We all know what I'm like: talk, talk, talk. That's why I'm here.
I want to go to chapter 3 on health and safety in federal buildings. I appreciate that my colleague Mr. Kramp raised something on this. This is one of those things, in the context of the millions and billions of dollars we deal with, and of conflict of interest, and defence budgets, and war planning, and the like, that could easily get overlooked.
When you're talking about their not doing the fire drills, at first blush that can sound pretty mundane. But, boy, if there's ever a disaster and then an inquiry and the first piece of evidence is that there was no fire drill, suddenly it's headlines.
Let's recognize that our first priority, even beyond the programs we deliver, with a couple of exceptions—armed forces, RCMP, emergency response personnel—and our first obligation to the people we hire to implement those policies is their health and safety. There are hundreds of thousands of Canadians who work in buildings we're responsible for, and probably millions of people who care about those individuals.
So I'm going to urge, if we can, Chair, that we find time to maybe do.... I'm just suggesting this.
But I also liked the questions that Mr. Desnoyers was asking around VIA, given the importance of the future, of moving Canadians around this big country, about the importance of moving to rail in terms of the environment--all those reasons. We have a report that's telling us there are major problems.
I'm going to suggest to colleagues that perhaps we could find a way to maybe do one hour on this report, and pick one, two, or three within, spending maybe an hour or 45 minutes on each.
The other one I want to raise is the Great Lakes Pilotage Authority. I'm being right upfront that I'm being very parochial. Hamilton is affected by this in a big way, but so are literally tens of millions of other Canadians. At Hamilton we have one of the major ports on the Great Lakes-St.Lawrence Seaway system, and there are real issues here about the qualifications of the pilots and the navigators.
There are recommendations, if I have this right, that domestic shipping no longer be exempt from the certification process, or no longer be exempt from having to....
Help me on this; there's a piece that they have to do and they're exempted from it. Perhaps you can fill that in for me.
But there's a piece there, and there's a recommendation that came out in 2002 saying, hey, we ought to move away from this.
Again, as one of the Great Lakes port representatives, and thinking about all the cities that are impacted by ports, and here we have a health and safety issue on our waters.... I don't think it needs to be a long two-hour examination, but it would seem to me that we ought not to leave that untouched.
Also, there's the building issue. If I can, I would note the example you gave of 66 Slater Street. Lest anyone watching think, “Really, fire plans...?”, it's the confusion among departments, because they didn't know which department was responsible—one of them was the PCO, by the way. The report says: As such, fire safety planning risks were not addressed for the building for almost a three-year period...endangering the health and safety of the federal employees located at 66 Slater Street.
It seems to me that's an alarm bell and that we have an obligation to follow up on it.
Thank you, Chair.