Sheila Malcolmson

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

Madam Speaker, the points do not line up with what I heard from members in my riding. I received a lot of mail on this. They uniformly expressed their concern with the process and with the content. They felt they had been discriminated against all these years and that it had taken a court case with a strong ruling to identify that they were not being treated in a manner equivalent to other federal workers and other police officers.

They continue to express their great disappointment with this bill and they urge us to vote against it. They would rather deal with the courts than have inadequate legislation.

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

I hear a broken record, Madam Speaker. I am absolutely proud to live in a community that is so well-served by the RCMP. Every day we see how well its members stand up for us. I will stand up for them and with them with great gratitude for their work. I urge every member of the House to offer RCMP members across the county the respect they give to us. We should work together to support them.

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

Mr. Speaker, first and foremost, I want to sincerely thank the members of the Nanaimo detachment of the RCMP for the work they do every day in our community to keep us safe. There are 151 sworn members of the RCMP who form the ranks in Nanaimo. They join over 18,000 members from across the country. It is important to remember when we are talking about the bill that it does not just affect 151 people in my riding. It does not just affect 18,000 officers across the country. It affects families, spouses, grandparents, children, their classmates, and our entire community.

I am going to take a moment to say how proud I am of the work that the RCMP members do in Nanaimo. They have a fantastic bike patrol unit. They are really the eyes and ears on the ground in our community. They work municipal traffic. They have a criminal intelligence unit and a K-9 dog unit. They work hard on victim services. When we do homelessness counts in our community, they know every citizen who is living rough. They know where they are. They keep track of them. They are very good people. They are part of the fabric of our community. They host open houses to show the public what is happening behind the scenes. They fundraise for victim services. They proudly attend community events in our riding, such as the marine festival parade, and they ensure that roads remain safe during Ladysmith's Christmas light-up festival.

With that backdrop of our community, collective bargaining is about respect. It is about fostering respect for workers and their rights, creating a safe working environment, and rewarding workers for their dedication and growth. It allows employees to have a voice and enables employers to listen. The cornerstone of collective bargaining is respect. It is that simple; it is respect.

Collective bargaining is a right that is enjoyed by a vast majority of federal workers, and those rights generally allow workers to be part of the conversation about staffing levels, deployment and relocation, and sexual harassment, except for the RCMP.

Janelle Canning-Lue and her husband recently wrote to me about Bill C-7. They are both serving members of the RCMP, and they have collectively served in 12 posts in four divisions. They say that they view Bill C-7 as a slap in the face. She says that instead of empowering them, it legislates the takeaway of fundamental rights of negotiation in the areas of officer safety and working conditions. She is not wrong to feel that way. The negotiation of officer safety is a right that every other police association in the country is granted. So much for respect.

The RCMP members and the NDP support and recognize that meaningful collective bargaining should extend well beyond the issue of pay and benefits alone. There must be a mechanism in the bill to support improved workplace safety, and to finding a resolution to the unresolved issue of sexual harassment complaints by members of the RCMP. The extent of sexual harassment problems in the force has been extensively documented, and has been widely covered in the media. Just yesterday, a senior member of RCMP management was charged with sexual harassment. This followed a class-action lawsuit of 400 RCMP members on sexual harassment in the force. How especially troubling and appalling it is that this was explicitly excluded from the bill. It is a great failure.

Rural officers in particular have concerns around the unresolved issues with respect to workplace safety. I think of the terrible tragedies in Mayerthorpe and Moncton, where there was terrible loss of life of RCMP members, and there are remaining issues as to the extent to which they were protected. These men and women stand up for us and we should stand up for them.

Another failure of the bill is around uniforms. The prevention of bargaining with management about the selection, function, maintenance, and replacement of uniform pieces does not make sense. RCMP members are using this equipment daily. The bill will restrict them from using their front-line knowledge about the safest and most efficient pieces of equipment. That kind of inside knowledge could be invaluable and could save time, money, and most importantly lives.

Second, employee transfers should not be removed from the bargaining process. Transfers should be a part of the conversation that takes into account workers' input to ensure they are being fairly administered.

A transfer can be a life-changing event for officers, their families, and our communities. In Canada, we have many remote areas with very high costs of living. We have very isolated communities as well. Some of these communities have a real lack of access to basic necessities, like affordable, safe child care. Therefore, members need to be involved in those decisions. They need to have that be a matter for collective bargaining.

Corporal Clover Johns in Nanaimo wrote to me saying that the removal of the restrictions on transfers and equipment would not hamper RCMP operations, but in fact would likely improve them, allowing more harmonious problem-solving, strong employer-employee relations, and higher member morale. Working together to solve problems creates strong employer-employee relations and higher member morale. That is respect, and that is what collective bargaining should look like.

The motto of the RCMP is Maintien Le Droit, or Maintain the Rights. Bill C-7 would provide less rights for members of the RCMP than other police.

Unfortunately, the government has failed to adopt the amendments that the NDP put forward at committee. These were reasonable amendments, such as allowing workplace safety and sexual harassment concerns to become matters for collective bargaining and arbitration between RCMP members and management. We should hear those concerns, and we should act upon them. Enabling meaningful collective bargaining will not only benefit the members and their institution, but it will benefit all Canadians.

The government's bill excludes everything from collective bargaining, except pay and benefits. I expressed great concern about this during the debate before second reading. Yet, I voted in favour at that stage with the optimism that these amendments could be made at committee.

I heard most witnesses at committee express great concern about what was left out of this collective bargaining agreement. The government failed to expand collective bargaining by agreeing to the amendments that the NDP proposed at committee. In our view, this means the bill fails to live up to the court's direction. Now the government has just voted to shut down debate on this important bill.

The government could have chosen to make a bad bill better. It could have done that at committee, but closing down debate today is the final process failure. Shutting down debate does not help meet the court deadline. Shutting down debate just reinforces the failure of process on this. The government has already failed to meet the court ruling, really, because it failed to write legislation that would give RCMP members access to true collective bargaining.

Today, I will vote in favour of the report stage amendments proposed by the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands. They do not go as far as the amendments that the NDP proposed at committee, but they are our last chance to repair this flawed bill, given the government's refusal to truly extend the right to collective bargaining to RCMP members.

If the amendments are not approved today by the government and by the House, I will vote against the bill.

Finally, Corporal Clover Johns from Nanaimo reminds me that members of the House have what RCMP members do not. We hold the power to listen and to voice their concerns when they were not afforded an opportunity to so. We have the power to enact just laws that enhance the national police force, to treat its members fairly, and advance public safety in Canada.

We should do that today, and we should guarantee members of the police in Canada equitable, open, and harmonious labour practices.

[Indigenous Affairs, May 11th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, last week, Pauktuutit called on the federal government to ensure the upcoming inquiry into murdered and missing indigenous women and girls meets Inuit concerns.

Funding is needed to support the participation of indigenous peoples, including access to healing and support services, and action is needed now to prevent violence. There is no need to wait until the end of the inquiry in order to act.

Will the government listen and provide full support for the full participation of indigenous women, and will it act now to prevent violence?

[Indigenous Affairs, May 10th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, we heard from a number of first nations leaders, the Assembly of First Nations, the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, that have written letters of concern to the Prime Minister.

Could the parliamentary secretary please let the House know whether those letters have been replied to, and if so, is he willing to table them in the House for all of us to see?

[Indigenous Affairs, May 10th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I am picking up on a conversation we had with the government back in March in relation to a failure to respond to first nation leadership letters around the federal process on the Site C dam.

The New Democrats, along with many other Canadians, have believed that the Government of Canada has an intense, responsible, and heartfelt requirement to engage in a true nation-to-nation relationship with indigenous peoples to work together and to protect the environment. The Liberal Party campaigned along the same lines. Therefore, I want to delve into this a bit more.

In the mandate letter to cabinet ministers, the Prime Minister indicated this was their highest responsibility. He has repeated this deep commitment to the nation-to-nation relationship being the most important relationship to him, a deep commitment of the government, that as a country we need this to work well. I stand here in support of that intention.

Back in March, along with a number of other New Democrat colleagues, we met with representatives of Treaty 8 first nations. Among them was Helen Knott, the great great-granddaughter of Chief Bigfoot, the last chief to sign Treaty 8. She spoke with us about concerns around work camps, around a megaproject like Site C. She spoke about violence against women, and what made people more vulnerable in those situations.

Some of her colleagues spoke about fisheries violations at the Site C dam. They had a deep concern about the federal government not stopping its practice of issuing fisheries permits. They wanted the government to sit back, pause and take the time to investigate those reported fisheries violations. They felt the whole process needed a bit of a time out. The leaders, at that point, indicated very much that they had an expectation of that engagement and correspondence following the election.

When we spoke in March, the question was why the letters had not been answered, what the process was, whether the government would suspend federal decisions on Site C at the time so there could be a time out and some back and forth conversation. I would like to know what has happened since March. Has there been any further correspondence between the government and the chiefs? Has the government suspended its issuance of further fisheries permits around the Site C dam?

[Candidate Gender Equity Act, May 10th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured in this moment to thank the people of Nanaimo—Ladysmith for supporting me, working hard for my election, and electing me. I have many allies throughout the riding, and it does make all the difference around who prevails. For us, with the nomination and election, it was almost a two-year campaign. I am thankful.

I am going to talk first about the imperative for the bill. In 97 ridings across the country in last fall's election, voters had no opportunity to cast their ballot for a woman from a major party. That is a significant gap. Even if people wanted to vote for women who had a chance of forming government, they did not have that opportunity.

Election after election, the uneven addition of women to ballots throughout our country means we are not electing enough women to Parliament. That is why we are getting these tiny incremental gains. This is supposed to be the parity Parliament. We have 26% of women elected, with 52% of the population being female, and we have only made a 1% improvement from 2011. Canada, embarrassingly, ranks 61st in the world. We have to get to almost page 3 of the international list before we can find our country's name. I want us to change that.

At this rate, Equal Voice, which is a terrific advocacy, non-governmental organization, calculates that it will be 89 years until we reach gender parity in Parliament. That is a change that is painfully slow.

That is why I think this is a problem. When Parliament does not reflect us, then sometimes it is possible for voters to disconnect from the parliamentary process. It might be that a parliament that does not reflect the country perhaps has priorities that are a little different from what people sitting around the kitchen table would like to see. That is perhaps why we do not have universal child care in our country. That is perhaps why we do not have affordable universal pharmacare. That is perhaps why we do not have a good palliative care program.

We know that women disproportionately end up looking after their families, both at the beginning and the end of life. If we could get them here in these seats, they might help us to adopt the policies that would take the pressure off everyone.

This is perhaps why first nations kids are so embarrassingly discriminated against at budget time. Even now, we have had the human rights tribunal say that Parliament over decades has had the wrong priorities.

In turn, these lack of policy supports may well be keeping women out of both community life and off the ballot, so there is an interesting circularity of this argument. When woman are squeezed by family obligations, they decide not to run, and then they do not get into these seats and they do not vote for front-line family support issues.

Parliament was conceived well before women had the right to vote, and it has been fairly static for over 100 years. Parliament has just not innovated, and the bill is an innovation. Therefore, I appreciate the people who are here for the discussion and are willing to bite into this to see how it could work.

Much has changed in the hundred years. We got the federal right to vote in 1918, the right to run for office in 1921, the Persons Case in 1929, admission of women into the army in 1980, and inclusion of women's equality in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982. Also, just a few years ago, we got changing tables added in the parliamentary bathrooms. We innovate where we can. All of these changes reflect the evolution of our society.

There is a lot of attention being paid to the gender-based cabinet, and I applaud the Prime Minister for appointing men and women equally to his cabinet. It is not the first time that this has happened, though. In 2008, Quebec made that commitment. In 2015, Premier Notley, in Alberta, made the same commitment. That did not get more women on the ballot. It was a good move, but we want to at least have a chance to elect women. We want equal opportunity.

Canada still has no laws in place to promote gender equity in our democratic process. How can we make it change? I have a list of programs, such as Equal Voices' Daughters of the Vote, which is a fantastic way to get young people thinking early about what it would look like for them to be sitting in these seats. I applaud that work.

Second, we can support women in nomination and election processes, and I am very grateful for the people who got all of us here to the House.

Third, proportional representation would help. In countries around the world and in almost every western democracy people are elected using proportional representation. They all elect more women than we do.

Fourth, when I was at the United Nations this spring, I heard a fantastic presentation from Italy, a country that was so proud that because it had legislated gender equity on candidate slates, it went from 21% women in just one election to 31% women. That is 21% to 31% just by virtue of getting a balance on who was on the ballot.

My colleague's bill is not that kind of legislation, but it does tell us what our options are.

Turning to my colleague's bill, Bill C-237 would give parties incentives to nominate more women. It would not take away freedom. It would not tell anybody how to do it or even whether to do it. However, if they do choose to nominate an equal slate, then they would have a financial incentive to do that. The fine print is 45% female, 45% male. Members will notice that the math adds up so there is a 10% fluidity there, whether that is transgendered or gender-fluid, people who just do not identify, that gives them flexibility.

Again, this would be an incentive for people to put gender equity measures in place. They would determine how and whether to do it. This would also work in any voting system: first past the post, proportional representation, anything.

The idea of linking public subsidies to gender equity measures is not new. Canada had a royal commission in 1991 that recommended just this thing. This has since been implemented in quite a few western countries.

If we do get to this point that we are electing more women to Parliament, what might the impact be? We could enact policies that would appoint equal numbers of women to our crown corporations and agencies. We could establish a national action plan to end violence against women, something that embarrassingly the country has not done yet. Even Australia and places that we do not think of in this way have already made this connection. We can support more work on domestic violence. We can take action to close the pay gap between men and women. We can ensure safe and equal access to reproductive rights and reproductive health care. As well, we can address those policies that might be keeping women off the ballot or out of participating in public life: daycare, home care, palliative care, early childhood education support.

The United Nations Security Council did a study a few years ago on peace, security, and women. Part of the conclusion was that when women's groups were able to influence negotiations or push for a peace deal, an agreement was almost always reached. Agreements reached with the participation of women were 35% more likely to last for 15 years or longer. We want to have women involved internationally around the table, and advocating for peace and security as well.

I was so honoured to be part of the Canadian delegation at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. I am grateful to the Minister of Status of Women for including me in the delegation. We heard from every woman leader all over the world that we had an unprecedented opportunity in the world right now to bring gender equality. It is not just about Canada. As well, we heard again and again that women's rights and social justice were key to global sustainable solutions. If we empower women, if we end violence against women, and if we bring and educate young girls into the system, we would solve some of the difficult problems this planet faces, whether environment, food security, or anything. We need all hands on deck, full participation, all intellect, and all diversity and opinions to solve the problems that face us.

As Equal Voice says, women got the right to vote 100 years ago. It should not take another century for women to have an equal voice.

[Candidate Gender Equity Act, May 10th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, certainly the majority of parties in Parliament ran on an electoral reform platform. I would like hear more from the member about how his initiative might interface with a change in the way we elect members of Parliament.

[National Anthem Act, May 6th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to serve with my hon. colleague, the member for Ottawa—Vanier, and honoured to be in this House today.

I am sorry that the extremely positive and supportive speech I was about to make has to be interrupted by saying I am ashamed to have heard those words from that member. After 10 years of the former government slashing and burning women's programs, creating national embarrassment across the world, disrespecting indigenous people, disrespecting history and science, and having this fantastic opportunity to remediate the Conservative Party's image, I cannot believe he would say such things. To speakers from his party, I hope that my compelling argument might change the tone for the next series of speakers to follow.

The New Democratic Party, being a strong supporter of gender equality and having a very strong record of concrete action on achieving women's equality, I, along with every New Democrat I know, am very proud and honoured to support this bill before the House today.

It must be said that true action on gender equality in Canada will only be achieved when the government shows true leadership and action on addressing the gender gap, taking real action on universal child care, equal pay for work of equal value, ending violence against women. That said, symbolic changes help as well.

A national symbol's value is tied to its ability to reflect every one of us and bring us together. To help bring us all together on this bill, I am going to give 10 great reasons to vote in favour of the private member's bill from the member for Ottawa—Vanier. Members will be relieved to know that not a single one of them is because it is 2016.

One, this is not such a big change, and I want my Conservative friends to really hear this. Our lyrics used to be gender neutral until they were changed in 1913. Even when Canadian women did not have the right to vote, Canada had gender neutral lyrics in its English language anthem. If this feels like a threatening change, please roll back time to more than a century ago in Canada when we had gender neutral lyrics for our national anthem.

Two, the French lyrics do not need to change, so, as we know in Canada, that makes it simpler. The French version does have gender neutral language, and it has since 1880. Its words have not changed since then. The French are very evolved, very ahead of their time.

Three, the member for Ottawa—Vanier is following in the tradition of fabulous New Democrats Svend Robinson and Libby Davies. This will be the tenth time in 35 years that this Parliament has tried to change the English language lyrics to promote gender equality. Said another way, it is about time.

Four, changing the words will ensure that more than 18 million Canadian women are included in our national anthem. Continuing to sing “thy sons” excludes 52% of our population.

Five, as the member for Ottawa—Vanier has compellingly outlined, many advances have been made in Canada in gender equality since 1913. There was the federal right to vote in 1918, the right to run for office in 1921, the Persons Case in 1929, the admission of women in the army in 1980, and the inclusion of women's equality in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982. The member compellingly argues that the bill reflects the evolution of our society.

Six, if we take the “stand on guard for thee” literally and think of soldiers, we have to vote for the bill. This would honour our sisters who are in service on the front lines of our armed forces.

Seven, it sounds good: “true patriot love in all of us command”. We all brought Kleenex for this. I am trying to lighten the mood here.

Eight, 58% of Canadians polled last year agreed with this change to the anthem.

Nine, they are in excellent company. High-profile supporters include former Conservative prime minister Kim Campbell, author Margaret Atwood, Conservative Senator Nancy Ruth, former Conservative senator Hugh Segal, former Conservative MP and Liberal Belinda Stronach, and former member of Parliament and Toronto city councillor Olivia Chow. Members are in good company if they vote yes.

Finally, if all of these reasons are not enough, the member for Ottawa—Vanier wants women to have this voice. Let us vote together, and let us include women in our national anthem.

[The Environment, May 6th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, the feds towed the vessel Silver King from one riding to mine a month ago. Now it is rotting right off Ladysmith's community dock, and dozens of abandoned vessels cram the harbour already. Local business, Ladysmith council, and the Stz'uminus First Nation all warn that this will harm the local community and economy.

This is a growing issue for our coast, yet the government is shuffling the problem from one community to another. When will the government remove abandoned vessels from Ladysmith's harbour?