Peggy Nash

[Petitions, April 1st, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to present petitions from my constituents.

The first petition is from 120 constituents, some of whom pay thousands of dollars each month for child care, if they can find it.

The petitioners call on the House to work with the provinces and territories to create an affordable, quality child care program, so every child who needs a child care space across the country can get one.

[Safe and Accountable Rail Act, March 31st, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for his question.

Indeed, if the trains are moving more slowly, there is less of a risk. The government is telling us that trains will go slower in downtown areas. However, people who live near the railway tracks say that the trains move quite rapidly, especially at night. We are very concerned about the fact that there is a much greater risk of an accident—a serious accident—when trains are travelling at high speeds, especially in big cities.

If these trains have to continue to pass through our cities across the country, we need to make sure that they slow down in order to keep people as safe as possible.

[Safe and Accountable Rail Act, March 31st, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his question.

Our constituents are asking why we have had to wait 10 years for tougher, better-protected tank cars. The federal government announced that better tank cars that are CPC-1232 compliant are being phased in, but we have already seen that they are not tough enough. These are the tank cars that broke in the accidents in northern Ontario. People who live near railways are concerned about the fact that the standards are not high enough. The government must do much more to protect the public.

[Safe and Accountable Rail Act, March 31st, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert.

I am very pleased to speak to the issue of rail safety. It is a very important issue for my riding, which I will explain shortly.

We are debating second reading of Bill C-52, which would amend the Canada Transportation Act and Railway Safety Act. This is something that is closely watched by people in my community, in my riding of Parkdale—High Park.

The bill would require minimum insurance levels for railways transporting dangerous goods, based on the type and volume of goods being transported. It would establish a disaster relief fund to compensate victims of derailment paid for by levies on railway companies that are transporting crude oil. This would be on top of the minimum insurance levels. It would also implement other changes to increase the powers of inspectors.

In general, we support the bill. We think it is important to take immediate action and any improvement is certainly positive. We need to improve the liability and accountability regime for Canada's railways and we need to ensure that the government enforces the legislation, that the regulations are enforced and that the inspectors and auditors have the resources required for this effective oversight. We believe the bill should have gone much further, but I will come back to that in a couple of minutes.

What got everyone's attention in the country on the issue of rail safety was the terrible, tragic rail disaster in Lac-Mégantic in 2013. It is a situation we know well, where a freight train loaded with Bakken crude oil travelled down a hill unattended. It derailed and on impact exploded, caught fire and killed 47 people. The town centre was destroyed. Eight hundred people were evacuated. The land was contaminated. It was a traumatic situation not only for the people who were horribly affected by the devastation but for our entire country.

The subsequent reports made a number of findings and recommendations. They found that back in the 1990s, with the Liberal governments and continuing with subsequent Conservative governments, deregulation of the railway sector and a transferring of responsibility for safety from the government to the railway companies began. In this case, they found a series of problems with the company that was responsible in Lac-Mégantic, such as a very weak culture of safety, mechanical problems and a lack of staffing. With Transport Canada, they found inadequate oversight and inspection. What was highlighted was the weakness of the tank cars.

It is fair to say that people assumed the government was looking out for them and taking care of their safety, that this was surely one of the basic responsibilities of government, to ensure that public safety was respected.

I want to read into the record in the House an email I received from a constituent because this got the attention of people in our riding of Parkdale—High Park. One neighbourhood in our riding is called The Junction. The Junction is the crossing of the CN and CP lines. As one can imagine, there is quite a bit of rail traffic going through our neighbourhood. This was historically an industrial neighbourhood, which over the years has seen a greater number of people with their homes right by the tracks.

I want to read from a constituent's letter: “My partner and I currently own and live on...a street beside the tracks. Our property backs onto the rail yard. Our bedroom is less than 40 feet from the rails that transport tons and tons of goods, many of which are unknown to us. We see black oil tankers go by multiple times a day, cars with perforated holes in them. Since the Lac-Mégantic catastrophe as well as others across the country—they seem to be happening more and more frequently—we are deeply concerned for our safety as well as the safety of our neighbours and friends. Because of our home's proximity to the rail lines, if anything were ever to happen on the rail lines behind us, a derailment or an explosion, we would most likely lose our home and potentially our lives. The number of lives that could be at risk if such an accident occurred here is absolutely staggering.”

This is a concern that is very real in our neighbourhood. It goes well beyond the issue about liability, while liability is a key factor because we saw in Lac-Mégantic there was clearly a lack of responsibility and a lack of liability on the part of the shipper.

We have a number of questions from members of our community who have organized into an organization called Safe Rail Communities. They want to know why, while the technology to stabilize light crude oil by extraction of volatile gases exists and is mandated in the state of Texas, it is not required to be stabilized before it is transported by rail. Most of this is required to be stabilized before it is transported by pipeline. People want the substances that are being transported made as safe as possible.

They also want to know why Canadians must wait until 2025 for the new TC-117 tank cars, the safer tank cars. Why do people have to continue to see the DOT-111s or even the newer cars that crashed in northern Ontario roll past their bedroom windows when there are safer alternatives? Why do we have to wait 10 years for safer tank cars to roll on the Canadian lines? Why can people not know what is being transported through their communities? Why do people not have a right to know the hazards that are rolling right past their bedroom windows? These are fundamental questions that need to be answered.

They also want to know, when a catastrophic accident from a flammable train in a densely populated area could have costs going up to $6 billion, why the strictest requirement is only $1 billion. In fact, we have written to CN and it has told us that it already has more than $1 billion in liability insurance, so this would put no new higher standard on it. Why do we not require shippers and those responsible for the products that are being shipped to have insurance that would cover the complete liability? Why would we allow any exposure to liability in our communities?

When we think of the potential tragedy of a major rail accident in our largest city, the city of Toronto, where hundreds of these tank cars carrying Bakken oil or dilbit are transferred every day, surely we need to prevent as much as possible any potential accident from happening. People want to know that what is being shipped is as safe as possible, that it is being shipped at as slow speeds as possible, that wherever possible it is rerouted from their area to the less-populated neighbourhoods, but then should there be any tragedy that the community would not have to once again pick up the tab.

Protecting the public is a core responsibility of the government. New Democrats believe we need to do everything in our power to ensure that tragedies such as that which occurred in Lac-Mégantic never happen again. Fixing liability is just the beginning. We need stronger laws, stronger enforcement, penalties for those who break the laws, and much more serious oversight, inspections and audits by the government.

[Safe and Accountable Rail Act, March 31st, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, while the bill would make some modest progress in rail safety, the constituents in the area I represent in Parkdale—High Park, who have tanker after tanker of highly volatile, highly flammable substances going right by their homes, behind their bedroom windows, are very concerned about the possibility of some kind of catastrophic accident taking place in a highly-populated area, like our neighbourhood.

While there would be some modest improvements in insurance coverage, could the member tell me why there is not more significant attention and urgency being given to regulatory safety, stricter regulatory measures and also better enforcement?

Certainly the Auditor General has indicated that lack of enforcement and a real lackadaisical approach to the safety enforcement by Transport Canada was a key part of the disaster in Lac-Mégantic.

Could he tell me why the government has not put greater urgency on that part of prevention?

[Safe and Accountable Rail Act, March 31st, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, the member and I have worked together a great deal on the whole issue of rail safety in the city of Toronto. We represent very similar ridings.

The member talked about the need to prevent accidents. He cited the Auditor General's report that really highlighted the lack of supervision and the lack of regulatory structure and enforcement to ensure that the public is protected with these major shipping routes of highly volatile substances, such as oil, going through our neighbourhoods.

It was in 1999 that the Liberal government amended the Railway Safety Act that really accelerated deregulation of the industry. It kind of took off like a runaway train. Later they brought in safety management systems that turned safety over to the companies to regulate themselves.

Can the member comment on how effective or ineffective this has been, and how he thinks we should deal with this problem in the future?

[Child Care, March 31st, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, Statistics Canada reported today that, under Conservative mismanagement, the Canadian economy is actually shrinking.

However, Canadian families did not need StatsCan to tell them that they are working harder than ever but still struggling to make ends meet. Rising child care costs are putting the squeeze on families, and the Conservatives have broken their promise to create any new child care spaces.

Now a report from the Parliamentary Budget Officer confirms that their plan is entirely insufficient to help families struggling to afford child care. Meanwhile they plan to take billions from the middle class and give it to the wealthy few, through their unfair income-splitting scheme.

Canadians deserve better. That is why the NDP has an affordable child care plan that will create quality child care spaces for just $15 a day. We look forward to delivering the real help Canadian families need when we form the first NDP government later this year.

[Military Contribution Against ISIL, March 30th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I am sure everyone in the House agrees that the crimes of ISIS are absolutely appalling and horrific. There would certainly be unanimity on that. However, let us remember that the Assad regime in Syria has cost more than a hundred times the loss of life than ISIS. There is, nevertheless, a crying need for much greater humanitarian aid. There are more than five million people today in desperate need of humanitarian aid.

I want to ask the member about the responsibility to protect. Several of her colleagues on the Conservative side over the course of the day have mentioned the responsibility to protect. I am sure she knows that the authority for intervening in another country under the responsibility to protect rests solely with the UN, through a UN Security Council resolution. Is the member aware that there is no UN Security Council resolution for this mission and therefore there is no legal authority for Canada to intervene in Syria? Can she answer that?

[Petitions, March 30th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present a petition on behalf of many of my constituents in Parkdale—High Park about the issue of affordable housing.

A report was presented today from Toronto Community Housing by our mayor, which indicates the shortfall of funds needed from the federal government to invest in our public housing to keep that housing stock useful and active for community members.

What the petitioners are requesting is a national housing strategy to ensure that people have access to secure, accessible and affordable housing for all Canadians in co-operation with all levels of government. They are calling on the government to make meaningful, long-term investments to build more affordable housing and to address the housing crisis.

[Housing, March 30th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, the Bank of Canada says that the situation is atrocious and Canadian families are paying the price.

A new report says that in Toronto alone, 12,000 public housing units will be uninhabitable within eight years unless the government helps. The mayor said that inaction had left cities like ours “twisting in the wind”.

When will the Conservatives stop hiding and start doing their job? When will they finally introduce a budget and make the economy work for Canadian families?