Natural Resources committee  I was going to say that we probably all recognize that safety culture is what will drive continual improvement. Really the lesson for us as regulators—and this was discussed at some length at the International Regulators Forum—is how we can promote safety in the offshore and hold operators accountable for continuous improvement; in other words, move past a compliance regime to a continuous improvement regime.

Natural Resources committee  Shall I go back, or continue from here?

Natural Resources committee  Now under development is Encana's Deep Panuke offshore gas development project. It involves the production of natural gas from an offshore field located approximately 250 kilometres southeast of Halifax, and it's also in shallow water. Production is scheduled to begin in the last quarter of 2011.

Natural Resources committee  Thank you very much for the opportunity to appear here this morning. I think most of you are aware that both our chair and I appeared before this committee back on May 25. Today, I'd like to take the opportunity, especially for new members of the committee, to provide a brief update of what was stated previously, and then move on to provide the committee with an update on other relevant information on developments since that time.

Natural Resources committee  At the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board, we have approximately 38 staff in total. We have an operations, health, safety, and environment group that is combined, and it has about seven or eight people. Two of them, day to day, work directly on environmental protection, along with the manager, but a number of the other people in the operations group will tend to environmental issues as well.