Canada’s maritime industry welcomed the government’s recently released recommendations to modernize the country’s 45-year-old rules for piloting ships within its ports and waterways.
Bruce Burrows, president of the Chamber of Marine Commerce (CMC), said “Canada’s pilotage regime is stuck in the 1970s.”
“Pilotage costs in Canada are out of control and have a long history of increasing at rates that far exceed inflation,” he added. “The government’s Pilotage [Act] Review process is an important first step towards creating a pilotage system that not only promotes safety as its first priority but also meets users’ needs, uses sound risk management practices and is accountable and transparent. We look forward to participating in stakeholder discussions going forward.”
According to the chamber, fees, salaries and benefits paid to licensed pilots averaged $376,500 per pilot in 2016, increasing 3.4 times more than the consumer price index over the past five years. “On the St. Lawrence River, for example, the hourly cost of pilotage exceeds the total cost of the entire crew of a vessel,” the group said.
Marine pilotage is a government-mandated service in which a certified marine pilot must take over a vessel to navigate through designated ports, straits, lakes, rivers and other waterways.
The service is managed by four separate federal Crown corporations across the country and includes a total of about 400 pilots. Each Crown corporation has its own set of regulations, operational procedures and management practices.
“In some cases, Crown corporations are only permitted to use the services of pilots in monopoly, for-profit, pilotage corporations,” the chamber said. “And in many of the pilotage zones, archaic and cumbersome rules make it almost impossible for domestic ship masters and mates to be certified to pilot their own vessels — despite having similar local knowledge and expertise and having access to state-of-the-art navigation and traffic control management systems.”
The chamber noted that on the Canadian side of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway, ship captains and deck officers are certified to pilot their own vessels and “have a safety record that exceeds that of their government-mandated counterparts.”
The chamber has proposed that the regulatory authority of pilotage be transferred to Transport Canada, which will exercise oversight of the service to address potential conflicts of interest. It also seeks to abolish the disparate, regionalized management model of pilotage for a national pilotage authority that instead oversees regional pilotage operations centers.
The chamber also said the pilotage corporations contracted by the regional pilotage centers should be required to make public their financial statements, service contracts and be subject to audits.
In addition, the chamber recommended that the pilotage program allow “certified” ship captains and deck officers to operate fleet-wide, such as in the case of qualified ship officers on Canadian domestic ships in the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway who hold pilotage certificates to pilot their own vessels in that region.
“Research shows they have an exceptional safety record that is better than their government-mandated pilot counterparts,” the chamber said. “CMC supports the current Great Lakes Pilotage Authority certification program to be used as a model for a national system with the proviso that certified masters and mates be able to work on any vessel in their company’s fleet. We also believe that pilotage certification should be overseen by Transport Canada to eliminate any potential conflict of interest.”
The Canadian government’s Pilotage Act Review began on May 31, 2017, and was completed on April 30. The recommendations are now open to industry review. The report calls for strengthening five areas of the Pilotage Act, namely its purpose and principles, governance model, labor structure, safety framework and tariff-setting process.
“Marine pilotage makes an important contribution to marine shipping and ensures the safe transit of vessels. This review supports the delivery of safe, efficient and environmentally responsible marine pilotage services into the future,” the government said in a statement.
The Canadian Marine Pilots’ Association said on its website that the Pilotage Act “has served the country, and marine transportation in particular, very well and compares favorably with anywhere else in the world.”
Contradicting the Chamber of Marine Commerce, the association said that pilotage costs across Canada represent only about 2 percent of a vessel’s total operating costs and that they have remained “consistent over time.”
“Because the cost to shipping lines for pilotage is just a tiny fraction of the overall cost of their operations, it follows that these charges have virtually no impact on modal preference, choice of shipping route or rates charged to shippers,” the association said on its website.