Sheila Malcolmson

[Canada Labour Code, May 7th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, being unable to discern what that question was, I will take the opportunity to run through a list of the amendments that my colleague presented at the committee that were rejected. We have already talked about the role of the public safety and national security committee's motion that was moved, which, despite many witnesses calling for it, was not taken up by the government. We also proposed strengthening the prevention of mental illness in the Labour Code. Something that teamsters urged us to do was to have a very strong intervention on mental health. That was a motion that was rejected. There was a proposal that the fundamental corporate policies be listed in the Canada Labour Code so that this be fully transparent. Another idea was to schedule mandatory training sessions on sexual harassment so employers are fully aware of their responsibilities. I have another list twice as long, but I will leave it there.

[Canada Labour Code, May 7th, 2018]

Madam Speaker, we are at quite a time in our country. I am honoured to be representing Nanaimo—Ladysmith at this time.

First, we have an unprecedented opportunity for gender equality around the world. At the same time, I would argue that we have an unprecedented awareness of the impact that sexual harassment and workplace violence, and harassment, period, can have on workers and the fact that harassment should never be part of any job.

I think of my grandfather, John Osler, who was a lawyer for labour when there were not any in Canada, and the recognition of the violence done physically to people in the workplace and the importance of putting in place laws and frameworks to protect workers' physical safety. We now know our responsibility in this day and age is to have the same level of protection for people's workplace environment as it relates to harassment and sexual harassment. Therefore, we cannot pretend we do not know.

I am very aware of the media investigation this weekend about the threats against the life of New Democrat Premier Rachel Notley. I know she is not alone. Women in this House have been profiled as having received sexual harassment and threats of physical violence against them. Harassment is not part of a politician's job, so I am sorry for Rachel Notley.

While watching some of the media this weekend with my mom and dad, they observed that there was a great deal of hand-wringing but very little concrete action. What are we actually going to do? Talking about it or reporting on it is not enough.

I was reminded of two years ago when the status of women committee, in its 2016 all-party consensus report, made recommendations to the government, to this Parliament, in particular recommendation 18. This is in the context of its study on ending violence against young women and girls, but, inevitably, there was a great deal of testimony that we heard about online harassment and cyber-bullying. Young women, like Rehtaeh Parsons and Amanda Todd, were harassed to the point that they took their own lives. There are horrible stories with which no family should ever have to contend.

When we asked the witnesses for remedies, they said that the previous Conservative government had removed part of the Canadian Human Rights Act, maybe for reasons of freedom of speech, which turned out leaving a very serious hole in our human rights legislation that we needed fixed immediately. Therefore, our recommendation was:

That the Government of Canada introduce legislation to restore Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act which permitted rights complaints to the federal Canadian Human Rights Commission for the communication of hate messages by telephone or on the Internet.

However, here it sits two years later. The government received an all-party recommendation to repair the damage the Conservative government did in the Harper era.

While we are talking about harassment in the workplace and while our attention is focused on the death threats that Premier Notley received, as reported last week, let us remember there are actions that we can take, and I urge that we take them. We need a little less conversation and a little more action.

Bill C-65 is an example of action, which the New Democrats welcome. We welcome anything that makes workplaces freer from harassment and creates a clearer path for employees. For employees on the Hill, there is this strange kind of cone of no-rules land somehow around the Labour Code, especially as it relates to harassment and sexual harassment. Therefore, we are glad to see the bill here. We are also glad that all parties have been able to work together, especially with the labour movement, which has very good advice on this file to try to bring changes to the bill.

We know the need is real. Fifty-three per cent of Canadian women have experienced unwanted sexual pressure. Fifty per cent of Canadian women have experienced some form of sexual harassment in the workplace. Sixty per cent of respondents experienced some form of harassment in the workplace, with nearly half of those from people with authority over them. Therefore, power is a big part of this dynamic. Women who are racialized, queer or indigenous and women living with disabilities all have a much harder time and receive a disproportionate amount of harassment and violence in the workplace. Therefore, the work needs to be done.

This legislation is mostly procedural. It sets up an investigatory process through which issues of violence or harassment in the workplace could be investigated fully and without prejudice. That is the intention. It follows two similar streams through both Parliament and government-regulated workplaces and industries such as telecommunications, transport, and banks, which is about 8% of the national workforce, as well as the people that work here with us in Ottawa and in our constituency offices to provide us with vital support, as well as federally regulated workers across the country. The rules apply to parliamentarians and everybody.

We are glad to see the bill before the House. However—and there is always a “however”—there are some gaps, and we worked quite hard to try to fill them. I salute my friend to my left, the member for Saskatoon West, who is our former labour critic, and my colleague to my right, the member for Jonquière, both of whom led the charge in committee to try to bring many amendments forward and perfect the bill as much as we could.

Our strong disappointment remains that the joint health and safety committees have basically been removed from the process. These committees have worked for years, and it is a great disappointment that this legislation would remove them from doing their effective work. Every labour ally who came to committee asked for these committees to be returned to their roles. We proposed amendments, but they were not accepted by the Liberal-dominated committee. That continues to be a great disappointment. In the words of CUPE, the union that represents 650,000 workers in this country, limiting the role of the health and safety committees will have “a chilling effect” on workers' willingness to come forward and participate in the process.

The Liberal bill is an employer-driven process. If an employer is harassing an employee or if an employer has failed to create a safe workplace and regulate the other employees, then quite reasonably the person experiencing the harassment may not want to participate fully in a process that is dominated and controlled by his or her employer.

The health and safety committees have doing all kinds of good work in different areas of the Labour Code for all this time. If they had been used, an existing tool would have been used and an impediment to complaints would have been removed.

CUPE has deep experience in federally regulated industries. It has 650,000 members across the country, many of whom work in rail, ports, communications, and energy, all places that would be protected by this legislation.

We tried to bring forward a number of other amendments. Fortunately, three of them were taken up, including one with respect to the definition of “harassment” in the legislation, which all of our labour allies had called for. Certainly those of us who are employers want to have that clarity. I am glad that our perseverance resulted in that definition being brought in.

We also had input from the teamsters union, which wanted changes made to the Labour Code. It was pushing the government to clarify that mental health was included as part of this legislation. The Canadian Labour Congress very strongly voiced its concerns about a lack of capacity for labour investigators. PIPSC, the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada, was well represented. Workers at the DFO biological station in my riding are members of PIPSC. It is a very strong advocate. It wants to see Bill C-65 guarantee adequate representation for those involved.

In closing, I would like to thank the government for bringing this legislation forward. I would also like to thank Conservative and New Democrat members for being able to advance some of the changes that we wanted to see, but I continue to urge the government to draw on the deep experience of the labour movement, which has been doing this hard work for many years. Let us not leave to regulation what we could transparently include in legislation right now.

[Canada Labour Code, May 7th, 2018]

Madam Speaker, I thank the government for moving this legislation forward. I understand that at committee there was a common cause between New Democrat and Conservative representatives in urging the government to ensure that psychological harassment was specifically included in the bill and that mental health considerations were urged by the members of the Teamsters who came to testify at committee. The labour movement has a very large capacity and a big body of experience with respect to this.

I would like to hear from my colleague the extent to which he is satisfied that the amendments proposed at committee to include mental health protection and psychological harassment are in the final bill we are debating.

[Petitions, May 7th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, shockingly, vision loss is expected to double in Canada over the next 20 years.

Petitioners from Nanaimo, Surrey, and Delta urge the government to invest in combatting the underlying factors that lead to vision loss. Specifically, the petitioners call on the government to develop a national framework for action to promote eye health and vision care, which will benefit all Canadians through the reduction of vision impairment resulting from preventable conditions, such as diabetes, and modification of known risk factors.

[Petitions, May 4th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, because of the risk to sport fishing and to tourism and the risk of an oil spill on sensitive shoreline, particularly on Sandwell Provincial Park and Whalebone Beach, which is in Snuneymuxw, I commend to this House yet more petitions opposed to the establishment of five new bulk anchorages off Gabriola Island, which is also my home.

Petitioners from Calgary, Surrey, Red Deer, Gabriola Island, the province of Quebec, and across the country are urging the transport minister to cancel the bulk anchorages establishment at a time of unprecedented new anchorage traffic from these huge ships in the Salish Sea. We do not want to add to more of the risk and more of the load.

[Oil Tanker Moratorium Act, May 4th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, in my capacity as Islands Trust council chair, I started writing to the Conservative ministers of transport and environment starting in 2011, asking them to show me the science they had. Apparently that caused a bit of a ripple in the departments because it had not been studied. The marine environment studies are extremely limited.

Just a year ago, the Liberal transport minister was quoted on the radio saying that the government did not know how it reacted and through the oceans protection plan, it would study its behaviour in the marine environment. I have a file full of peer-reviewed papers that say this needs more study in the marine environment and in estuaries and places where there would be sediment and waves.

[Oil Tanker Moratorium Act, May 4th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I salute the Alberta New Democrat premier, Rachel Notley. She campaigned on a strong platform of standing up for the existing jobs and industry in her province, and she is continuing to do that. I also salute New Democrat premier, John Horgan, who campaigned against the Kinder Morgan pipeline and said loudly that he would use every measure he could within his limited provincial jurisdiction to protect the coast, and he is doing that.

From my perspective, when we hear in Kinder Morgan's filings to the National Energy Board that the permanent jobs in British Columbia are 50, and we recognize the tens of thousands of jobs that are dependent on a clean environment, on sport fishing, on tourism, and everything in the coast, for us it does not compute. I would argue that the true national interest would have been for the Liberal government to have kept its election promises to redo the Kinder Morgan review, but, most important, to truly reconcile with indigenous people. If the Liberals are to sign off on UNDRIP, then they certainly cannot ram a pipeline through and fight first nations in court. It is in the national interest to protect the environment. That is what we are doing.

[Oil Tanker Moratorium Act, May 4th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I am thankful for the opportunity to speak to Bill C-48, the north coast partial oil tanker ban. That we have this in place is a credit to decades of work by north coast people. I also want to acknowledge the work of my colleague, the member of Parliament for Skeena—Bulkley Valley. His version of this bill in the previous Parliament toured the entire country, and thousands of people came out under the “Defend Our Coast” banner. It was very powerful. It gave the Liberal government the mandate to implement this, so we are glad to see the legislation.

We will be voting in favour of the bill. Our New Democratic colleague from Port Moody—Coquitlam tried quite hard to strengthen it. There is more ministerial discretion than we would like to see. Some of our colleagues have been quoted saying that one could drive an oil tanker through this moratorium. Nevertheless, we are going to vote in favour and we are glad to see some version of it moving forward.

As a member representing the south coast of British Columbia, the Salish Sea and Nanaimo—Ladysmith, I can say that we have very complicated shorelines, very fast-moving currents, very sensitive ecology, and 450 islands between the area I represent on Vancouver Island and the mainland of British Columbia and the U.S. border, with extremely complicated shipping traffic. We have very sensitive ecology and shorelines where we know that if there was an oil spill of any size, it would be extremely difficult to clean up.

Given that the industry standard for oil spill response is a 10% cleanup of oil, let me say again that members representing the southern part of British Columbia are committed to protecting their coastline, the economy, and the jobs that depend on it. They are just as concerned about the impacts of oil tanker traffic, especially when it is an unrefined, raw product that has no value-added jobs in Canada and no energy security benefit for Canada. Certainly, for British Columbians, the shipment of what we view as an increased level of danger by more oil tanker traffic and a thicker, unrefined product is all downside for our coast. There is no upside.

If the government is willing to put in strong measures for the north coast, why not for the south coast? There is still no peer-reviewed science that tells us how bitumen would react in the marine environment, in rough water with sediment in it. Who is going to have an oil spill with no waves? It just boggles the mind that the Liberal government could have approved the Kinder Morgan pipeline in the absence of evidence that bitumen can be recovered from the marine environment and that our response times are adequate to clean it.

What we have is some suspicion or concern based on what has been observed from other times when bitumen has been spilled in the marine environment. The diluent, which allows the raw, unrefined bitumen to flow, may evaporate very quickly. The evaporation itself may pose dangers to first responders, so it might be that first responders have to keep away. Certainly, if there was a bitumen spill in a heavily populated area, such as downtown Vancouver, a million people would be affected by a spill with much more toxic fumes than a refined product would have. We saw that in the Kalamazoo spill, which was in fresh water, but that was a huge occupational exposure.

When first responders have to stay away and cannot get to the spill quickly, this means that the diluent has more time to evaporate and there is an increased risk that the bitumen would sink. I have folders full of science reports from the Polaris Institute, the Royal Society of Canada, and others that talk about the stickiness and impact on marine wildlife such as sea otters and sea birds, let alone what would happen if we end up with bitumen coating the seabed. The damage that would be done trying to clean that up is alarming to contemplate.

We ask again, how is it that although the north coast partial oil tanker ban is being lauded by many of us on the coast and in the environmental movement, we do not have a concomitant level of protection in the south? We do not have confidence that our oil spill response is in a respectable and responsible place.

It turns out I am splitting my time with the member for Courtenay—Alberni. I look forward to his speech. We are full of surprises today.

My understanding is that the response regulations have not been updated or tightened since 1995. The Liberal government has had two and a half years to make that change. It has not. It is my understanding that if there is an oil spill in my region, the corporate entity responsible for the oil spill has 72 hours to get there. It is not in violation of the regulations unless it does not have booms and an oil spill response plan enacted within three days. How could that ever give any of us any confidence?

If the current government, or the previous government, really wanted to have pipelines approved and give coastal people any measure of confidence, then surely it would have upgraded and tightened those response times, as Washington State has done, repeatedly, as has Alaska.

When I was chair of the Islands Trust Council, we heard from our fellow governments at the local, regional, and state level that they were extremely concerned about Canada's, or British Columbia's, poor level of preparedness for an oil spill. Oil does not recognize the international boundary. They are very concerned, given the fast-moving currents. First of all, we are shipping a dangerous product for which there is no adequate response technology, and if we do not have the response times in place, the oil will move quickly to their side of the border. Certainly, their aquaculture industry is extremely concerned about our poor level of preparedness.

I am very glad to continue to see the Washington State governor salute the British Columbia NDP premier, John Horgan, for the very strong stand that he is taking to say, “I believe that the oil spill response plans for B.C.'s south coast are inadequate.”

We are seeing now, in court, the provincial government saying that as soon as the oil hits the shoreline, it is its responsibility and jurisdiction. If the federal government is not going to adequately regulate to protect this resource, then the provincial government will consider implementing regulations itself that would protect coastal ecology and coastal jobs.

To my regret, yesterday the federal Liberal government decided to intervene in that case to oppose my premier's efforts to better protect the coast where the Liberal government has failed to. Our New Democrat leader, Jagmeet Singh, urged the Prime Minister to join the British Columbia premier so they would co-operatively go to the courts together and ask for clarification.

That would have been leadership, and it would have been a real sign of co-operation and trying to get the right answer. Instead, to see the federal government intervening against the British Columbia government, which is simply trying to strengthen and increase the safety net, is extremely discouraging. What a strange way of spending both the government's legal resources and taxpayers' dollars. How on Earth could that be a good expenditure? What we need to be doing is strengthening the ecological safety net, and not fighting against stronger measures in court.

When I was chair of the Islands Trust Council, we heard from our Washington State colleagues about how important it was to have geographic response plans in place for oil spill prevention and preparedness. These are micro-studies of a particular region that would be enacted in the event of an oil spill. The responsible spiller, whoever that was, would know to boom this. The spiller is likely to be a corporate entity, and they do a pretty good job of looking after their own business.

We would love to see geographic response plans in place. I am pleased that the B.C. government is pushing for that.

[Oil Tanker Moratorium Act, May 4th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I thought the member for Cloverdale—Langley City was next.

[Oil Tanker Moratorium Act, May 4th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, the revisionist history here is breathtaking. The northern gateway pipeline was defeated by first nations on the basis that the Harper Conservative government failed to consult them. Therefore, this is challenging language.

Given what we are now hearing from that quarter of the House about the Conservative Party's commitment to science and evidence, how does the member view the previous Conservative government's sabotage of the Environmental Assessment Act and the removal of protections under the Navigable Waters Protection Act? Where was the science that told that government it was a good idea to remove habitat protection from the Fisheries Act?