Cathy McLeod

[The Budget, April 20th, 2021]

Mr. Speaker, I greeted the presentation yesterday with both skepticism and concern. My question will focus around the skepticism and hopefully later I can talk about the concerns.

The Liberal government has promised democratic reform. For over 29 years it promised child care. For over 24 years it promised a pharmacy plan. It made fiscal commitments prior to the pandemic. It promised to end boil water advisories on reserves and introduce an action plan for missing and murdered indigenous women and girls.

In his mandate letter to the finance minister, the Prime Minister stated that there will be no new fiscal programs, and he asked the minister to create a new fiscal anchor. If the mandate letter from the Prime Minister to the finance minister means nothing, and the government has such a history of breaking almost every important promise it has made to Canadians, why should we greet this particular document with anything other than skepticism?

[Department of Industry Act, April 13th, 2021]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-284, An Act to amend the Department of Industry Act (financial assistance).

Mr. Speaker, this pandemic has required extraordinary support for business and industry, which will be an obligation on current and future taxpayers. An example, of course, is the airline announcement of yesterday.

While we support many of the measures, government transparency and accountability are essential. My private member's bill, an act to amend the Department of Industry Act, financial assistance, would require annual publication of all grants, loans and contributions that total over $100,000. I picked $100,000 so that we would not be capturing all the small businesses that were seeking much-needed support.

Parliamentarians and all Canadians have a right to know the status, terms and conditions, especially for repayable loans. This bill is not only about greater transparency and accountability, but it is also about our ability to scrutinize the effectiveness of spending and, more importantly, the ethics of the spending.

Certainly, I want to thank the member for Carleton for seconding this bill, and I think it should have the support of all members in the House for us to do the critical work that we need to do.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Economic Statement Implementation Act, 2020, April 12th, 2021]

Madam Speaker, the government typically puts in measures that help with the pandemic and then it overreaches. The overreach is in one of its first pieces of legislation: It asked for unfettered spending for almost two years. With this particular piece, there is absolutely important support. However, then it asks for $1.8 trillion in terms of the debt level. This is much more than it says it plans on borrowing to fund its activities for the next few years.

How can it justify asking for the ability to borrow $1.8 trillion when, according to its plans, it is not going to need that kind of money? Are the Liberals being disingenuous in terms of their plans, or are they again overreaching like they typically do?

[Gender-Based Violence, March 25th, 2021]

Madam Chair, I started to talk about the Angel Street campaign. What was really poignant for me when I participated was that a husband and wife led the initiative. The husband talked frankly to all the school children and people who were at the ceremony to rename the street about his pattern and history of domestic violence. What was most uplifting was that he made changes through support, programs and services and was now a mentor. He was very willing to talk to the young students about how wrong and ashamed he was for what he had done and how he had made those changes. Those things that support—

[Gender-Based Violence, March 25th, 2021]

Madam Chair, the part of my speech I did not get to was what we as parliamentarians need to do. I had it broken into a number of different categories. One of them is our laws, expectations and policies and we are directly responsible for ensuring women newcomers to Canada are safe. It has gotten better, but we need to be continually vigilant in monitoring it.

Something else on my list is that we need take care of our own House. I have never been in a Parliament yet where there have not been issues in our own House. We know that the current situation with our military is absolutely appalling and we need to take care of our own House, but there are so many other areas, as privileged parliamentarians, that we can focus on in terms of improving the situation, and it should be our commitment to do so.

[Gender-Based Violence, March 25th, 2021]

Madam Chair, as we know, abuse takes so many forms. The member is right that economic abuse is part of control, but it is also part of control with diminished options for women in terms of escape. It is tough enough for a woman to escape a very abusive domestic violence situation, but when she has economic challenges, and does not know if she will be able to put food on the table or what will happen with her children, it becomes a compounding issue, absolutely.

[Gender-Based Violence, March 25th, 2021]

Madam Chair, certainly one of the most profound things we do in the House sometimes is to speak in these take-note debates. Tonight, of course, is no different in terms of the incredible speeches and passion that we are hearing.

Certainly we all have a shared responsibility to protect our mothers, daughters and sisters across this country. Women, girls and members of the LGBTQ+ community continue to face violence or harassment in their homes, schools, workplaces, online and in the streets. Of course, that is just unacceptable.

I grew up in a household where I always say my dad was a feminist before his time. He had four daughters. I was very fortunate and perhaps naive. It was only when I headed into the nursing profession that I started to realize the scope and challenges of the problem of violence against women and domestic violence. As a young nurse working in rural and indigenous communities, my first time with a rape victim was when she had been found unconscious, lying nude in a ball diamond down the street. Then there was the first time someone came in who had been stabbed by a partner in the evening, and the first time I saw bruises on a person I knew from the community. She was wearing a turtleneck to cover-up the bruises from the abuse, in the middle of summer, and too ashamed to talk about it. I started to realize the profound scope of the issue we are facing. Certainly it continues.

I was looking at statistics before this debate. It is a little bit hard to say whether the situation is actually getting any better or worse. Going through the statistics, it is really hard to compare apples with apples, but we do know that COVID is really making things more challenging.

I believe I mentioned this at the start, but I am splitting my time with the member for Yorkton—Melville.

Marylène Levesque died in 2020 right before COVID struck. In this case, someone out on probation was told to take care of his needs and murdered her as part of doing that. How can we have someone going out on probation with that sort of opportunity and those sorts of instructions?

We do know that this problem is not new, but we also know that with COVID, we certainly have a new crisis and a new sense of urgency. Maybe what we need to do is to have a special focus right now. It is a global problem, but we really need to talk about having a special something happening right now for those with intimate partners who are trapped in their homes with their abusers. The abusers are using COVID to further control and isolate people from friends and families. Again, the statistics are all very different, but one in three women will experience physical or sexual harassment and violence in their lifetime, so we have a problem in Canada. I heard one of our colleagues earlier talk about 2.5 women are killed every week by intimate partners.

I think we have talked about the negatives, and so I do want to spend a bit of time talking about some of the things that it has been my privilege to be a part of. Who has not been part of a take back the night march and had the opportunity to see incredible power? Who has not put on a white ribbon as we look at that campaign for women? Moose Hide is a really important campaign.

One campaign that people might not have heard of is the Angel Street campaign, which started in Iqaluit. It was a project to name streets after women. I had the honour to be part of a march in one of the indigenous communities in my area. Lesós is the Secwepemc word for “angel”. We marched and renamed the street. What was most powerful about the march was—

[Business of Supply, March 25th, 2021]

Madam Speaker, with regard to WE, we know that the government was going to give a contract worth almost a billion dollars. We know that the Prime Minister admitted he should have recused himself and that his family benefited to the tune of close to half a million dollars. We know that the government prorogued Parliament, seemingly to escape this.

We also know that they have spent 40 hours filibustering at committees to avoid answering questions, and we know that there is a LinkedIn message that really can make a person suspicious about the very active role of the Prime Minister's office.

Can my colleague, who sits on that committee, tell us how much they still need to find out from these witnesses and what the government's response has been to date?

[Business of Supply, March 25th, 2021]

Mr. Speaker, I am going to ask my colleague if he thinks it is petty partisan politics for Parliament to want to know about why there was no investigation into alleged sexual impropriety at the highest levels of our Canadians Armed Forces? Is it petty partisan politics to want to know why the government gave an almost billion-dollar contract to someone who was friends with the Prime Minister? There is clear evidence that perhaps the Prime Minister's Office did help the program.

Let me suggest that the over 20 meetings of filibustering by the Liberals is, indeed, petty partisan politics. What have they got to hide?

[Business of Supply, March 23rd, 2021]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to respond to the comments from the member for Yukon. He said that someday, maybe, there will be adjustments. I am going to use the border as an example.

Each month the Prime Minister simply says, “It is closed.” There are families on either side of the border desperately wanting to reunite. There are property owners and many people in difficult circumstances. Would it not be reasonable to make some decisions around vaccinations and negative tests and have criteria that are laid out in terms of numbers, and to state whether it is going to be a phased reopening or will open the same way it shut down? It is time. Why have the Liberals not told Canadians what the criteria are going to be, instead of just saying, “We are going to adjust it someday, maybe.”