Jinny Sims

[Petitions, March 8th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, in the second petition, petitioners are expressing their support for Bill C-233, an act to eliminate poverty in Canada.

It continues to be a pleasure to represent the voices of the people of Newton—North Delta in this Parliament.

[Petitions, March 8th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I am rising today to present two petitions on behalf of my constituents.

In the first, petitioners are expressing opposition to the amalgamation of Service Canada and HRSDC work sites, due to resulting environmental stress, expense and disruption to work-life balance for employees.

[Citizenship and Immigration, March 8th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, they failed to make their own settlement targets, but all we get are more excuses and much more spin.

For some reason, the minister still refuses to meet with leading Syrian-Canadian organizations. He will not meet with the Syrian National Council, the Syrian Canadian Council, the Syrian Expatriates Organization, Canadian Relief for Syria, the Syrian Student Association or Watan.

The Syrian refugee crisis is worsening. Why will the minister not meet with these groups?

[Citizenship and Immigration, March 8th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, again Conservatives are making things up and running full speed away from accountability.

Yesterday I asked the immigration minister about the disappointing numbers around refugee resettlement. Instead of taking responsibility, he just made excuses. Instead of living up to their commitments to increase refugee settlement, Conservatives settled 25% fewer refugees than the year before. They failed to meet even their own target.

When will the minister stop the spin and fix this problem?

[Women in Politics, March 8th, 2013]

In a country where just 25% of city councillors are women, I am proud to represent Newton—North Delta, where 50%, seven out of fourteen, of our councillors are women. In a country where just 16% of all mayors are women, I am proud that in my riding, we beat those odds. Both of our two mayors are female.

I am proud to sit in a Parliament that, since the last election, has more chairs occupied by women than in all of its history. Currently 77 members in this House are female. I am proud to stand with a party to which most of those seats belong; 39% of the NDP caucus is represented by women.

On International Women's Day, I want to take a moment to celebrate Canada's female politicians at every level of government and the contributions they make each day toward more inclusive discussions, more representative decisions and ultimately, a fairer and better Canada.

[Technical Tax Amendments Act, 2012, March 8th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, it was very hard to sit here and listen to a comment that parliamentary democracy in the form of debating legislation, which is the duty of parliamentarians, is somehow considered as standing in the way of legislation passing.

This comes from a member of a government that has moved time allocation to cut off debate on critical issues, preventing fair discussion by parliamentarians and preventing parliamentarians from doing their due diligence when they look at the budget and other pieces of legislation.

My question is to the hon. member across the way.

This is a critical piece of legislation. The Auditor General wrote about the urgency of these amendments in 2009. He suggested 400 outstanding technical amendments; we see only 200 of these addressed here. It took four years for the government to address 200 of those, 50% of them. How much longer is it going to take the government to address the rest of the Auditor General's recommendations?

[Canadian Human Rights Act, March 7th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege today to rise and speak in support of Bill C-279. The bill would add gender identity and gender expression to the Canadian Human Rights Act, section 2, as prohibited grounds for discrimination. It would also amend the Criminal Code to include gender identity and gender expression as distinguishing characteristics protected under section 318, and as aggravating circumstances to be taken into consideration under section 718.2, hate crimes, at the time of sentencing.

However, before I go into more detail on the bill, I want to take a moment to acknowledge the stellar speeches I have heard tonight. My colleague from Charlottetown captured what the legislation is about, but also identified how many of the fears are baseless and that a lot of flames are being fanned to scare people and make them not feel right.

My colleague from Halifax, from a legal point of view, but more from the emotional point of view, very importantly pointed out to us that we are not talking about giving people rights here; we are talking about acknowledging in legislation, laws that we are saying they already have. I have not heard anyone in the House say that transgendered people do not have these protections. Therefore, let us make them explicit by putting them in the Criminal Code and the Human Rights Act.

My colleague also went on to talk about, and we could see it in her presentation, the human toll it takes when we have discrimination and we have a minority group of people in our society who do not feel reflected in law. They have to find a corner that they can hide in or that they can fit in. That is not how we are as Canadians.

I also liked the struggle of my colleague across the way, the member for Calgary Centre North. What was so moving about her presentation was that she identified beautifully the very reason that we need this legislation. She felt, when she heard and read the testimonies, the pain and anguish that some Canadians are going through because of gender identity issues.

After listening to these three members, I cannot imagine anyone in the House being opposed to the legislation. We disagree in the House on all kinds of things, on the budget, on some pieces of legislation, but surely when it comes to fundamental rights and protections for every Canadian, no matter what race or gender, that is one thing we can all agree is fundamentally Canadian and the right thing to do.

My colleague articulated beautifully the struggle that women have had. When we look at history, it was not that long ago that women were not recognized as persons. I challenge anyone in the room to think that we could be sitting in the House as women representing our ridings if that legislation had not been enacted and we had not been recognized as persons. That did not automatically get rid of all the discrimination and all the barriers and glass ceilings that exist. However, what it did do was to open up a pathway, and it took away the greatest barrier, which was to not be recognized at all.

This bill, in turn, would do exactly that. It says to the members of our transgendered community that they are part of this society and they are explicit in our human rights code. They do not have to hide, nor do they have to go looking to see which corner of the human rights code they fit in, nor do they have to see if there is a judge who is going to be favouring looking for a spot or fear a day when the judiciary could turn around and say it is not explicit and cannot be found in here, so they are not covered. It is to avoid that very situation that we have to have legislation like this.

In our human rights code, we identify race, gender and many other things. This bill would add another specificity to the word “gender”. It would identify it to include Canadian society.

I do not know if members are aware, but I was a classroom teacher for a very long time. In that role, one of the things I discovered very early on in my teaching is that for children to be successful in life, they have to see themselves reflected, but they also have to feel themselves protected. When we have transgender young people in our community who do not feel protected explicitly in our law, we leave them vulnerable.

I do not have to explain and draw graphic pictures in words of the kind of discrimination many face. I am not saying this legislation would take it away, but when this legislation is passed, it would send a message to employers and to the very few Canadians who may have a tendency not to be so inclusive and not to be so accepting. There are very few of those in Canada, I find, but when it comes to imposing hurt on a person, one person can do a lot of damage. It is for that reason that we must have this law and this kind of explicit protection in our legislation.

As we sit in here, words are important, and words in legislation become even more important. I heard a colleague today speak from a legal perspective that I had not thought of, describing all the different areas the different judges have had to explore to see where discrimination on gender identity and gender expression could be covered under the human rights code. They actually have to struggle to find those areas, and if they have to struggle to find them, our human rights code needs to be made more explicit.

Once again I acknowledge the wonderful speeches made by my colleagues from Halifax and Calgary Centre—North and the emotion and empathy I heard from my colleague from Charlottetown. I am sure her colleagues on that side of the aisle heard the pain that she experienced as she chose her words very carefully and will see that it is time for this House of Commons to take action.

It would be fitting if we could all vote for this measure unanimously, especially when we are on the eve of International Women's Day. We would celebrate the fact that we have enshrined those rights into our legislation and into human rights.

I appeal to my colleagues across the aisle to vote for this unanimously. I know they are going to, because they are very caring Canadians.

[Citizenship and Immigration, March 7th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, as usual, there is no answer, and the ministry's own figures today belie the facts. The truth is that the minister has been saying one thing and doing another on refugee resettlement. They are nowhere near meeting even the minister's own targets. It is the world's most vulnerable who pay the price for this mismanagement.

One million refugees have fled Syria and half of them are children, yet the minister still refuses to meet with the Syrian community. Why is the minister abandoning refugees?

[Government Spending, March 5th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, maybe the Conservatives should give senators a literacy test, since they are the ones who cannot seem to read the rules.

We are not suggesting that the minister wrote the test herself. The point is, she does not have to. Grant recipients are so scared of being cut-off that they feel the need to kiss the ring just to keep their funding, even so far as to rewriting history to align with the Conservative fiction.

When will the Conservatives take responsibility for the environment of fear they have created in our communities?

[Electoral Boundaries, February 7th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservative Party now admits it blanketed the good people of Saskatchewan with robocalls.

The intent of the call was to illegitimately influence the work of the non-partisan federal electoral boundaries commission. One Saskatchewan Conservative MP correctly called this practice deceptive. Yet the Prime Minister stood in the Houses to defend this despicable practice. He also stated, “These efforts will continue”.

As a Star Phoenix editorial pointed out, this practice is a “prelude to gerrymandering, and it's intolerable”. The not-so-mysterious voice in the robocall suggested that the commission's work was betraying Saskatchewan's values. However, what is a betrayal of Saskatchewan's values and Canadian values are the actions of the Conservative Party, shamelessly supported by the Prime Minister.