Sheila Malcolmson

[National Strategy for Alzheimer's Disease and Other Dementias Act, June 8th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, last month, I joined my community in Nanaimo on the walk for Alzheimer's where our community walked in support of Alzheimer's patients and their families.

The honoree this year was the late Dale Horn. She was born in 1933 in Australia and she came to Canada at the age of 24. She was such a strong part of Nanaimo's community boards and the life of its community spirit.

At this Alzheimer's walk a month ago, her son, John Horn, honoured her at the walk for all the hundreds of participants ready to get started, saying: “Dale was a fantastic companion, fully engaged, witty and keenly observant. She drew you in and made you feel lucky to be included in her world.” With “a steely resolve and genuine grit,” Dale was unfazed by her disease, said John. “When affected by Alzheimer's, she insisted on helping others with the disease. She retained a wicked sense of humour and immense grace, right up to the end of her life.”

This year's Nanaimo Alzheimer's walk raised $18,000. This is to promote critical research to reduce the effects of Alzheimer's, but also to provide services for those living with, or assisting with Alzheimer's. This is really to ease the personal circumstances that exist for the people suffering and for their families every day.

It is in that spirit that I am pleased to stand and speak today in favour of the bill at hand and to speak about Canada's responsibility to improve care for the hundreds of thousands of Canadians suffering from dementia, and to give better support to their families and caregivers.

Bill C-233, which calls for the development and implementation of a national and comprehensive strategy to improve health care delivered to persons suffering from Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia is something we can and should all support. Canada has fallen behind other countries such as the United States, the U.K., Norway, France, the Netherlands, and Australia. All of these countries have coordinated national dementia plans in place already.

Past president of the Canadian Medical Association, Dr. Chris Simpson, spoke to this when he said:

We have the dubious distinction of being one of the few G8 countries without a national dementia strategy. Meanwhile, our acute care hospitals are overflowing with patients awaiting long term care placement and our long-term care facilities are understaffed, underspaced and underequipped to care for our most vulnerable seniors. This leaves patients and their families in limbo, struggling to fill these gaps in our system.

He also said:

The reason your father has to wait nine months for a hip replacement is that the beds are being used by dementia patients.... That is the single biggest reason why elective surgery wait times are so long.

Now, it was the NDP that first introduced a proposal to the House to create a national strategy for dementia. In 2012, former NDP MP Claude Gravelle introduced Bill C-356 in Parliament, prescribing a national dementia strategy. Unfortunately, that bill was defeated at second reading a year ago by a single vote. The bill was opposed by a majority of Conservative MPs, Bloc MPs, and, critically as it turned out, a single Liberal MP who failed to stand for the vote. I was watching it on CPAC. It was heartbreaking because it would have made a big difference in our communities.

Inexplicably, the member for Niagara Falls, the sponsor of the bill before the House today, voted against the national dementia strategy just a year ago. If the House had followed New Democrat leadership in the last Parliament, Canadians would have a national dementia strategy in place right now. Canadians would not have lost precious time, and that is something that is so precious to people suffering from a degenerative illness.

This has had real human impact. I have heard countless stories in my riding about the impacts of Alzheimer's disease and dementia on my constituents. Many cannot afford quality home care for their parents and it is especially shameful that the Liberals abandoned their election promise to invest $3 billion in home care.

I have heard stories from personal care workers, nurses, and physicians who report emergency wards overwhelmed with patients, long-term facilities that are understaffed, and long gruelling hours for caregivers. These are very often offering low-pay work in the homes of dementia patients.

These stories underscore the need for real leadership in this chamber. So many are affected. Three-quarters of a million Canadians were living with dementia in 2011. That is 15% of Canadian seniors. That might double by 2031. This costs our country $30 billion a year in medical bills and lost productivity. Left unchecked, that number could skyrocket to $300 billion within 25 years.

As Canada's population ages, we must prepare our health care system and our communities for the inevitable rise in the number of Canadians suffering from dementia.

To paraphrase Tommy Douglas, the father of medicare and a New Democrat, only through the practise of preventative medicine will we keep health care costs from becoming excessive.

The need is pressing. The burden for caring for patients with dementia and Alzheimer's falls primarily on family members. In Canada, family caregivers give millions of unpaid hours each year caring for their parents and family. That is $11 billion in lost income and a quarter million lost full-time equivalent employees from the workforce.

If nothing changes by 2040, it is estimated that family caregivers in Canada will be spending 1.2 billion unpaid hours per year providing care, and a quarter of family caregivers are seniors themselves.

Dementia also has a disproportionate impact on women. Women are two and a half times more likely to be providing care. Women themselves represent 62% of dementia cases and 70% of new Alzheimer's cases. That puts them at the epicentre of a growing health care crisis. Also, women are nearly twice as likely to succumb to dementia.

Another group of vulnerable patients are affected by another bill in the House, and that is the government's physician-assisted dying bill. We keep hearing arguments again and again that people with a dementia diagnosis should have a real choice over how their lives end. The federal government's legislation for assisted dying would not allow Canadians with a dementia diagnosis, while they were still of sound mind, to make an advance request for physician-assisted dying. This puts up an enormous barrier for thousands of Canadians with dementia or other degenerative illness.

Without the right to make advance requests for assisted dying, Canadians with a dementia diagnosis are faced with what the courts call a cruel choice between ending their lives prematurely or, potentially, suffering immeasurably and unbearably. This is completely unacceptable. To us it looks as if those who most need physician-assisted dying may inexplicably be excluded from it. We remain optimistic that amendments will be made to ameliorate that very serious flaw.

Let us go back to the national Alzheimer's strategy.

The New Democrats believe that the bill must be crafted correctly to ensure the best outcome for patients, their families, and their caregivers. While we support Bill C-233, it is less ambitious in its scope and implementation provisions than last year's New Democrat bill.

We will work constructively at committee stage to bring about meaningful and substantive amendments to strengthen the final version of the bill. Canadians deserve no less than the best national Alzheimer's strategy possible. The New Democrats have a long and proud history of advocating for federal leadership on health care issues.

In fact, as my colleague, the member forVancouver Kingsway likes to remind me, we invented it. The New Democrats stood alone in the House unanimously for a national dementia strategy in 2015. We stand in the House in 2016 and work so every Canadian, every Canadian family, every caregiver, can have a world-class dementia strategy, as the New Democrats have fought for in the last five years.

[Abandoned Vessels, June 6th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I stand in support of Motion No. 40. I thank my colleague for bringing it to the House.

First, the problem of abandoned vessels is urgent and there is on-the-ground harm being done, including to B.C.'s ferry fleet. Second, local governments have been passing motions like this for over a decade. Third, I will tell members about the legislation I tabled in the House in February. Finally, since the problem is urgent, I will argue that the federal response also be urgent. The New Democrats want to turn words into action.

Here is the problem. A legislation gap allows for the abandonment of vessels that are not an immediate navigational or environmental hazard. No one department is responsible to prevent these vessels from becoming a greater hazard to the environment or navigation. When communities try to take action, they get the run around.

First, I want to give some good news. I have stood in the House at least three times since the beginning of the year and have asked for help with the Viki Lyne II. It is a 100 foot trawler abandoned four years ago. Transport Canada towed it into Ladysmith Harbour where it has sat ever since.

It did not originate in Ladysmith. The federal government brought it in, and local governments and communities have since been asking the federal government to get it out.

Four years ago, the Coast Guard filed a report with Transport Canada and Fisheries and Oceans saying that this vessel was an imminent risk to sink and that it was full of contaminants. It recommended full removal, yet that has not happened.

However, the good news is that partly with the excellent advocacy of Ladysmith city council, Stz'uminus First Nation, Georgia Strait Alliance and also a very big on-water rally of residents of Ladysmith last summer, after four years of rotting in the harbour, I was delighted to tell all the local community representatives, when I was back in the riding the week before last, that I had secured an agreement from the former fisheries minister, the member of Parliament for Nunavut. He agreed that the Coast Guard would remove this vessel by August.

We are delighted. I was so glad a week today to be able to thank him in person for taking that action on behalf of Ladysmith.

That it took four years and ministerial intervention is a major problem. The federal government must understand the urgency of the abandoned vessel problem, which has spiralled out of control over the past decade. Some 400-plus abandoned vessels litter our harbours and waterways all over the country. These are end-of-life freighters, large ships, and small recreational craft.

Why are there so many right now? Fibreglass is reaching the end of its lifetime, there are more intense storms and changed weather patterns on our coasts, there are changes in the coastal fishery which have moved some boats out of commercial use, and, finally, economic hardship has resulted in the abandonment of responsible ownership by some people.

Why does it matter? Oil and solvents pose environmental risks when these vessels inevitably sink. They can harm sensitive ecosystems and threaten shellfish and aquaculture industries that provide jobs in our region. They are eyesores that blight otherwise picturesque harbours on our coasts.

Like Ladysmith Harbour in my riding, former mayor Rob Hutchins, described spending millions on waterfront beautification only to have the harbour blighted by almost 50 abandoned vessels evicted from Vancouver harbour and Nanaimo harbour. It was not Ladysmith's problem, but became its visual pollution.

This is like Shelburne, Nova Scotia, where last week the mayor applied for an arrest warrant for the owner of the abandoned vessel Farley Mowat, and the CAO called for the federal government to help overwhelmed municipalities like theirs with federal legislation.

Municipalities have been calling on the federal government and the province for help for years to no avail. For 12 years, I was elected to local government and we passed resolutions calling on action on abandoned vessels every year. The Union of BC Municipalities, the Association of Vancouver Island Coastal Communities, and the longtime regional district of Nanaimo chair, Joe Stanhope, all stood together, with strong advocacy and encouragement to no avail.

As chair of Islands Trust Council, three times I led delegations to the provincial government and to the responsible minister. One time, 19 local governments stood with me. Gary Holman, the New Democrat provincial MLA for Saanich--Gulf Islands, has pushed hard on this issue and it has all fallen on deaf ears. The B.C. Liberal government has not acted on this file.

We did get an inventory, a fact sheet, and a working group, which was good, but those actions did not remove a single vessel from our waters. These motions fell on deaf ears. This undermines the confidence the coastal communities have in senior levels of government, which is a problem. It is one of the reasons I ran for federal government. I wanted to bring legislation to the House to act on this issue once and for all.

The member of Parliament for South Shore—St. Margarets had options in front of her to either bring legislation or to bring a motion. She chose to go with a motion, and it is a good one. I will vote in support of it. Honestly, however, I have been voting on motions to fix abandoned vessels for 15 years, and the problem has only grown. It is not what people have been asking for, and it is not what the urgency of this problem requires.

By contrast, Bill C-219, the bill I introduced in February, could become a law. It would solve the inaction on abandoned vessels federally. By making the Coast Guard the responsible agency, we would end the runaround, and that is the biggest frustration. We do not know which ministry to ask. The government would have the mandatory obligation to deal with the removal and recycling of these vessels once and for all, and it would be responsible for the collection of the cost from the original owners as well.

I hope to have support from the Liberal government for my abandoned vessel solution, as it supported former MP Jean Crowder's almost identical bill a year ago.

Other countries have comprehensive legislation. I have visited Norway and the coastal authority there takes action when there is an abandoned vessel. It does not mess around to find out who owns it. It gets it out of the water where immediately it can protect the ecological and economic values of the region. Then it passes on the bill to the responsible owner.

I helped to bring the Washington State derelict vessel program manager to Canada. She met with Transport Canada representatives so they could learn how well a comprehensive solution could work here.

Canada also needs a national plan, not a ship-by-ship approach. We cannot just shuffle this problem from one community to the next.

We also heard in the House of when the Silver King started to sink in Baynes Sound, mid-Vancouver Island. My colleague for Courtenay—Alberni worked very hard to protect the aquaculture and migratory bird habitat. He secured Coast Guard removal, but the Silver King was towed from his riding to mine in Ladysmith Harbour. It sat there for months instead of the days that were originally promised, and that was right at the beginning of tourist season.

Nanaimo Port Authority, to its credit, has acted, although it does not have to, on vessels both inside and outside its waters. However, it is also pleading for federal leadership and a comprehensive approach. Right now, it is costly and uncoordinated.

The costs of not dealing with this are real, and I have a brand new example of the cost to coastal communities in B.C.

In the course of our research, we spoke with the BC Ferry and Marine Workers' Union and with BC Ferries management . We heard that the Queen of Oak Bay, a public ferry which has the capacity to carry 1,500 people, hit an overturned sailboat, an abandoned vessel. Vessel Traffic Services and the Coast Guard were involved and had to stay at the scene of the collision until it was clear, and the Queen of Oak Bay was cleared to resume its trip.

Collisions like that endanger the safety of passengers and crew. They create travel delays and economic costs. Additional staff had to be assigned to monitor the ferry afterward to ensure it was safe. It is dangerous, time consuming, and expensive. That collision in March was just one of three hits or near misses in just a few months this year.

While I support the motion, it will not help coastal communities as fast as we need. A legislated solution binding future governments will. Therefore, I really hope the government will bring in full legislation or else support mine. Until then, action is needed so communities can see immediate results.

Therefore, I would like to seek the consent of my colleague who sponsored the motion to propose the following amendment: That the motion be amended by adding after the words “abandoned and derelict vessels” the following words: “including the dismantling of abandoned ships or wrecks that lie in waters that are a source of drinking water, or threaten the environment, or obstruct navigation.

[Privilege, May 19th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I very much appreciate the member's observations. She is quite right. What happened in the House last night was 100% because of the actions of the Prime Minister. He chose to stride across the aisle; he chose to swear at members across the aisle; he chose to grab and intervene physically. There is no excuse for that. I am very interested to see what actions the Prime Minister will take to go beyond simply “I'm sorry”, because what happened was inexcusable.

[Privilege, May 19th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, what I think we often see in social media, and just in conversations around the country, is an attempt to justify what is unjustifiable. This happens in domestic violence all the time.

I am not saying that what happened on the floor yesterday was domestic violence. I am not saying that at all. I want to be really clear on that.

However, when we do see people weighing in, trying to justify the unjustifiable, that is a sign to me that we have a lot of work to do in our country about workplace violence, about violence in our lives generally. That is why I am so proud that our status of women committee has violence against young women and girls as a high priority. A number of members of the House are part of that committee. It is why I am so pleased that New Democrats have led on a commitment, working with non-governmental organizations and the labour movement, to establish a national violence against women strategy. I am very glad to see the government has a commitment to that, also. It especially says why it is so important for the leaders in this House, and the Prime Minister more than anybody, to set the tone and to never let there be any room to blame victims of violence in any form.

[Privilege, May 19th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I continue to feel unsettled about what happened in this chamber last night. I think many of us are feeling the same way. The Prime Minister's actions were disappointing; they were shocking; they were unprecedented.

Many of us have said it this morning, but again, in no workplace would swearing or grabbing of colleagues, male or female, be allowed. It should not have happened.

I will echo my colleague's comments. Cynicism about senior governments and cynicism about this place is a big problem in this country, and it affects the work we do here. The government was elected on such a message of hope and change and optimism after, frankly, a dark decade with the Conservative government—I will say that again—and that hope and change is betrayed by the actions that have happened, particularly this week, in this House.

We had a very strong message from voters to work together, and we saw that on Tuesday, when my colleague from Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke stood together with the Minister of Justice. To have her take entirely the bill on transgender rights that he has worked on for so many years, to have that co-operation across the aisle, to have them stand together was a very beautiful and very powerful and respectful moment, very respectful of my NDP colleague's work. I am thankful to the Minister of Justice for doing that. That is an example of where we can work together, work co-operatively and set a different tone.

The profile of feminism that the government has set has been noticed around the world. Now every country is having the same conversation. We have a unique opportunity in the world right now to truly bring gender equality and to bring gender into all our conversations, and I commend the government for setting that tone.

Why then would we dial that back this week? We also had a great example of tone in this House around our debates until midnight, those of us who sat together until midnight, both to talk so powerfully and sorrowfully about the tragedy of suicide in Attawapiskat and then a couple of weeks later to talk about physician-assisted dying, a very emotional, very personal discussion, and to have members of all parties speak from the heart on this and have us speak together. That is the kind of work we should be doing together.

To contrast that to yesterday, to see the Prime Minister intervene in a way that was completely outside his job description, completely inappropriate and completely rattling of all of us, to see grabbing and swearing, was shocking to all of us. It feels like bullying, I have to say. We have seen the government shut down debate on five of its 15 bills. It did not need to do that. It has a majority. It will get its way at the end of the day. Why would it invoke closure and stifle debate in this House?

Why would the government have pushed past the very powerful advice that its committee on physician-assisted dying gave? Why would it not have reflected the advice of that all-party partial consensus in its legislation? It just feels like a disregard. Why would the government take a majority on its democratic reform committee? It has a majority in the House; why not take these opportunities to work together, as my colleague from Skeena—Bulkley Valley proposed, to have the committee designed in a different and innovative way? It did not take those opportunities.

More than anything, we were elected to give voice to our voters and voice to our ridings, and the actions this week and what feels to me like bullying are impeding that. I have been waiting four days to give a speech about physician-assisted dying. Every time I have come to work ready to give that speech, the government has been throwing spanners in the works all week.

The Liberals then asked us to debate, all of a sudden with no notice, the immigration bill. We have not talked about that for weeks. Then all of a sudden we were talking about RCMP collective bargaining. Then there was a copyright bill that we had not debated at all. We were kind of jumping around all over the map. There was so much consensus in the House that we moved through the copyright bill very quickly, but again, why make us jump all over the map when the true emergency is the bill on physician-assisted dying. It is very discouraging.

We should remember that what we were voting on last night was a motion that the government moved to invoke closure on debate around the physician-assisted dying legislation, very heated and passionate. Why would the Liberals stifle debate on this? It was in that atmosphere that the Prime Minister charged across the aisle when he did not need to and came into physical contact with two members on this side of the House.

The Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, PROC, is going to look at this issue. I am concerned, given that the government has a majority on that committee, that it might bully its way there also. I would love to hear members on the other side reassure me on that point.

There is another bullying motion, Motion No. 6, which was announced yesterday morning, an unprecedented straitjacket on the work of the opposition and an unprecedented stifling of the ability of members of Parliament, elected democratically in their ridings, to give voice to their constituents' concerns. It is extremely troubling.

It is clear that high tensions yesterday affected everybody in the House, but the government imposed those tensions, both by shutting down debate on five out of 15 pieces of legislation that have been in the House already and by proposing Motion No. 6 to hamper the opposition. The government chose to do that and the Prime Minister chose to leave his seat and get physically entangled with members on the other side. That was his decision.

I do appreciate his apology this morning. If he had given that unqualified apology last night, it would have gone a lot further. It was important for him to have said it immediately. I am glad that, 15 hours later, he said to us in the House.

I encourage the government to back down from its strong-arming of this legislation. It should allow us to do our work, to represent our voters and our ridings, and to speak true voice to all the important issues before the House. The government should recommit to a workplace in which swearing and grabbing are never allowed and nobody ever tries to justify it; they say it is not allowed. The government should also abandon Motion No. 6. The House has to be able to do its work.

New Democrats believe in working together with all parties to get things done and improving the tone in the House. However, the Liberals need to take leadership to make this happen, and they lost a lot of ground last night. Canadians have a right to expect decorum in the House, to expect workplace safety, and to expect better things in Parliament than what they saw yesterday; and New Democrats are determined to work with all parties to make that happen.

[Privilege, May 19th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciated the Prime Minister's apology this morning. If he had made that apology last night, it would have de-escalated things a lot.

I am dismayed to hear the member now revisit and reopen things, and try to justify and qualify what was said. We have had a significant setback by virtue of the member's intervention just now. I am very discouraged to hear her referencing the comments from the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands, who could not sit further away, in the sixth row. Why would those comments be highlighted?

Again, this morning we have had an apology with no qualifications and no attempt by the Prime Minister to justify any of his actions. That was classy. Last night was not, by anybody on the other side.

I ask the member, were the comments she made on behalf of her party and her government? If they are, this is a serious setback to what we heard from the Prime Minister this morning.

[Privilege, May 19th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the minister's comments about tone in the House. She is right. When we sat together until midnight to debate both suicide in Attawapiskat and physician-assisted dying, those were good moments. That is what we heard a lot about in the election campaign. People wanted to hear a dialogue and a tone in this place that they would recognize, the way that they deal with their own family and friends, and in their own workplaces. This is particularly why we are all so rattled by what happened last night. It is so out of keeping with the very powerful mandate that the Liberal government received to do business differently. Therefore, I am very frustrated and disappointed.

I am also frustrated and disappointed that I have come to work on four days this week being ready to give a speech on physician-assisted dying, to echo the extremely high volume of mail and advice that I am getting from my constituents. Four days in a row I have shown up ready to give that speech, and the Liberal government has changed its mind, saying, “We are going to talk about immigration.” or “Over the next hour we are going to talk about the RCMP.” How can the minister justify shutting down debate when we need to be having these important conversations in this House?

[Fight Against Food Waste Act, May 12th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to stand here with my colleague, the member for Berthier—Maskinongé, in support of a bill to develop a national strategy to reduce food waste.

The numbers here are compelling. Canadians waste approximately 27 billion dollars' worth of food every year, food that is landfilled or composted. The true cost of that food waste might be more like $107 billion a year, if we include the labour costs, transportation, and capital investments in infrastructure and inventory.

Globally, and this is the terrible link, 1.3 billion tonnes of food are wasted every year, yet 870 million go hungry every day. Just this morning a number of parliamentarians heard at breakfast from Laval University professor Jean Caron. He said one billion more people could be fed in this world if we went ahead and reduced food waste in the food chain by more than 50%, which he and a number of other activists say is absolute doable.

Right back in Canada, almost 2.5 million Canadians experience food insecurity, and over 800,000 visit food banks every month. In a country as wealthy as ours, this is shameful. Since 2008, the number of people turning to food banks has increased by over 25%. Close to 900,000 households in Canada are food insecure, and a few years ago the UN's special rapporteur harshly criticized the right to food in Canada under the Conservative government.

Connecting food waste with people in need is what people in Nanaimo—Ladysmith have done, and I am so proud of the success stories that are coming out of our riding.

Loaves and Fishes is a community food bank in Nanaimo. After many years of just working to try to get people fed who were in need, they had this brilliant innovation. They put the donations they were able to receive into refrigerator trucks and they now drive all around the riding. They might get a phone call from a shipping company that says they got stuck in a ferry line and now they cannot deliver their load of cheese or whatever under the conditions that were guaranteed before, but it is still good if they want to come and get it. They will go and get a whole pallet of food. They have processes around food safety that they have negotiated with the provincial and federal governments on a one-off basis, and they are able to assure their volunteers and their food bank clients that this food is good.

We have people in poverty in Nanaimo who are eating rack of lamb, and it is fantastic that this is a choice they can make and that their food bank offerings are not only the traditional canned goods. We have something like 600 local volunteers at Loaves and Fishes who are helping this non-profit sort and distribute food throughout the riding, and last year alone, the food recovery program of Loaves and Fishes saved 2.5 million dollars' worth of fresh food. It is fantastic.

That food goes to 30 different non-profits, who in turn distribute it to their own clients, and to schools as well for their lunch programs. It is helping over 8,000 people a month. This is due to the partnership with the grocery stores, with volunteers, and with shipping companies. It is very much a collaborative exercise and I wish that it was more common. We would love to find ways to get out of the way of the innovation of local organizations such as Loaves and Fishes and have this be a model that happens all over the country.

This is exactly what the MP for Berthier—Maskinongé is asking the government to strategize on, just these sorts of donations of unsold food. It does not cost donors anything. In fact, it can relieve the grocery stores of a great deal of cost around disposal, but better co-operation between food banks and retailers is needed. That would reduce food waste and would reduce food insecurity in our region.

Bill C-231 encourages this and it provides the tools to make it happen. The process that it proposes could well reassure non-profits that they will be supported if they do this important work safely.

Worldwide, food waste is a major problem, and that has been recognized by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Union of Wholesale Markets.

Most famously, to date, France has led the charge on this. Just a year go, it was the first country to legislate against food waste. Part of that was amending the legal framework to remove the liability for donors. There is now a push to make that law European Union-wide.

In 1996, the United States adopted a similar kind of legislation where voluntary food donations were covered by legislation. That makes everybody volunteering in the field feel just a bit more secure and protected.

The need here is so great. In my province, British Columbia, more than 100,000 people were assisted by food banks last year, 32% of whom were children. The Ladysmith food bank and the Nanaimo Loaves & Fishes food bank said 3,600 individuals accessed their food banks last year. Of those, 31% were children.

In a more focused area of needs, the Canadian Network of Women's Shelters and Transition Houses say that 75% of Canadian shelters rely upon food donations. This is both to meet the needs of women in shelters and also to support them and their children when they transition out of domestic violence shelters.

Another great story, in the same vein, is about a local non-profit called Nanaimo Foodshare. Through its community and school programs, it is teaching people around buying food in season, shopping locally, cooking from scratch, food management, how to compost, how to cut the amount of food wasted. It also has a paid gleaning coordinator who is funded through a provincial grant. That person connects people who have unharvested vegetables and fruit trees groaning with apples, organizes carpooling of volunteers to harvest that food, and then, again, redistributing them throughout the community.

In one season alone, Nanaimo Foodshare saved over 400,300 kilograms of fresh produce.

Again, people who are using food banks need to access fresh produce. It is good for local farmers; it is better for nutrition. We need to include all these innovative ideas into a national strategy to reduce food waste in Canada.

The tenets of Bill C-231 are to build that strategy against food waste, to assist consumers to reduce food waste, to facilitate the donation of food by the private sector, and to study the environmental impact of food waste. Those environmental impacts are significant. It is not just the land that is taken up by landfilling, but it is also the methane that is generated, which is a tremendous greenhouse gas amplifier and is something that really exacerbates climate change. It is an unnecessary use of land. It is bad for climate change. If we can keep food out of the landfill and redistribute it to people in need, that is better for everybody. Perfectly good food should not be landfilled when people go hungry.

We want the Canadian government to be a leader in this area and to implement tools so all stakeholders in the supply chain, from farmers to consumers, can reduce their food waste.

This can be done by removing barriers to donations from the private sector of goods that are imperfect, but goods that are welcomed by community groups and food banks. They are doing the front-line work of fighting insecurity and this national work can be done by supporting Bill C-231.

In my final moments, I want to celebrate, as my colleague before me just has, the work of some of our local farmers.

I am inspired every time I am at home by the Boulton family on Gabriola Island. Eric Boulton is, I believe, 85 years old. He is still driving the tractor. When our provincial government put rules in place that really impeded the ability of local farmers to slaughter meat and sell it in their own communities, the family hung on. It thought it was going to improve food safety, but in fact it really interfered with local food production. This tenacious farmer just hung on and got his slaughterhouse re-certified by the provincial government. He now sells beef to local restaurants. Our biggest grocery store, Village Food Market, and the McCollum family are very strong supporters of local produce. We can buy locally-raised beef right there.

The Boulton family is a great donor of its organic turkeys and other meats that it grows and slaughters at home on its huge farm. It donates that directly to charities, to partners like the People For a Healthy Community. Its annual Christmas dinner is a festive, beautiful time. It has all local produce, the best turkeys one will ever have. It is a great example of celebration at the community level, a great example of farmers' support.

[Business of Supply, May 12th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I want to discuss this in relation to my riding of Nanaimo—Ladysmith. We are very proud of, and very reliant on at a local industry level, local agriculture and food security. Value-added cheese and winery industries are very important to us, and value-added forestry. We are very committed to trying to do what we can to make up the 21,000 lost jobs in value-added paper and lumber manufacturing that have fallen over the last decade. Raw log exports are a very visible part of our community.

When we read the headlines in Nanaimo—Ladysmith, we see with the TPP a weakening of regional content rules, which might block local food security. We have acceleration of already soaring prescription drug costs. We see a facilitation of corporations suing our governments for standing up for health and environmental standards, in secret tribunals. Then we see the C.D. Howe Institute saying that gains from TPP may be relatively modest.

How, on balance, could this deal ever be good for people in my community of Nanaimo—Ladysmith? How, in particular, does the member view the apparent failure of the government to continue to offer compensation to local farmers and local industries that would be harmed by this deal?

[Public Service Labour Relations Act, May 11th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, this is a circular question and something that is so important to the country moving forward.

Members on the status of women committee, who have been working on the murdered and missing indigenous women and girls file and gender-based violence, are concerned about the under-reporting of gender-based or sexual crimes. We are afraid it has to do with a lack of trust in our national police force. If RCMP members themselves are unable to freely complain and have their complaints about sexual harassment dealt with and adjudicated in the same way as any other labour force, then how can we expect the more vulnerable members of our communities to have faith in the police force? Our country has to grapple with this key issue. We have a lot of work to do in this area.

Our police need to be empowered. Our members need to be empowered. That in turn may well create more faith in the system and may empower the most vulnerable members of our society who are repeatedly victimized.