Debates of Feb. 2nd, 2016

Auditor General of Canada

[The Speaker, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

I have the honour to lay upon the table the fall 2015 report of the Auditor General of Canada.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(3)(g), this document is deemed to have been permanently referred to the Standing Committee on Public Accounts.

Interparliamentary Delegations

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 34(1), I have the honour to present to the House, in both official languages, the reports of the Canadian Group of the Inter-Parliamentary Union respecting its participation at the Steering Committee of the Twelve Plus Group, held in Brussels, Belgium, on September 21, 2015; and the 133rd IPU Assembly and related meetings, held in Geneva, Switzerland, from October 17 to 21, 2015.

Business of the House

[Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet, NDP, Hochelaga, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to move the following motion, and I seek the unanimous consent of the House:

That at the conclusion of the debate on today's opposition motion, all questions necessary to dispose of the motion be deemed put and a recorded division deemed requested and deferred until Wednesday, February 3, 2016, at the expiry of the time provided for government orders.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

Does the hon. member have the unanimous consent of the House to move the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

The House has heard the terms of the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

(Motion agreed to)

Water Protection

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise today to present two petitions. The first is about protecting the water in the environment in my riding.

In particular, this petition from members in my riding speaks to the importance of designating the Saanich Inlet as a designated zone where the discharge of raw sewage is not allowed. In particular, this concerns the recreational boating community. It is an area of very little tidal clearance or flushing. The petition is from almost 300 members in my riding.

Shark Finning

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition is an issue that came before this House in the last session when the member for New Westminster—Coquitlam made efforts to ban the possession of shark fins or the offer of shark fins for sale.

Sharks around the world are extremely endangered. The petitioners would like this House to take action.

Impaired Driving

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have some sympathy with respect to this petition, having just been rear-ended by a drunk driver.

The petitioners wish to call attention to the state of the current impaired driving laws, which they feel are too lenient. In the interest of public safety, they are asking for tougher laws and the implementation of minimum mandatory sentences, and that the Criminal Code of Canada be changed to redefine the offence of impaired driving causing death as vehicular manslaughter.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to present two petitions. The first petition highlights the sad fact that 22-year old Kassandra Kaulius was killed by a drunk driver. A group of people called Families for Justice who have also lost loved ones to impaired driving are calling upon Parliament to introduce tough new legislation that would have mandatory sentencing for persons convicted of impaired driving causing death.

Sex Selection

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition highlights the sad fact that there are over 200 million girls missing in the world because of the practice of sex selection. An Environics poll found that 92% of Canadians believe that sex-selection pregnancy termination should be made illegal. They are calling upon this Parliament to deal with this important issue.

Questions on the Order Paper

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I would ask that all questions be allowed to stand.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

Is that agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

Decorum in the House

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, this is the first convenient moment to raise a point of order about a disturbing trend. Last night in the votes, I have to say it became intolerable. I refer to our rules, and you will find at page 580 of O'Brien and Bosc the following reminder:

From the time the Speaker begins to put the question until the results of the vote are announced, Members are not to enter, leave or cross the House, nor may they make any noise or disturbance.

Mr. Speaker, we have had a poor practice, certainly in the last Parliament and continuing to this one, of constant interruptions for wild applause for members of one's own party as they vote. That is against our rules. It was particularly disturbing last night to hear booing across the floor for members as they voted.

Our rules are clear that the occasion of voting is not an occasion for demonstrations of any kind. Mr. Speaker, I ask for your guidance on this point and a reminder to members.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

I thank the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands for raising this point of order.

Members should be encouraged to stay quiet during the vote and not respond to who votes or in what way. In fact, that is what the House has decided should be the rule. Should it be the will of the House to change the rules, the House can do so, but that is the rule that the House has set, so I would urge members to abide by it.

Opposition Motion—Pay Equity

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

moved:

That the House (a) recognize that the government must take action to close the unacceptable gap in pay between men and women which contributes to income inequality and discriminates against women; (b) recognize pay equity as a right; (c) call on the government to implement the recommendations of the 2004 Pay Equity Task Force Report and restore the right to pay equity in the public service which was eliminated by the previous Conservative government in 2009; and (d) appoint a special committee with the mandate to conduct hearings on the matter of pay equity and to propose a plan to adopt a proactive federal pay equity regime, both legislative and otherwise, and (i) that this committee consist of 10 members which shall include six members from the Liberal Party, three members from the Conservative Party, and one member from the New Democratic Party, provided that the Chair is from the government party, (ii) that in addition to the Chair, there be one Vice-Chair from each of the recognized opposition parties, (iii) that the committee have all of the powers of a standing committee as provided in the Standing Orders, as well as the power to travel, accompanied by the necessary staff, subject to the usual authorization from the House, (iv) that the members to serve on the said committee be appointed by the Whip of each party depositing with the Acting Clerk of the House a list of his or her party’s members of the committee no later than February 17, 2016, (v) that the quorum of the committee be as provided for in Standing Order 118, provided that at least one member of each recognized party be present, (vi) that membership substitutions be permitted from time to time, if required, in the manner provided for in Standing Order 114(2), (vii) that the committee report to the House no later than June 10, 2016.

Mr. Speaker, I am the Nanaimo—Ladysmith member of Parliament, and, for the New Democrats, the Status of Women critic. I will be splitting my time today with my colleague, the member of Parliament for Jonquière.

Today I honour the work of many generations of women, and their supporters, for the gains that have been made. I think of my aunt, Kim Malcolmson, a social justice activist, feminist, and one of Ontario's first pay equity commissioners, who I think is watching today.

We stand as New Democrats with many feminists who have made enormous strides over many generations. Yet, Canadian women have hit a glass wall when it comes to the salary gap. Equal pay for work of equal value is a fundamental human right. However, today women in Canada continue to be paid far less than their male colleagues.

Last night, I heard that full-time Canadian child care workers, who have to go to school and get a several-year degree, earn on average $25,000 a year, and 97% of the people in that profession are women. A comparable profession, which is 97% male, would be truck drivers. They are also well trained, but earn $45,000 a year on average. When comparing $25,000 versus $45,000, it is not fair.

On average, women working full time in Canada make only 77% of that of their male colleagues. The gap is even worse for indigenous women, women of colour, transgender women, and women living with disabilities.

Canada is one of the worst countries in the world when it comes to the gender gap, ranking 30 out of 34 OECD countries on this measure. This is unacceptable. It contributes to income inequality, and it discriminates against women.

My friend June Ross, in Nanaimo, was telling me this weekend of her experience as a single mother going to school, working as a teacher's assistant after getting a degree, and earning $8 an hour. She watched her colleagues, custodians in the school system, earn $11 to $15 an hour. It was not fair. Since then, she has given much of her life's work to fighting for pay equity. She is very discouraged to see the rollbacks, the lack of progress that has been made, and is very disturbed to see senior women living in poverty in our riding. It is not fair.

Now is the time for real action toward real equality for women. That is why New Democrats are urging Parliament to recognize pay equity as a right, because women's rights are human rights.

Canada has excellent and very strong international and national direction to do so. In 1976, Canada ratified the UN International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which requires remuneration that provides all workers with fair wages and equal remuneration for work of equal value.

In 1977, the Canadian Human Rights Act was amended to state the following:

It is a discriminatory practice for an employer to establish or maintain differences in wages between male and female employees in the same establishment who are performing work of equal value.

In 1981, Canada ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, which recognizes women's rights to equal remuneration and to equal treatment in respect of work of equal value.

It has been 40 years since Canada committed to these three foundational documents, and we are still not where we need to be. However, the beautiful symmetry is that these three groundbreaking pay equity commitments were all made by the Pierre Trudeau government.

For the sake of our generation, I urge today's Prime Minister and his government to complete the work of the first prime minister Trudeau and legislate equal pay for equal work.

Because past governments have missed these critical opportunities to tackle the pay gap, our second recommendation is for the government to implement the recommendations of the 2004 pay equity task force report. In 2000, the then Liberal government established this task force. In 2004, the task force recommended stand-alone, proactive pay equity legislation, legislation that the Liberals of the day failed to adopt.

In 2009, the Conservatives attacked pay equity in the public service, and that leads to our third recommendation, that the government restore the right to pay equity in the public service, which was eliminated by the Conservatives.

The 2009 Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act was yet another bill that does the exact opposite of what its title suggests. It made it more difficult for women in the public sector to achieve equal compensation. It made pay equity an issue for collective bargaining rather than a human right. It forced women to file individual complaints rather than allow a union to support them. The act imposed a $50,000 fine on any union that supported members in filing a pay equity complaint and it prohibited access to the Canadian Human Rights Commission. This legislation was bundled into a budget implementation bill, which the Liberals supported during a minority Parliament.

To undo that damage and to carry forward the work that the previous government did not complete, we urge this Parliament to adopt our fourth recommendation, and that is to appoint a special committee to conduct hearings on pay equity and propose proactive pay equity legislation.

We hope members of the House of Commons will agree that in 2016 this must be a priority. Not only is it the right thing to do, it is smart economically. Women with more spending power benefit the local economy. Study after study has told us that. Letting women fall into poverty costs us all. One-third of single senior women in Canada are today living in poverty, and that is unacceptable. It is long past time for the federal government to step up and do the right thing and do everything it can to tackle the wage gap.

There is no excuse for the fact that women in Canada continue to make substantially less than men. We are ready and willing to work with the Liberal government to get proactive pay equity legislation in place to finally achieve wage equality for women. Let us make it so.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I acknowledge the efforts and the comments of the member in introducing the motion.

A couple of things have come to my mind. The member made reference to the father of the current Prime Minister and his attempts to try to bring justice to this issue. My colleague also made mention of some other positive things that occurred.

In 2004, the Paul Martin government attempted to resolve, or at least bring us one step further in the right direction, on this issue. Ultimately, a year later, the Liberal government was defeated. Now we have a new Prime Minister who recognizes how important it is that we deal with issues of this nature. We have the first cabinet in Canada's history that is composed of 50% females and 50% males. Great strides have been made.

My question relates to the regions of the country that my colleague would like to see this committee go to. Is she thinking about a committee going beyond Ottawa? Does she have specific locations in mind that she would like to see a committee of this nature visit? I wonder if she could elaborate on what sort of a timeframe she has in mind with regard to the committee itself.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Mr. Speaker, we have been waiting such a long time in this country that we want to establish this as a priority of Parliament and start to move forward toward finally making real change in this area.

I commend the Prime Minister for his cabinet appointment decisions, but we cannot rely on the particular goodwill of a particular government at one point in time. We must legislate pay equity. That would then fan out to the provinces and across the country. This is going to require partnership, but without leadership from the federal government we will remain where we are with a significant pay gap of 23%.

We hope that Parliament will choose to task a committee with this work. It will then be up to the committee to decide its own scope and who it needs to hear from. We have experts across the country in provinces that have implemented pay equity who can describe the experience. We have experts who can tell us about the realities of what this gap is costing the country. There is great wealth for us to draw on.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate my colleague for an excellent speech and for raising awareness of this issue, which I am passionate about as well.

We have a status of women committee with a similar membership to what you have outlined, and you and I are on it, so why does the member think we need an additional committee on top of that, when in the past this kind of thing would be championed by the status of women committee?

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

Before the hon. member answers, I just want to remind members that they are speaking through the chair and not directly to the other members, and the Speaker is not on that committee.

The hon. member for Nanaimo—Ladysmith.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the question from my colleague. The rationale, first, is that this is a broader issue than simply the status of women. This is a nationwide economic issue. It is not just about women. It is about all of us. The second more technical reason is that the status of women committee, on which the member and I both sit, will decide its own agenda and priorities and has a lot of big work to do.

If Parliament does agree with New Democrats that we should give a particular committee a focused task, then it is sure to be at the top of its agenda. The issue will get the profile it deserves and we will be able to move forward more quickly. It may be that its membership ends up being identical. Who knows. We certainly considered the recommendation the member is making, and this is a better way to move forward.

[Karine Trudel, NDP, Jonquière, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise in the House today to participate in our first opposition day. Nevertheless, I am somewhat disappointed. As everyone knows, the motion before us today is about pay equity. This is disappointing because this issue should have been resolved a long time ago. As I was preparing my speech today, I was struck by the fact that this very Parliament passed the Canadian Human Rights Act 38 years ago. I was born 38 years ago, and today I am in the House to debate this issue yet again.

For all these years, we have been talking about resolving the pay equity issue. Why have we not found a way to remedy this kind of discrimination even though we have a law that makes it illegal to discriminate against women in the workplace?

The stark reality is that Canadian women are still paid on average 23% less than their male colleagues. This wage gap is even worse for first nations women, visible minorities, and women with disabilities. Wages are different in the same profession, which is not right. It is simply unacceptable. There is no reason for women in Canada to earn less than men. This discrimination is contributing to the growing problem of economic inequality. As I describe this problem, I look to the new government and hope that it will live up to our expectations.

The government has an opportunity to take real action to help women achieve something that is actually just a basic right.

Would my male colleagues be willing to earn 23% less than their female colleagues? I doubt it. This issue would have been resolved a long time ago. I would even say that we would not even be talking about this problem, as it would not have persisted for 38 years.

To have gender inequality is to disregard the important contribution women make to our economy. Whether the work is done by a man or a woman, the work itself does not have a gender. Let us stop dragging out this problem when we have both the reasons and the power to resolve this issue. Just look at what happened in the Canadian Union of Postal Workers dispute more than 30 years ago. It is hard to imagine that it took all those years to resolve a problem when the legislation was already on the books to deal with the situation.

Some 30,000 women could have been eligible immediately and could have kept contributing to our economy in a meaningful way. Thirty years later, when the dispute was settled, the cheques were sent to the graveyard because, unfortunately, a number of the women had died. They worked their entire career without the benefit of pay equity.

The Liberal government cannot stand idly by on this issue. We must adopt meaningful measures to put an end to lingering pay inequity. The NDP has been fighting for this for many years. Let us be honest. The previous government set women's rights back a decade.

I will now list some facts. They changed the criteria for establishing whether jobs of equal value should be included in market forces. They made pay equity a collective bargaining issue rather than a human rights issue. They imposed a $50,000 fine on any union that helps a woman file a grievance pertaining to pay equity. That is unacceptable.

At the beginning of my speech, I mentioned my disappointment. Here is another reason. In 2000, the government asked a task force to examine the issue we are debating today in the House. This task force conducted exhaustive consultations with employers, unions, advocacy groups, and women in order to fight for greater pay equity.

The task force's findings were very comprehensive. It made 113 constructive, meaningful recommendations in order to put an end to pay inequity.

Unfortunately, more than 12 years after the pay equity task force came out with its report, none of the recommendations has been implemented. The Conservative government is not alone in shouldering the blame. Under the Martin government, the Liberals also did nothing. The facts are known. Here are a few facts to inform our discussion and underline the need to take urgent action.

First, Canada is lagging behind in terms of pay equity. According to the World Economic Forum, Canada is ranked 80th out of 145 countries. That is quite simply unacceptable for a G7 country. Pay inequity also has an economic cost, as shown by an RBC study. Closing the gap could boost GDP by 4% by 2032. We could make real progress. Women between 45 and 54 earn an average of $23,600 less a year than men in the same age group.

The right to pay equity is nothing new. We are not in uncharted territory here. For years, Canada has recognized that there is a problem when it comes to pay equity. Were that not the case, why would we have signed so many international treaties in this regard? Take for example the United Nations International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which Canada signed in 1976 and which provides for fair wages and equal remuneration for work of equal value without distinction of any kind. In 1981, Canada also signed the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, where it is written in black and white that women have the right to equal remuneration.

Many provinces in Canada recognized that the problem of pay equity needed to be solved. I would particularly like to point out the efforts that Quebec has made in this regard.

It is 2016. The NDP has been fighting for pay equity for a long time. It seems to me that now is the time to take action. We are calling on the government to implement the recommendations of the pay equity task force.

Our proposal would affect all those working under federal jurisdiction in the private and public sectors. In practical terms, we are talking about women who work in banks, communications industries, and transport. The motion calls on the government to recognize pay equity as a right, to finally implement the recommendations of the 2004 pay equity task force report, and to appoint a special committee with the mandate to conduct hearings on the matter of pay equity and propose proactive federal pay equity legislation. Finally, we are calling on the government to take action to close the unacceptable gap in pay between men and women. The government needs to recognize that pay equity is a fundamental right. We hope that the government will support this motion and make pay equity a priority.