Sheila Malcolmson

[Oil Tanker Moratorium Act, April 30th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague asked about four questions there.

Yes, the government does talk a lot about marine protection, but I wish there was less talk and more action. One of the first things that happened under this government's watch was that it closed down the Comox Coast Guard base. How on earth could that be building the safety net? That closure was this government's decision.

Here is another example of talk. In 2013, the Harper government said it was going to do scientific research on diluted bitumen to understand how it would behave in the marine environment. That was in 2013. Then in 2016, the Liberal government said the government would conduct research to better understand how different petroleum products behave in the marine environment. Then it approved the Kinder Morgan pipeline, without having that science done. It was completely irresponsible.

Its action plan sounds just like the Harper Conservatives, and it never got implemented. I am afraid it is all talk and no action.

[Oil Tanker Moratorium Act, April 30th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I stand today on behalf of Nanaimo—Ladysmith to talk about regulating the shipment of oil tankers on B.C.'s coast and what is at stake.

I worked for many years as an ocean kayak guide. I had the great privilege of going to B.C.'s wildest places and I so appreciate the ferocity of the weather, the complication of our shorelines, the speed at which currents and tides move, how the water is never standing still on the B.C. coast, how extremely complicated it would be to clean up oil, and how hard it is to get to some of these places. Where we have the roughest weather is where there is the highest probability of an accident and it would take the longest time to get to a spill. I know what is at stake: the coastal communities that are dependent on fishing, on tourism, and on a pristine environment; the people who live from the shellfish beds and eat the food of the sea, but also those who are invested in the marine economy, the wild salmon economy, and the aquaculture industry.

When the Enbridge northern gateway pipeline was proposed, there was some semblance of a National Energy Board review that gave coastal people their voice. I had the privilege to be in hearing rooms and hear people with emotion in their throats and tears in their eyes talk about the beauty of taking their herring boat through skimming fish, zipping over the surface of the water, the sea life, the birds, and the whales. The connection to the coast is deep and heartfelt and it is our livelihood. It is why we are there. It is where we have come from. A lot is at stake.

I was elected first in 2002 on fighting a pipeline that was going to run through the southern Salish Sea, through the southern gulf Islands. The community worked to fight it. It took four and a half years but we did beat that natural gas pipeline. I was elected to a local government with a conservation mandate. A few years later, I was the chair of council, and we got a real scare when a bulk tanker dragged its anchor in Plumper Sound. That is the sound between Saturna, Mayne, and Pender islands. It was a near miss with its huge tank of bunker sea fuel. We heard within days the head of the department of ecology in Washington state say it was a near miss, that another couple of hundred feet and that freighter would have been on the rocks. If its fuel tank had ruptured, it could have oiled the shorelines on both sides of the international boundary. That is when the lights went on for us. This was in 2009. The Hebei Lion was the first one. In 2010 and 2011, it was virtually the same thing. Huge container ships thought they were anchored safely but they were not.

We started as a local government asking questions about what the oil spill response is and if there had been an oil spill, how quickly response vessels would have arrived. Once we started digging around, we figured out that in fact Kinder Morgan was gearing up for an expansion of its pipeline. This was not well known. The fight against oil tanker traffic was focused on the north coast, but it turned out that this expansion was upon us as well. It is only since 2007 that Kinder Morgan has been exporting in oil tankers out of Vancouver harbour, and so the phenomenon of shipping out an unrefined product is still very new.

The lights went on and we started asking questions about bitumen. It was a Conservative government at the time in 2011. I started writing letters, as I was the trust council chair, asking the minister to tell us about bitumen. I asked where the science is that says it will float long enough for the government to be able to respond to it. I asked what response time was needed. I asked if the existing skimming technology was adequate. Those were questions I asked in 2011, and those questions remain unanswered today. We have never had a letter back from Liberal or Conservative ministers saying that they have a handle on that.

Indeed, we have repeated peer-reviewed studies from The Royal Society of Canada, Polaris, The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, all of which say it is not clear with a spill in marine waters, especially with rough water and sediment, how long bitumen will float. Right now, the area I represent, the Salish Sea in between Nanaimo and Vancouver, is exactly the route of the Kinder Morgan tanker traffic that is happening now, let alone the sevenfold increase that will come if the Liberal government has its way and is able to force the project over the objections of coastal people.

No one has been able to say that they know how to respond to it. The response regulations that we have in place date from 1995. The Liberal government, despite its deep affection for the coast—the Prime Minister said he is a grandson of the coast and promised he would do it no harm—has not changed the oil response regulations. A spiller in my region that I am elected to represent has three days to get to the site of a spill and boom and contain the oil.

I keep hearing my Conservative and Liberal counterparts say not to worry, that they have this in hand. Who could possibly count on regulations that date from 1995? Who would ever allow regulations to remain in place that give a spiller three days to get to the site of a spill? I met with the Kinder Morgan CEO in Anderson about six years ago. My best advice to him was that he should be getting the Conservative government to up the oil spill response regulations. I know that he, as a corporate spiller, would respond faster, because he would not want the PR bad news of this. We continue to hear these old, broad announcements about the oceans protection plan from the government, but it has not actually implemented the regulations, which would have some teeth. It is one thing to say we are going to educate and do research, but we need tighter regulations right now.

The diluent that would evaporate off a dilbit spill is thought to be highly volatile, potentially so much in the very first hours of a spill that first responders may have to stay away. That has not been sufficiently studied and we have ample evidence that says it has not. If the first responders have to stay away, after the volatile diluent has evaporated away, it may be that we remain with the crude that sinks faster. We need to have strong measures in place to protect first responders and have fast response times so that the spilled material does not contaminate shellfish beds, the animals that live on them, and the first nations communities whose culture and economy are entirely dependent on a clean ocean.

I do applaud the government in moving forward with a north coast oil tanker ban. It is very much modelled on the legislation from our colleague, the NDP member of Parliament for Skeena—Bulkley Valley. His defend-the-coast tour in support of that legislation was famous in British Columbia. Thousands of British Columbians supported that initiative. Therefore, I very much applaud the government for advancing it.

As I said before, New Democrats wish there was not so much ministerial discretion. We are concerned that accidents, like the Nathan E. Stewart, which so badly affected the Heiltsuk people just last year, and continues to, would not be blocked by this. We continue to be extremely disappointed that the government has invoked closure on this debate so that we are not able to elaborate on the remedies and be even more persuasive about closing some of the loopholes in the ministerial discretion around the types of fuel.

That said, I will be voting in support of the bill, but I do not want friends and coastal people at home to have any false sense of security that the safety net is in place. If the government was really about oceans protection, tomorrow it would be legislating tighter response times so that our communities and ecology on the coast are safe from the threat of a bitumen oil spill.

[Status of Women, April 25th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, that spending is years away.

We hear a lot of talk from the Prime Minister, but there is still so much to do on gender equality. This week, the UN special rapporteur on violence against women called out the government for its lack of action to end violence against women. Today, women from 20 countries called on G7 leaders to drop the feminist platitudes and take real action that would change the lives of women now.

The feminists I know get stuff done, so when will the Prime Minister drop the fake feminism and take real action for women today in Canada?

[Indigenous Affairs, April 23rd, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, with respect to my colleague, I will point out once again that the six women who fought this in court for 40 years do not agree with the government's approach. The Native Women's Association of Canada does not agree with the government's approach. Just last week, the Ontario Native Women's Association reminded many parliamentarians that they do not agree with the government's approach. There is no fixed date for the implementation of the bill. The 1951 cut-off is still in place, and the government voted down the proposed paragraph 6(1)(a) “all the way” amendment, which was supported in the Senate and by my colleague and urged by the women who have the most to lose and have been fighting this for four decades.

I promise that this is not my opposition; this is what we are hearing from indigenous leadership. I wish the member opposite would understand and respect that.

[Indigenous Affairs, April 23rd, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I believe this is the fifth time I have stood in the chamber to ask why the Liberal government would not have removed all sex discrimination against indigenous women from the Indian Act. The Liberals had multiple opportunities proposed by the Senate and my colleague from the NDP, which on National Aboriginal Day, of all days, the government and the Conservatives voted down. They did a half-way measure and said that they would consult on removing the sex discrimination for indigenous women.

To be clear what this means is that in the past indigenous women who married white men lost their Indian status, which then affects all of their subsequent children. There is a not a concomitant penalty for indigenous men who marry white women. It is an obvious case of discrimination and has been adjudicated in Canada's courts for 40 years.

Therefore, Ms. Jeannette Corbiere-Lavell, Ms. Yvonne Bedard, Senator Sandra Lovelace-Nicholas, Dr. Sharon McIvor, Dr. Lynn Gehl, and Senator Lillian Dyck fought this hard in the courts and won. The courts ordered the government to act. Instead, it took the narrowest measure, the most narrow interpretation of what it had to do.

Again, on Wednesday night last week, I asked the parliamentary secretary why the government believed it was necessary to consult on whether indigenous women should have full human rights. To my amazement, she said, “We are restoring rights to indigenous women...that cannot be denied as it is clear in the legislation....I would ask the member opposite to understand and accept that.” The famous six indigenous women who fought this in court do not support what the government has done. They consider it a half measure.

To lead up to my question, where once again I will ask the government why it is necessary to consult on whether indigenous women should have full human rights, I will read today's blog from the Native Women's Association.

But here’s the catch – Bill S-3’s provisions haven’t come into force with the bill’s passage; in fact, there is no fixed date for their implementation.

Not only does this leave thousands of Indigenous persons in limbo, but the bill also neglects to address several other forms of legislated sex-based discrimination: the existing hierarchy between men with 6(1)(a) status and re-instated Bill C-31 women with less conferrable 6(1)(c) status as well as issues related to sperm donors, surrogacy and adoption, such as a child adopted into an Indigenous family who receives ‘higher’ status than an Indigenous child born into an Indigenous family.

There is more. It is a great read. I do recommend it to all parliamentarians. NWAC goes on to say that:

But don’t worry – the government will be engaging in consultations with Indigenous groups to discuss barriers and discrimination related to status registration. That is to say, the government is consulting Indigenous peoples on just how much discrimination against them is acceptable.

Therefore, one more time, the sixth time at least, I ask this. Why on earth would a feminist government committed to a nation-to-nation relationship built on respect continue to discriminate against indigenous women in our country?

[Natural Resources, April 23rd, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, coastal communities are alarmed about the marine impacts of Kinder Morgan's new pipeline: a sevenfold tanker traffic increase, a terrible oil spill response, bitumen spill risks, traffic harming orca whales, and disrespec for indigenous rights. Instead of protecting these vital public interests, the Prime Minister is more concerned with protecting the interests of a Texas-based oil company.

Why will the Liberals not stand up for B.C.'s coast and keep the promises they made to indigenous leadership?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2018, No. 1, April 19th, 2018]

Madam Speaker, my colleague on the government side describes with pride the dollar investments to protect the coast. We hear about the $1.5 billion oceans protection plan. That is a five-year spending program spread over three coasts, and it is being asked to do all kinds of things, such as protecting us from a spill of bitumen in the event of Kinder Morgan oil tanker traffic damaging B.C.'s coast and economy and solving the abandoned vessels problem.

Two weeks ago, the transport minister came to Ladysmith in my riding and announced $64,000 to remove abandoned vessels. It is better than nothing, but honestly, given that the previous vessel removal cost $1.2 million, $64,000 is not much. It probably cost him that much just to travel there to make the announcement.

Could my colleague please comment on whether he agrees that this feels to us on the coast like a drop in the bucket?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2018, No. 1, April 19th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague, the member of Parliament for Davenport, was on the Special Committee on Pay Equity that was initiated as a result of a New Democratic Party motion in 2016. The government, very sadly, has delayed implementation again, 42 years later, of pay equity legislation. It is not in this budget. It will come, we now hear, in the fall.

I am wondering if the member as part of the Special Committee on Pay Equity heard any witnesses who actually recommended such a long delay, because that is not what I have heard.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2018, No. 1, April 19th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, this is what the New Democrats campaigned on in the last election and what our leader, Jagmeet Singh, is also campaigning on. It has to do with the Liberal government being too deeply friendly with the 1% and its very wealthy corporate supporters. It has repeatedly failed to close tax havens and the CEO stock option loophole. Calculations show, again and again, that this could be a $11-billion benefit to taxpayers every year. Imagine if the Liberal government had had the courage to transfer the wealth from those who have so much into social programs that would support everyone and lift everyone up. With the programs I mentioned, which everyone in the progressive movement wishes the government had invested in, if it truly were a feminist government, such as pay equity and universal child care, the economy and women would prosper.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2018, No. 1, April 19th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, that is the most convoluted question I have ever been asked. Absolutely, if the government were taking the advice of stakeholders, all the items I recommended, pay equity, universal child care, and the list goes on, would have been in its first budget implemented two years ago.

It is good that the Prime Minister appointed a gender balanced cabinet, but that does not change women's lives right now. It has not reformed employment insurance. It has not helped working women on the ground to have a better life.

I will give the Manitoba New Democratic government credit for being the first province in Canada to implement paid domestic violence leave. I believe it is five days paid leave. If women are victims of domestic violence, it is kind of the same as sick leave. They have time to get the family resettled, find a new home, and they will have a job to return to and be paid while they have to be absent.

Sadly, the Liberals only introduced three days unpaid leave in its labour bill last year. However, under great pressure from the women's movement and following the example of the Manitoba NDP, in this budget implementation bill, it now will be five days paid leave for domestic violence. I am very glad to see that and I applaud the government for making that move.