flag state

FLAG STATE

Flag State Control is responsible for ensuring that Canadian-flag vessels are inspected in accordance with both Canadian regulations and, for vessels on international voyages, the appropriate international memoranda, conventions and protocols Canada has ratified, adopted or acceded to. Furthermore, it is responsible for taking all other steps necessary to give these instruments full and complete effect to ensure that, from a point of view of safety of life and environmental protection, a Canadian ship is fit for the service intended.

Inspections are made either by Transport Canada's Marine Safety #88bb21Inspectors or by appropriately qualified organizations, in accordance with signed agreements between the recognized organizations (ROs) and Transport Canada. Marine Safety still has a Duty of Care to monitor the condition of vessels and inspections carried out by the ROs, to ensure compliance.

Vessels on international voyages outside the Great Lakes area are required to comply with both the appropriate international conventions and the Canada Shipping Act, 2001 and its regulations.  Other vessels are inspected in accordance with Canadian regulations as well as various agreements between Canada and the United States of America for vessels trading between the two countries.

Select the links below for further information on Flag State Control.

Regulatory Framework

Delegated Statutory Inspection Program

Approved Products Catalogue Index (APCI)

In international customary maritime law, it is incumbent upon any state which allows the registration of vessels under its flag to effectively exercise its jurisdiction and control in administrative, technical and social matters over ships flying its flag [UNCLOS Art 94]. The flag state is required to take such measures for ships flying its flag as are necessary to ensure safety at sea with regard to (inter alia) construction, maintenance and seaworthiness, manning, labour conditions and crew training, prevention of collisions. Specifically in relation to the monitoring of condition of vessels on the flag, such measures shall include those necessary to ensure that each ship is appropriately surveyed as to condition, equipment and manning.

Art 94.5 then imposes a duty on flag states to take any steps which may be necessary to secure observance with generally accepted international regulations, procedures and practices. The obligation is repeated in relation to oil pollution in Art 217.

This is achieved in the main by the flag state issuing the vessel's safety certificates indicating compliance with the main international conventions, without which it is all but impossible to trade the ship world-wide. And it is these certificates which are the key to the port state control inspection system.

The UN Convention on the Conditions for Registration of Ships believing that ... a flag state should have a competent and adequate national maritime administration seeks to compel flag states to ensure .. that ships flying the flag of such State comply with its laws and regulations concerning registration of ships and with applicable international rules and standards concerning ... the safety of ships and persons on board and the prevention of pollution of the marine environment. And further that such ships are periodically surveyed by its authorised surveyors in order to ensure compliance with applicable international rules and standards. [Art 5.3]. Significantly, but sadly largely unsuccessfully, the convention requires identifiability and accountability from shipowners and managers. A vain hope in today's world of one-ship owning companies:

The hard reality is that there is little identifiability and almost no accountability where it is needed most - in relation to the owners of sub-standard ships.

And flag states are not universally doing their duty to regulate and police their own tonnage. That they cannot be expected to have an inspectorate spread across the globe is accepted, but flag states generally contract their surveying out to local classification or non-exclusive marine surveyors. Many flag states, and a few of the classification societies as well, could do a much better job. And there is a potentially unhealthy relationship between the classification societies, the registers for which they survey and the shipowner: it is usually the shipowner who indirectly at least pays the bill of the surveyor who is to decree if a ship is seaworthy or not. Add to this the practical difficulty: can one surveyor, however competent, thoroughly inspect the vast hidden reaches of an aging OBO, under pressure from owners and charterers and often at the risk of being buried under under a relentless rising tide of bulk cargo being disgorged into the very spaces he is trying to inspect? It is the system that needs change. For the system often does not give the surveyor a fair chance.

Lloyds Register and DNV, BV and the Polish Register have in recent months faced (and hotly disputed) allegations that their surveyors sell bogus safety certificates [see eg Lloyds List November 23 1994].

The losses speak for themselves: Consider the five year average from 1988-1992 when the highest percentage of total losses of ships (ranging from 1,06% to 0,5% of the total tonnage on the respective registers) were lost from the registers of Malta, Turkey, Cyprus, South Korea, St Vincent & the Grenadines, Vanuatu and Panama - all of which are expanding registers, attracting more tonnage each year. And compare this to the world average of 0,27%. There are clearly good and bad register states; and bad registers attract the worst shipowners with the worst ships.