Honourable senators, I rise today to speak to Bill S-3, An Act to amend the Offshore Health and Safety Act. I would like to thank our colleague Senator Ravalia for his remarks on Thursday last week regarding this bill and, additionally, for his kind words about my father’s life and dedication to improving the state of Canada’s offshore health and safety.

I also thank him for referencing my sponsorship of the original Offshore Health and Safety Act in 2014. And as you may know, colleagues, I have a long history of work related to health and safety in the offshore, extending from my previous role as Deputy CEO and board member of the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board, the primary regulating organization for Canada’s offshore.

Colleagues, I was honoured to have been the Senate sponsor of Bill C-5 in 2014. This bill became law later that year. It was called the Offshore Health and Safety Act. This act played a critical role in increasing worker safety in our Atlantic offshore areas. As Senator Ravalia mentioned as well, it was broad in scope and addressed many of the complexities of the issues at hand, especially regarding clarifying processes, jurisdictions and responsibilities of all parties involved. That bill provided five years for implementation.

Offshore health and safety is one of the most important issues requiring our attention and speaks to the fundamental role of government: the protection of its citizens. Offshore workers should be able to arrive at work, day in and day out, knowing that we have implemented the proper regulations to ensure that they will be as safe as possible and to ensure that they will return home to their families at the end of each shift. For so many in our Atlantic provinces, these issues are not just a matter of legislation; they are personal, affecting the lives of themselves and their loved ones.

In recent decades, my home province of Newfoundland and Labrador has had to face devastating offshore tragedies. Senator Ravalia spoke about the Ocean Ranger disaster on Valentine’s Day of 1982. The Ocean Ranger was a semi-submersible drilling rig and was described as “indestructible.”

On that day, there was a storm off the coast of Newfoundland, which capsized the rig, resulting in the tragic deaths of all 84 on board. There were no survivors. This was Canada’s worst tragedy at sea since the Second World War. A good friend of mine, Darryl Reid, was one of the 84 who lost their lives. In Newfoundland and Labrador, these tragedies hit us directly because we are a small, tight community and everyone is within two or three degrees of separation.

Almost 30 years later, on March 12, 2009, Cougar helicopter Flight 491 crashed into the North Atlantic after experiencing mechanical trouble. The helicopter was ferrying 18 offshore workers to oil platforms off the coast of Newfoundland. Tragically, 17 lost their lives and there was only one survivor, my friend Robert Decker. The search and rescue technician who was lowered down by helicopter and pulled Robert out of the North Atlantic that day was Ian Wheeler, a high school classmate of mine.

Robert lived on our cul-de-sac. He delivered our paper when he was younger. I brought a pot of stew to his home when his family did not know whether he was going to live or die. The walk to his house, colleagues, was 30 seconds. You see, it is easy to understand why I, as a Newfoundlander sponsoring the Offshore Health and Safety Act in the Senate in 2014, and our former colleague the Honourable George Baker, also a Newfoundlander, served as the critic. It’s similarly easy to understand why now, in 2020, our colleague Senator Ravalia, a Newfoundlander, is the sponsor of Bill S-3 and why I am the critic. Colleagues, that the minister in charge of getting this done and hasn’t, who is also a Newfoundlander, is frustrating to me.

These catastrophes have brought so much devastation to my home province. They are deeply rooted. We mark time with them, asking questions like, “Where were you when you heard about it?” Health and safety legislation and regulations are personal to so many. Bolstering offshore health and safety means decreasing the likelihood that these devastating events will happen, and the likelihood that more parents, spouses and children will spend their lifetimes grieving.

As Deputy CEO of the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board, I consistently prioritized the health and safety of our workers, and our senior leadership team worked to effect positive change on the culture of Canada’s offshore safety. We set out to inspire a culture of safety. We hosted safety culture conferences and worked tirelessly to ensure that offshore workers were safe, felt safe and cared about issues of safety.

Those safety conferences continue to this day. And colleagues, to show that this was not just words from the top, I also completed the safety training. This training consisted of a variety of tasks, such as firefighting, getting out of a space that was filled with dangerous gasses and smoke, jumping from a ship into the frigid North Atlantic and remaining there for more than 30 minutes.

The most challenging was being strapped into a seat in a helicopter and being lowered into the water. At this point, the helicopter is flipped upside down because that is what happens when a helicopter goes down in the water. You are upside down, strapped in your helicopter seat, with the water level rising, and you have to wait for it to fill the cabin so the pressure is equalized. Then you remove your five-point harness and bang the window out with your elbow or fist and exit the small window, all while holding your breath underwater, upside down, in the dark.

It was our goal to ensure that all of our offshore workers felt a part of the safety culture that we encouraged and that they were trained and ready to deal with any event that could arise.

Colleagues, we know that the offshore petroleum boards — one in Newfoundland and Labrador and one in Nova Scotia — play critical roles in meeting our health and safety goals. However, the boards cannot do it alone. They require the cooperation of government to prioritize these issues and to push forward necessary legislation and regulations.

The 2014 Offshore Health and Safety Act was a promising step forward, but with Bill S-3, the bill in front of us now, there is no promising step forward. This bill simply asks for an extension of two years. The government’s legislative summary states that it is necessary because of the complexity of the regulations and the need to secure agreement from Newfoundland and Labrador, and from Nova Scotia.

The 2014 Offshore Health and Safety Act outlined a path towards permanent health and safety regulations for our Atlantic offshore. However, I understand that the act of putting permanent OHS regulations into place is one that requires study and coordination, so transitional regulations were put in place when the Offshore Health and Safety Act was enacted, giving the government a five-year period of time to conduct the necessary analysis and to determine permanent regulations. These transitional regulations were necessary at the time, but critical elements were still delayed awaiting this five-year window, including the establishment of an Occupational Health and Safety Advisory Council. We’re still waiting on that because the legislation hasn’t passed. What few people know is that an extension was already given in the second 2018 Budget Implementation Act. That was a one-year extension tucked into the 884-page omnibus BIA. Now the government is asking for two more years.

Prior to these transitional regulations, the offshore petroleum boards had to find ways to ensure that the health and safety priorities were being met without regulations. So health and safety standards were made conditions of licensing for resource development companies, and they knew that health and safety negligence would result in licence suspension or revocation. That was a workaround solution before the development of codified regulations.

Now, even the codified regulations we do have are transitional and are not being given any priority from this government. This legislation makes that even more evident. The government has made it consistently clear that offshore health and safety is not important to them. But I ask the question — and it’s not rhetorical — given our history of tragedy, what could be more important in the offshore than safety?

Colleagues, we passed the end of the five-year period in 2019, and the one-year extension expiry is upon us. The transitional regulations are set to expire in a few weeks on December 31, 2020. The bill in front of us now, Bill S-3, seeks to extend these transitional regulations for two more years until December 31, 2022.

The fact that this is now in front of us is shameful. The government has had five years plus a one-year extension to develop the regulations to protect our offshore workers, workers who are putting their lives at risk each day. What we see here, colleagues, is a rush job. The sponsor’s speech was Thursday, and the bill could have its third reading as quickly as tomorrow.

This has come down to the wire in such a way that the text of the bill is retroactive, out of fear that it will not get passed before transitional regulations expire. In this case, if the bill is passed in February or March 2021, the transitional regulations would be “revived on January 1, 2020.”

This is a pure abdication of responsibility by the government, the Department of Natural Resources and the minister from Newfoundland and Labrador, and the MP for the riding in which I live and where many offshore workers live.

The government has failed our workers. I ask again: What is more important to the government than bringing safety to some of our most at-risk workers? In the past five years, the government could not find the time to develop permanent regulations, ones that are simple and clearly based on existing provincial and federal regulations and the practices of the board, including the provisions of conditions of licence. Why has this taken so long and why are we scrambling for an extension mere weeks from the expiry of the transitional regulations and mere days from Parliament adjourning until 2021? Safety of citizens is a fundamental responsibility of government.

Honourable senators, we are weeks away from the automatic termination of the current extension. At the expiry of this third time frame, will we be sitting here being asked again to consider an extension of these same regulations in two years? Thank you.