value-added preparedness services to all of our members and assume a leadership role in the preparedness to oil spill response within the community at large.
ECRC is a privately owned company whose role is to provide marine spill response services, when requested, to a responsible party, the Canadian Coast Guard or any other government lead agency. These response services include operational management, specialized response equipment and operational personnel.
ECRC uses a version of the incident command system called the ``spill management system'' as a tool for managing its spill response activities. SMS is designed to meet the response requirements within the Canadian legislative context. It allows ECRC's spill management team to manage the operational response from an emergency mode to a project mode of operations.
The SMS is a structured process, allowing the SMT to fulfil its initial response and tactical phase responsibilities while focusing on a movement toward the strategic or project phase of a response.
ECRC's geographic area of response covers all navigable waters south of the sixtieth parallel of latitude for all of the provinces of Canada, with the exception of British Columbia and the ports of Saint John, New Brunswick and Point Tupper, Nova Scotia.
ECRC is headquartered in Ottawa and operates six fully staffed response centres in Sarnia, Montreal, Quebec City, Sept-Îles and Halifax, with an average size of 16,000 square feet warehouses and the largest in St. John's, at 36,000 square feet.
The corporation has developed a standard format and completed 32 area response plans for ECRC's geographic area of response. Each of our three regions has developed a schedule to review and update these area response plans on a three-year cycle.
ECRC owns specialized oil spill response equipment and maintains contracts with spill response contractors, consultants and specialists. ECRC has also established mutual aid support agreements with the two response organizations on the East Coast. That is Point Tupper Marine Services and ALERT in Saint John, New Brunswick, as well as the one in British Columbia, Burrard Clean.
ECRC is also a member of the Global Response Network, a collaboration of seven major international oil industry funded spill response organizations, whose mission is to harness cooperation and maximize the effectiveness of spill response services worldwide.
ECRC has 38 full-time employees and maintains a complement of approximately 520 contractors and advisers, of which 470 are trained annually. In the Great Lakes region we have approximately 70 contractors and 20 advisers; in the Quebec Maritimes region approximately 260 contractors and 30 regional advisers; and in Newfoundland and Labrador, approximately 70 contractors and 10 regional advisers, with approximately 10 advisers at the national level.
The company conducts, on an annual basis, a number of mandatory, operational and table top exercises as required under its response plan submitted to Transport Canada for certification purposes. Equipment maintained in a state of preparedness includes the following: boom, 60,000 metres or 200,000 feet; oil skimmers, in excess of 100 different types; boats, in excess of 100 different types; on-water storage, 16,000 tonnes; and miscellaneous ancillary equipment to support the above.
In conclusion, ECRC was established in 1995 as a result of the changes to the Canada Shipping Act following the Brander-Smith Report. The result is an example of government and industry working together to achieve success in the development and implementation of an oil spill preparedness regime in Canada that is cost effective and has worked well and met the needs of Canadians for the last 15 years.
I have attached to the back of your package a map of Canada showing the location of the various response centres.
The Chair: On that map, is the yellow your company? There are two other small East Coast areas that are red and maroon, one being Point Tupper.
Mr. Carson: Yes, that is correct. The small dark semi-circles in Nova Scotia and in the Bay of Fundy are ALERT and PTMS, Point Tupper Marine Services.
The Chair: Obviously your organization is much bigger.
Mr. Carson: Yes, it is. Each of those companies has one response centre located within their primary area of response. ECRC has seven of those primary areas of response within our geographic area of response.
The Chair: This yellow goes up to the corner of the page. Would it go as far as the Orphan Basin?
Mr. Carson: It goes just to the Orphan Basin.
The Chair: Are there any Canadian offshore operations farther out to sea? Chevron is the farthest, I believe, is it not?
Mr. Carson: The Chevron is the farthest, yes.
The Chair: Is that in your area?
Mr. Carson: I believe so, yes.
The Chair: You believe so.
Senator Mitchell: Thank you all for being here and for being so patient.
One of the questions that the BP experience begs is how is the Canadian preparation, technology, technique in drilling, et cetera, different from that of BP, so that we can have some assurance that whatever caused the blowout is far less likely to occur here; and, if it ever were to occur, we have better response capabilities to stop it, plug it and fix it quicker? What are the differences?
Mr. Carson: First, I am not an expert in drilling so I cannot really comment on your question.
As far as our ability to respond should there ever be an incident, we have the capability. We have a limited capability. Again, I hope we never see anything like the size of the spill in the Gulf of Mexico, but ECRC is certified under the Canada Shipping Act to a level of what is called 10,000 tonnes of oil. That does not mean that we cannot respond above that; it just means from a planning basis, we have all the planning in place up to a spill of 10,000 tonnes and beyond.
If there were a spill over 10,000 tonnes it does not mean that we would not or could not respond to it. However, it means that it would take longer. The set amount of time for 10,000 tonnes recovery would increase for a 20,000-tonne spill. It would take two or three times that length of time to respond to the spill.
The Chair: I think you were clear in your statement about your affiliation with international colleagues. Clearly that is the type of situation where you would call them in to help you.
Mr. Carson: Certainly. We would rely on our mutual aid partners nationally. We would rely on our partners and their other affiliations internationally as well.
Senator Mitchell: You talked about planning. The point was made by Mr. Grenier that the national contingency plan establishes the framework and operational precepts used to respond to a marine collision incident at the regional level. Your preparedness is outlined in that plan.
Have you begun to re-evaluate that plan in light of the BP experience? Will you be reassessing what we are doing in light of that experience?
Can we get a copy of the plan? Is it a public document?
Mr. Grenier: We are revising our plan. It is cyclical. We are also working with the National Energy Board and the petroleum offshore boards that regulate the platforms off Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. We are in contact with them and they tell us every time there is a new project. We then look at our regional plan to ensure that we are up to date with what is going on.
We are waiting to see the report on what happened in the Gulf of Mexico, and we will be studying that carefully. This morning, I met with NRCan and INAC to discuss that matter. As soon as we receive the report we will look at it in order to gain from lessons learned and improve our own regime and response capability.
Senator Mitchell: Your organizations would not be doing all the cleanup; you would be working with the company that had the problem. How do you differentiate between what they do and what you do? Do they pay us back for the costs incurred by organizations such as yours to fix the situation? Who takes the lead in an emergency?
Mr. Grenier: In the case of an emergency off Newfoundland, the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board would be in charge. The polluter would be responsible to activate the plan and to respond. The polluter would probably choose to have ECRC or another response organization help them out.
We have a memorandum of understanding with the boards that, if required, they would also ask us to help. We would be there to support them and work with them. We have done that in the past with some small incidents. We have lent equipment and expertise on a cost-recovery basis.
Senator Lang: I will follow up on Senator Mitchell's questions. I want to quote from a description of what is going on down in the Gulf of Mexico.
From the beginning, the effort has been bedeviled by a lack of preparation, organization, urgency and clear lines of authority among federal, state and local officials, as well as BP. As a result, officials and experts say, the damage to the coastline and wildlife has been worse than it might have been if the response had been faster and orchestrated more effectively.
It goes on with a description of the events as they unfolded in the Gulf. At the outset, there seemed to be no one in charge. The impression is that everything was left to the oil company and that it was their responsibility to do whatever was necessary to rectify the situation. That is now coming into question.
Let us assume we had a similar disaster offshore, be it off Nova Scotia or off Newfoundland. Who would be in charge? Who says what must be done? Are either of you, Mr. Carson and Mr. Grenier, where the buck stops?
Mr. Carson: The responsible party, that is, the owner of the rig or the well, is in charge. ECRC would work as a contractor for the owner. The lead agency would have oversight and the final say on whatever response plans were developed to deal with the situation. ECRC's role in a spill is to provide operational management, which includes spill management and planning. We would prepare a plan. There would be an emergency phase and in the background we would be preparing a longer-term response plan. That response plan would be developed in conjunction with government agencies as well as the responsible party. The responsible party, in cooperation with the lead agency, would sign off on that plan and we would continue with the response.
It is ultimately the responsible party who has the command and control.
Senator Lang: I want to get this clear. It is the oil company that is responsible for the cleanup and makes the final decisions with respect to what will be done?
Mr. Carson: In conjunction with the lead government agency, which would be the offshore petroleum boards.
Senator Lang: Do we have a contingency plan in place today that would come into play if we had a disaster similar to what happened in the Gulf of Mexico?
Mr. Carson: Each operator has a contingency plan. ECRC has a response plan for certification. That is the plan that is resident with the response organization and that is the plan that supports our licence to operate as a response organization. That is the plan I referred when discussing the 10,000 tonnes of response capability on a plan basis.
Senator Lang: Ten thousand tonnes of what?
Mr. Carson: Ten thousand tonnes of oil.
Senator Lang: How many barrels is that?
Mr. Carson: One tonne is a cubic metre.
Senator Lang: Which is how many barrels?
Mr. Carson: One cubic metre is 6.3 barrels.
Senator Lang: So that is 60,000 barrels?
Mr. Carson: Yes.
Senator Lang: So that covers the first half hour.
Senator Massicotte: We are not experts in the oil and gas sector and we are not engineers. We are trying to get a sense of how prepared everyone else is, because this is obviously not our job.
My starting point is that it will happen. Accidents do happen in spite of the best laid plans. We heard from Chevron last week. The question is how prepared we are to minimize the damage. Today in the U.S. congress a committee interviewed five CEOs of oil and gas companies. The CEO of Exxon admitted that they are not well prepared for what is happening and they have not practised for it.
You referred to the contingency plans of oil and gas companies, but some of those plans have numbers of people to call who passed away four or five years ago. That is not very comforting.
How can you make us comfortable? Fifty thousand barrels is not very much. It works out to be about 40 miles or 70 kilometres of booms. That is not very much compared to what could happen if we had a disaster.
I know there are a lot of plans on paper, but accidents will happen. How do we minimize the damage to the environment and to our economy? How do we convince Canadians that we are prepared for this and that they should trust us?
Mr. Grenier: The Canadian Coast Guard's mandate is to respond to a ship-source spill, as I said before. The National Energy Board is responsible for regulation as are the offshore petroleum boards in their own sectors.
This question should be directed to them because they do a thorough analysis, and review the plan, the exercise and so on. I apologize; I could explain to you how we do it for ships, which is probably similar; but for the offshore, I would redirect the question to Mr. Carson.
The Chair: Senator Massicotte, we heard the other night that any company that gets a licence to drill and do their thing has to provide a plan and have it cleared in advance. We have heard that the Coast Guard are around. They are one of Canada's resources. If there were an accident, they may or may not be called in, but Mr. Carson's organization is under contract to some of these companies, I would suspect, with regard to their plans. That is where you want to focus the question.
Senator Massicotte: We were told numerous times that they have plans but are delegating, basically, the rescue mission to your organizations. That is the answer we get. I guess the X is on your forehead. How confident are you about getting information and how prepared are you? The CEO of Exxon admitted today they are not prepared for a major disaster; a small disaster, yes, but how about the big ones? It will happen.
Mr. Carson: You are right. This regime was designed and built primarily for ship-source spills, and the typical ship- source big spill is in the 10,000 tonne range. The offshore is a different kettle of fish. ECRC has offered to the offshore companies our capacity at 10,000 tonnes, and we have contracted with them for that level of preparedness. As I said in my opening statement, that level of preparedness was determined and decided upon through consultation between government and industry at the time but, again, based on ship-source oil pollution incidents.
Senator Massicotte: I want to make sure this discussion remains relevant. I hear the organization's responsibility is for up to 50,000 tonnes. Beyond that, you will contribute but it is not your principal responsibility, that is not what your contractual obligations are. That seems to suggest — I hope it is right — that someone has planned for it, and I hope the oil companies have planned for it, but if it is not you, is it another organization completely? I doubt it.
Mr. Carson: Typically what is in place now is the operators have what they call their tier one capability, which is resident on the FPSO on the vessel itself or on the rig. What ECRC brings is a tier two level of response capability. Going beyond that, companies such as Chevron, Suncor and Husky have arrangements and memberships with other international organizations which can bring those international resources to bear on the spill.
Senator Massicotte: Who would that be?
Mr. Carson: It could be OSRL in South Hampton, England. MSRC in the U.S. is another example.
Senator Massicotte: If it is a big spill, how many days does it take them to get here?
Mr. Carson: Most of OSRL's equipment would come by aircraft, by Hercules transport aircraft. Most of MSRC's equipment is marine-based, so they would have to steam from U.S. ports to the Newfoundland area.
Senator Massicotte: In the BP example, they are waiting for a ship from England which will take around a month and a half to get there. Is that an approximate time frame we are looking at?
Mr. Carson: That sounds a little long, but I cannot really say for sure.
Senator Lang: If I could, I will follow up on the question of the contingency plan and the experience they have had now down in the Gulf again, and that is what we are comparing ourselves to. One consultant said that the federal oversight of spill contingency plans largely amounts to accepting what oil industry operators say they can do, rather than demanding they demonstrate that they can actually do it. It is one thing to have a contingency plan and another to demonstrate that it will mitigate the problems you will face.
Is there a government agency that actually says to the oil company directly, an organization such as yours: Here is the contingency plan. Now demonstrate to us that it will work. How does it work? Do you have to do that?
Mr. Carson: In the case of the offshore petroleum boards, yes, they do have exercise requirements for the operators. As a matter of fact, Chevron is exercising their tier-two response capability tomorrow in Conception Bay with ECRC.
Senator Lang: Tier two means what?
Mr. Carson: Tier two is the 10,000-tonne level. Equipment is being deployed in Conception Bay tomorrow.
Senator Lang: Would a blowout similar to what has happened in the Gulf of Mexico be a tier five or six?
Mr. Carson: It is tier three plus.
Senator Lang: Then we do have demonstrations of a contingency plan that can cope with tier three or tier four?
Mr. Carson: No. This exercise tomorrow —
Senator Lang: Do we have it? If we called for that tomorrow, could you do it for us?
Mr. Carson: No.
Senator Massicotte: Would you ever drill with tier three?
Mr. Carson: Not for tier three, no. We have not done one for tier three.
The Chair: I know where you are going, Senator Lang, in terms of dealing with an accident as bad as the one in the Gulf, but we are also here to find out the prevention methods that are in place to prevent a bad spill. So far, the weight of the evidence would be that it is remote.
Senator Neufeld: Who is in charge and how is that determined? I think you have basically answered that. It is through a process, but when you started talking about the capabilities, it bothered me a bit. Chevron told us that they would be 100 per cent responsible for all of the cleanup, all the costs, third-party costs, everything, primarily with the government and the offshore boards. They would depend on you, Mr. Carson, or your organization I guess, as I understand, to do the cleanup. You say you are capable of 10,000 tonnes. Is that your limit?
Mr. Carson: No.
Senator Neufeld: What is your total limit? If Chevron called you tomorrow and said we need you now, what is your capability in tonnes?
Mr. Carson: It is a little difficult to explain. On a preparedness plan, on a plan basis, we have the capability to deal with a 10,000-tonne spill. If it is a 15,000-tonne spill, we will still respond to it and deal with it, but it will take longer than it would for only 10,000 tonnes or 5,000 tonnes.
Senator Neufeld: So your answer to me, as I would interpret it, is you are capable of the 10,000 tonnes. You can do more, but it will just take you longer. Tell me, how long would it take to you clean up 10,000 tonnes on a spill in the Atlantic?
Mr. Carson: In the Atlantic, on a plan basis, we are looking at within 10 days to get all the oil off the water. That includes unsheltered and sheltered water. If the shoreline is impacted, we are required, under the RO standards, to be able to clean 500 metres of beach per day.
We seem to get hung up on equipment. Equipment is certainly very important, but the planning is more important. A good, detailed plan that can be escalated from a tier one to tier two to tier three and beyond is key here.
ECRC's plan is built along that line. We can cascade equipment from across the country and from our mutual aid partners. We can cascade equipment in from, as I mentioned, Southampton, England, and from the U.S. Right now the U.S. has no surplus equipment available, but in normal times the U.S. has a lot of equipment that we could bring to bear. Over and above that, we have the government Coast Guard equipment.
Senator Neufeld: Having been involved in one large oil spill on land, where I come from, there was a huge amount of confusion. Would Environment Canada or DFO, as far as you know — and it may be unfair to ask you this — have any authority over what will take place? Does Environment Canada or DFO just say, ``Look, we are just going to stand by and the oil company is in charge?'' Your cleanup crew then comes in and does it. Is that the way it is on the ocean? That is not my experience on land.
Mr. Carson: On the ocean, with respect to the platforms, the offshore petroleum board has the final say. We either accept your plan or we do not.
Senator Neufeld: I mean when you go to clean up.
Mr. Carson: That is right; it includes the cleaning up. The responsible party has to submit a plan to the lead agency to describe how they will go about cleaning it up; with what, the resources required and the cost for a certain period of time. That plan is prepared by ECRC in conjunction with the agencies, which could be Coast Guard; if the spill involves the land, it could be the province; or if the spill has shoreline impact, it will be Environment Canada. That plan is then submitted and either approved or disapproved. It is back to the drawing board if the plan is disapproved.
Senator Neufeld: You say that all this was basically set up, to begin with, to deal with ship spills. On the West Coast, we have one to three large carriers going from Alaska to ports in Washington mostly, in the outer waters, not on the Inside Passage. If you had a spill the size of the Exxon Valdez — and some of these ships are bigger than the Exxon Valdez — would you have the capability of cleaning that up and responding to it right away? I want to get a sense of the size. You said you dealt with the shipping industry. If one of those ships crashed on the rocks in British Columbia, south of the Queen Charlottes, for whatever reason, would you have the capability to clean that up?
Mr. Carson: We certainly have the capability to get started and to ramp up a response over time. Yes, that is right.
Senator Neufeld: That is all in place?
Mr. Carson: Yes, it is.
Senator Neufeld: The carriers that ply the B.C. coast have contracts with Burrard Clean Operations?
Mr. Carson: That is correct.
The Chair: I thought it would be interesting to read this piece from the testimony on day one of our hearings by Max Ruelokke of the Newfoundland and Labrador board:
Last but not least, the board's safety and environmental professionals review the emergency response plans for the project in the event that an incident occurs despite the preventative measures in place. These plans include an oil spill response plan, which describes in detail the command structure the operator will put in place to respond to a spill event. It also describes the plan's relationship with other operators' and government's plans and a description of spill response resources available at site in eastern Newfoundland, nationally and internationally.
In other words, they seem to have at least foreseen the possibility of getting their wires crossed.
Senator Banks: I will re-plow the ground you have just talked about. Maybe I am seeing a bogeyman under the bed, and maybe there is not an analogy to this situation. Another committee of which I have been a member for a long time, the Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence, ten years ago, inquired about who is in charge, in the event of an event, of coordinating all the first responders? You might be first responders. When we heard words like ``putting a plan together in conjunction with maybe that guy or maybe that guy or maybe that guy,'' it struck terror into our hearts, which turned out in a couple of instances to be well-founded terror.
Since then, it has been the case that in most cities of any size — this is true of Vancouver and Edmonton, and I am sure it is true in Saint John and St. John's — the plan is in place now. No one has to talk to anyone, because when an event happens, everyone knows exactly where they will go and exactly who is in charge, and you sit there and this guy is running the show. There is no question about it. You do not have to say, ``We might have to talk to the ambulance operator or we might have to involve the police or the fire department,'' et cetera. They are all there. As soon as someone hits the buzzer, there is no question about who will run the show.
Please correct me if I am wrong, but I am hearing that that might not be the case in the event of either a ship-based spill or an offshore drilling rig spill. Parenthetically, Mr. Grenier, you said you mainly deal with ship-source spills, but I am presuming that your resources could also be called upon in the case of an offshore drilling event of some kind.
Can you give us a little more comfort? Say the event happens tomorrow morning at six o'clock. How soon will it be before someone is able to say, ``I've got this, I am in charge, and I will need to call those guys and those guys, and this is why I need to call them and they will do what I tell them''?
Mr. Grenier: I will respond in terms of a ship's response. Of course, the way the regime goes, the polluter activates the plan, so he is the first responder. In the plan, Coast Guard is notified that there is a spill or something to that effect. As soon as we hear that, the Coast Guard radio station will then relay the message to Transport Canada, to our environmental response group, to Environment Canada, and so on. We will send a Coast Guard officer to the scene to talk to the ship's captain or the polluter.
Senator Banks: Do you send him on one of your ships or on a helicopter?
Mr. Grenier: We will send him on a helicopter, whatever. It could also be over the radio. We will ensure that he is responding in what we feel is the right way. Then we become the federal monitoring officer, and we will stay there until the spill is cleaned up. This is with regard to ships.
Senator Banks: When you get there, who is in charge?
Mr. Grenier: The polluter is in charge of his own response. We are monitoring. If, for whatever reason, we are not satisfied with the way the clean-up is beingdone, or if it is a mystery spill from a ship — we do not know which one — then we will take over. Then we will become the on-scene commander and we will take over.
Senator Banks: The officer on the spot has the authority to say, ``That's it. I am taking over now''?
Mr. Grenier: Yes. There will be some discussion, but basically yes.
Senator Banks: Discussion is the problem.
Mr. Carson, would you reply, please.
Mr. Carson: It is very clear for ECRC. Let us talk about a generic ship. The ship has an arrangement with ECRC, and it is a pre-signed response agreement. The person in charge is either the ship's captain, or the ship's owner has a representative. ECRC reports to that person.
Senator Banks: Do you operate under that person's direction?
Mr. Carson: Yes. As I said before, we will take the necessary emergency action and we will prepare a plan which is submitted to the ship owner or to the ship's captain. Then, in conjunction with the lead agency, such as the Coast Guard, the plan will be approved and we carry on.
Senator Banks: So you submit a plan to the captain of a ship.
Mr. Carson: Yes.
Senator Banks: Is it subject to his approval?
Mr. Carson: That is correct.
Senator Dickson: Mr. Carson, I would like to follow up and ask how many rigs are currently operating and producing in the Newfoundland territory.
Mr. Carson: There are three producing and the Chevron well is being drilled.
Senator Dickson: Of the three producing, does your organization have contracts with the operators of those three?
Mr. Carson: Yes, we do.
Senator Dickson: Prior to three producing, it started out as one producing.
Mr. Carson: Hibernia.
Senator Campbell: Has your capability increased since Hibernia?
Mr. Carson: ECRC's capability has not increased. The operators have purchased additional equipment specific to the offshore. The three of them have purchased five single vessel side-sweep systems. Those are spill kits that contain equipment that can be adapted and mounted on the side of one of their supply vessels for immediate tier one response.
In addition, the operators have purchased state-of-the-art offshore sweep boom, as well as sophisticated, high- capacity skimming units. Under contract with ECRC, ECRC maintains that equipment, we train the people to operate it and we oversee its storage.
However, to go back to your original question, ECRC has not increased our capability as a result of taking on those customers.
Senator Dickson: Do you think it would be prudent to increase your capability? I am fishing here.
Mr. Carson: As I say, ECRC was built for ship-source oil pollution and it was built to what they call the ``response organization standards.'' These standards determine how much boom we would need, and how much pumping and skimming capability we would need.
The stakeholders in this regime pay for that through fees they pay to ECRC. It would require a legislative change or the stakeholders to agree to pay higher fees than what they do today for us to increase our capacity.
Senator Dickson: Legislative changes to the Canada Shipping Act, do you mean?
Mr. Carson: That is right.
Senator Dickson: Take me through this process. As I understand it, Chevron prepares a plan and they take it to the Newfoundland board. When do you first see that plan?
Mr. Carson: We would not see that plan in any detail until there was a spill. Our plan is part of their plan, the same as our plan is a part of Coast Guard's plan.
Senator Dickson: I want to make sure I am hearing this right. Mr. Grenier, you would not see the Chevron plan until there is a spill, is that right?
Mr. Grenier: The board which oversees it would see the plan. They would actually analyze the plan. I do not want to speak for them.
Senator Dickson: When do you see the plan? Do you see the plan before there is a spill? Does the board pass the plan to you to have on file, not for opinion purposes? I appreciate you are doing an excellent job — no question.
Mr. Grenier: I will take the example of ships. Ships have plans on board. Transport Canada approves the plan. So we know what the plan is, except for phone numbers and so on. It is a standard thing adapted to each and every ship.
Their plan calls for ECRC, if the spill goes up to a prescribed amount and they cannot handle it. That is why ECRC is part of their plan. However, if there were an incident, then you have the incident action plan that would then say ``Okay, today we need more. We need to cascade.'' Tomorrow, plan number three would say we need to ask for another region to come in because they do not have enough boom or skimmers or so on.
There is a plan in case something happens. If something happens, other actions kick in as the plan is adjusted.
Senator Dickson: I am interested in the Conception Bay exercise.
Mr. Carson: Yes.
Senator Dickson: I assume Conception Bay will not be tabletop; we will have real equipment, will we not?
Mr. Carson: It is real equipment.
Senator Dickson: Would you describe that exercise in Conception Bay?
The Chair: Is that the one taking place tomorrow with Chevron?
Senator Dickson: Tier one, I guess.
Mr. Carson: I referred briefly to the large offshore boom that these companies have purchased. That boom is called NorLense Offshore Boom. It is extremely large and is designed specifically for open ocean use. That boom is being deployed as well as what is called a TransRec skimmer. That is a heavy-duty oil skimmer that is deployed in conjunction with this boom.
The boom is used in a U-shaped formation; you have two vessels, one on each end of the boom and it tows this boom through the oil. The TransRec skimmer is in the apex of the boom and that is what recovers the oil. It pumps it up into storage tanks. That is what is being done tomorrow.
Senator Dickson: What is the largest tabletop tier exercise that you have participated in?
Mr. Carson: Every year, we conduct what is called a 10,000 tonne tabletop exercise. Typically, it runs for 36 to 48 hours continuously. During that exercise, specific objectives that have to be met in terms of producing plans and status reports. We work to a scenario. We bring in most of our personnel. We bring in quite a few of our specialist advisers as part of what we call the spill management team.
That is done every year. This year it will be in Newfoundland in September, and we would be glad to have any of you come and observe.
Senator Dickson: When was the last time that you did a tier 3 tabletop exercise?
Mr. Carson: We have never done one.
The Chair: I read a moment ago an answer from Max Ruelokke. I have here one from Mr. MacLeod of Chevron.
You had asked him the exact same line of questioning, and he said:
In terms of mitigation, our spill response plan is a tiered approach. The first of three tiers is that in the event of a small spill, we would activate resources on board the Stena Carron and the supply vessel standing by. A certain amount of boom equipment and absorbent equipment would be brought to bear. The next tier is to activate equipment in St. John's at the Eastern Canada Response Corporation, ECRC, with whom we have a contract to help respond.
When you said that you would not see the plan until there was an accident, senators' eyebrows went up, including those of the chair, because you have a contract. We wondered why you would not have seen the plan. He goes on to state:
In the event of an incident in the magnitude of the current one in the Gulf of Mexico, we would go to the third tier, which our corporation has only gone to once.
That was Chevron talking, and that was at the time of Katrina.
Senator Banks: Is the boom that will be deployed tomorrow and towed by two ships the biggest one that you have?
Mr. Carson: That is right.
Senator Banks: How much oil does it contain?
Mr. Carson: It is designed as a sweep system.
Senator Banks: How much oil can it take?
Mr. Carson: It is 400 metres of boom. The boom is about 2.5 metres in height. You have about a meter below the surface and a meter and a half above the surface.
The idea is that as you go through a slick, you sweep the water surface and the oil moves to the apex of the boom where it gets concentrated, thickened, and then the skimmers are much more efficient working in 10 inches of oil than they are in an inch of oil.
Senator Banks: Thank goodness oil floats.
Mr. Carson: Not always.
Senator Banks: It is 400 metres of boom in a U-shape.
Mr. Carson: Yes.
Senator Banks: I presume if you looked at the open side of the U, it would be in the order of 150 metres?
Mr. Carson: I can give you that number exactly.
Senator Banks: This would tell us the size of the slick with which this boom could deal, the breadth, the width, the face.
Mr. Carson: It is 90 metres.
Senator Lang: Getting back to the exercise tomorrow with the sweeper and what you are doing there, have you done that before in a real life exercise as opposed to a tabletop?
Mr. Carson: It has been done before with this equipment, and the single side sweep systems that I referred to on the tier 1 level are exercised every year.
Senator Banks: Is that in real situations?
The Chair: No. It is like a fire drill.
Mr. Carson: They are real situations, but no oil.
Senator Lang: Do you work with any other international companies? Are you strictly based in Canada?
Mr. Carson: We operate strictly in Canada. On occasion, we do provide people. For example, we have had people down in the Gulf, and we have two people in the Gulf as we speak.
Senator Lang: I have a further question on the contingency plan. Do you know of a tier 3-plus contingency plan where they do a fire drill exercise to see how they would cope with it?
Mr. Carson: Not that I am aware of, no.
Senator Lang: It has never been done.
Senator Peterson: We are focusing primarily on offshore platforms and drilling. Would it be fair to say in that instance that the oil companies are the people in charge?
Mr. Carson: You are correct.
Senator Peterson: You would come if they asked you to come.
Mr. Carson: That is correct.
Senator Peterson: They would be giving you all the directions on what to do and where to go.
Mr. Carson: Theoretically, they give the directions, but they take a lot of suggestions from us. We are the experts.
Senator Peterson: You said that you do not go north of 60, unless requested. Probably the most fragile area is the Arctic, and it would indicate here that the Department of Indian Affairs is in charge.
For the offshore of Newfoundland, there is the Canada-Newfoundland Offshore Petroleum Board, and the same with Nova Scotia. We have been told that there are a number of professional and highly competent people who have experience in this kind of operation. Does INAC have something similar to that?
Mr. Grenier: North of 60, it is the Coast Guard. There is no response organization. There is just a bit of traffic and no drilling as we speak right now. The Coast Guard is responsible for ships' source pollution.
The spill response plan that you are talking about would be reviewed during the environmental assessment by the regulator. INAC and the National Energy Board would review that plan. They would accept it. It is not like no one has seen the plan. It has been approved before they are given the permit to drill.
If you want to know a bit more about this, I have the Director of Oceans from DFO with me. Perhaps she can explain more about how it works.
Senator Peterson: I am surprised that INAC, and I did not know they were in this business, have competent people to carry out this kind of operation. How long has it been doing that?
Mr. Grenier: INAC would work with the National Energy Board, which has the expertise and the authority. INAC is there because they understand the North and the Aboriginals who live there. They rely on the expertise of NRCan and the National Energy Board.
Senator Peterson: I am concerned about the length of time to get ships and equipment up there. Where is the closest point with this type of equipment that you would need there, if you are part of it? Maybe you are not part of it.
Mr. Grenier: There is no drilling.
Senator Peterson: There will be; they are talking about it.
Mr. Grenier: If there is drilling, then they will have to have a plan, and if they have a plan, they will have to have a backup system if something fails. During the environmental assessment, many departments will review the plan to satisfy themselves that the response is a good plan, and they would either accept or not accept the plan. That is when they have to come up with what they will do.
The Chair: I have something for you, Senator Peterson. I am referring to the news release that came out on June 10 from the National Energy Board. It is an invitation: Dear Senator Peterson: The National Energy Board is inviting your participation in its public review of Arctic offshore drilling requirements —
Senator Peterson: That must be some other Peterson.
Senator Neufeld: It was in response to Senator Peterson's question about INAC. The National Energy Board is in charge; we have dealt with that in other areas. They use INAC as an adviser because, as you say, up there they deal with the Inuit and First Nations who live there and have done so for some time. However, as to who is in charge of drilling, it is the NEB.
Senator Banks: Although INAC grants the leases.
Senator Neufeld: They grant the leases; that is correct.
The Chair: Mr. Carson, you said that your company is a privately owned company. Are all the four response organizations that you described owned by the same party?
Mr. Carson: No, they are not.
The Chair: Are they all different owners?
Mr. Carson: They are all different.
The Chair: May I ask who owns your company?
Mr. Carson: It is Suncor, Imperial Oil, Ultramar and Shell.
The Chair: That is what I thought. It is a substantial group of players in the oil industry.
Mr. Carson: That is correct.
The Chair: What you do is what you have described; you are not out doing other things. You are waiting and continuing your preparation to be ready for whatever the contract you have calls for you to do.
Mr. Carson: That is right. Our full-time job is preparedness, which includes updating, planning, maintenance of equipment, training and exercising to be ready when the bell rings.
The Chair: When you referred to the stakeholders in the context that you did, are you referring to your principals?
Mr. Carson: I was referring to those four companies plus the shipping industry in Canada and international shipping as well.
The Chair: Are the other three response organizations also privately owned by the operators?
Mr. Carson: Yes. ALERT is owned by Irving Oil; Point Tupper is owned by New Star Energy; and Burrard Clean is owned by the majors with the additions of, I believe, Chevron and Husky.
Senator Massicotte: I would like to follow up on that point. When I see governments doing drills, my experience has been that since there is no measurement of success — when there is no competition to improve that measurement of success, like we see with the Olympics — there is no desire to excel or make it better, and eventually governments get fat and ugly until something happens.
You are owned by private enterprise, which is obviously interested in profit. How do we ensure your shareholders are also interested in the most important criterion of success, which is cleaning up after a mess? How do you measure that to ensure that you excel and become the best in the world?
Mr. Carson: We do a critique internally after every spill. Although the standards that we were built on and we operate under are planning standards, we do use those as a measurement. Can we really clean up 500 metres of shoreline in a day? We use those as measurements to measure our performance.
Senator Massicotte: How do your benchmarks compare to other world exercises?
Mr. Carson: In oil spill response, there really are no benchmarks because every spill is different. Every spill evolves differently. I have been talking about our equipment. We have 10,000 tonnes of response equipment. We responded to a significant spill in central Alberta back in 2005, 2006 and 2007. We hardly used any of our equipment for that spill. It was all specialized equipment that we had to round up and modify for a specific purpose. We had to develop new equipment.
In that particular spill, the oil stayed on the surface for about 24 hours and then sank and formed tar balls on the bottom. We had to develop equipment so we could go down — they were called hydraulic vacuums. We went down and sucked the tar balls off the bottom.
Senator Banks: Before you go, I would like to ask either Mr. Li or Ms. Guenette Senator Peterson's question. How close is your nearest equipment to an event that might happen in the Arctic or at the southern half of Hudson Bay, for example? Where is your nearest stash?
The Chair: The Coast Guard?
Senator Banks: Yes.
The Chair: When we build these new Coast Guard vessels, you will have a better answer.
Alex Li, Director, Safety and Environmental Response, Canadian Coast Guard: As Deputy Commissioner Grenier has pointed out, we have 19 depots for the Coast Guard equipment. The map here indicates the locations of some of our immediate response equipment. Subsequently, depending on the location, the size and the weather during the spill, we would mobilize different equipment across Canada to respond.
Senator Banks: Do the little blue dots, which are identified as Canadian Coast Guard Arctic depot sites, have oil containment equipment?
Chantal Guenette, Manager, Environmental Response, Canadian Coast Guard: Yes, in those locations, there are depots that contain booms and skimmers that can be readily deployed in those locations.
Mr. Grenier: We have 19 sites, but we also have, in Hay River, a special depot to transport 150 tonnes of equipment by plane right away, wherever it needs to go. We have three sites — in Tuktoyaktuk, Iqaluit and Churchill — where we have 1,000 tonnes of equipment. They are strategically placed so that we can respond. It is a big area but that is the best that we can do.
Senator Neufeld: To give some perspective on size, you said that you are at the 10,000-tonne level. What tonnage would an Exxon Valdez be? How many tonnes of oil would something like that carry?
Mr. Grenier: It would be 40,000 tonnes altogether.
Senator Massicotte: And the BP spill, how many tonnes would that be?
Senator Peterson: It is still spilling.
Senator Neufeld: Actually, until a little while ago, it was smaller than the Exxon Valdez, but it is now much larger.
Mr. Carson: I think it is estimated at twice that now.
Senator Neufeld: Yes, I think so.
Senator Massicotte: Twice the Exxon Valdez?
The Chair: I was involved a bit with the Brander-Smith inquiry and the Exxon Valdez disaster, now very much like the Deepwater Horizon, was a trigger for Canada to sit up and ask whether we were in good shape to deal with something like that spill. The answer was that we were not. What we have been hearing tonight basically, as I understand it, is the result of the response after that commission of inquiry. I think it had a good effect.
The National Energy Board, who will be one of our next witnesses, has announced, as a result of the Gulf situation — they have a team down and they are preparing a report on it — that they are also doing a full review of all of the regulations, rules, response mechanisms and so on. For what it is worth, we have heard that.
I wanted to say one other thing to the witnesses. The senator to your right, Mr. Carson, is Senator McCoy from Alberta. I omitted to introduce her earlier. She is one of our experts on the committee. You are lucky that we did not turn her loose on you tonight.
[Translation]
Mr. Grenier, we are always very proud to have you and your team here from the Canadian Coast Guard.
[English]
Mr. Carson, we have been hearing so much about your company, it was great to have you here tonight to help us get a sense of the responsibility of the operators for any evil they might wreak. Your organization is sort of a part or a subsidiary of theirs. Is that fair?
Mr. Carson: That is correct.
The Chair: Without further ado, I will suspend the hearing while we go in camera and start again, hopefully, in two minutes.
(The committee continued in camera.)