Sheila Malcolmson

[Indigenous Affairs, January 30th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, last month I had the opportunity to ask the Prime Minister directly why he is excluding the Native Women's Association of Canada from his government's provincial-territorial meetings, and he said, “That is simply not true.” However, in December 2016, the Native Women's Association of Canada and the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples were left out of a meeting with the Prime Minister advancing reconciliation.

On this conversation about reconciliation, there was not a single indigenous woman at the table. In the press conference after the meeting, the Prime Minister confirmed that their exclusion was deliberate. He said, “My answer is that we always have to make choices about who to include in different venues and at different points.” He later told the National Observer that “in any given meeting we have to make choices and we made those choices.” He has chosen again and again, despite the Prime Minister's commitment to a true nation-to-nation relationship and despite his commitment to feminism, to exclude the Native Women's Association. They were excluded from the first ministers meetings in October 2017, December 2016, March 2016, and again not invited to participate in the reconciliation meeting I just cited, in December 2016.

I would like to know from the representative of the Prime Minister what his evidence is that he has been inviting the Native Women's Association of Canada to these high-level meetings, these reconciliation meetings, these first ministers meetings, because he told me that I am saying something that is not true. “That is simply not true” is what he said to me.

The Prime Minister really is in bad company on this. The mandate letter he gave to the Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs indicated the government is committed to continue to develop and lead a whole-of-government strategy to include indigenous representatives in meaningful ways in Canada's federal-provincial-territorial dialogues. I will submit that if the Prime Minister continues to leave out indigenous women from these conversations, he is not fulfilling his commitment.

The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women indicated its concern that indigenous women's organizations are not included in Canada's countrywide nation-to-nation relationship on equal footing with other indigenous people's organizations. That report is more than a year old, and it still is not being honoured. UN CEDAW recommended that Canada ensure indigenous women's organizations are included in the countrywide nation-to-nation relationship in all cases in which issues of relevance to women apply.

The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples asks the government to commit to article 18, in which indigenous people “have the right to participate in decision-making in matters which would affect their rights, through representatives chosen by themselves in accordance with their own procedures”. The Liberal government says it is going to agree to my colleague from Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou's bill, but its actions do not line up with its words.

I would like to hear from the government's representative why it is continuing to shut out NWAC.

[Department of Employment and Social Development Act, January 30th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to stand in support of a bill that would provide better government services to people that need our help.

I am going to start off with a quote from my friend and constituent, A.J. Logan, who has this quote from Robert Hensel at the bottom of every email, “We, the one's who are challenged, need to be heard. To be seen not as a disability, but as a person who has and will continue to bloom. To be seen not only as a handicap, but as a well intact human being.”

That is how it should be but instead I am going to describe to members some of the experiences of people in my riding of Nanaimo—Ladysmith who are deeply frustrated by their inability to access government services and to be served in the way that they should be served.

I heard from a young veteran with PTSD about dealing with Veterans Affairs. He said, “It's like being given a jigsaw puzzle and turning off the lights.” How inhumane, especially for a young man who has served our country.

My constituency office is one of many across the country being flooded with urgent requests for help from desperate constituents who cannot access basic government services. It is not because they do not qualify but because they simply cannot get through to government agencies or cannot access the necessary information or the forms that they require. Many feel as if they are being systematically stonewalled by the very agencies that supposedly exist to assist them.

My staff member Hilary Eastmure said to me, “CRA recently told me that instead of replying to my faxes within 5 days, I shouldn't expect to hear back from an agent for at least 15 days”. The wait time for even our constituency office to get a reply has tripled. That is due to the “service renewal” at CRA, which has caused major backlogs for its staff as the entire system has been changed and staff have been reduced because some offices were closed or consolidated.

It sounds like things are getting worse, not better, and that was not the expectation that Canadians had of the Liberal government.

Phone lines are jammed to the point where people are not even permitted to remain on hold or leave a message. Instead, my constituents are advised to call back later, which yields the same result no matter what time of day they try to phone. Insiders readily admit that some government agency phone lines are designed to send people in circles and eventually drop their call because the system is too overloaded to handle the number of calls pouring in at any given moment.

The agencies themselves are understaffed and under-resourced. Remaining staff are working hard and they are trying hard, but they are stretched too thin and they are scrambling to cover the ever-growing backlog. Wait times are stretching from days to weeks to months to years. I have lost track of the number of refugee parents who have sat in my office. Being asked to wait years for family reunification means some parents are missing watching their children grow up. It is inhumane.

Whether it is a simple callback or a much needed refund or an anxiously awaited application approval, Canadians are waiting longer and they are suffering undue stress and financial hardship as a result.

Canadians accustomed to reliable service are quickly becoming disillusioned with our system, which is getting increasingly difficult to navigate, and this is especially apparent in the shift to online platforms. People that do not have regular access to a computer or printer, or who are not computer literate, have waited on the phone for hours. For seniors especially to be told to go online and fill out a form just sends them over the brink. They are so frustrated. These are people with disabilities, seniors, low-income Canadians, exactly the people that often require the most support from our government agencies.

Here is a quote from an email received from Freeman Dryden in Nanaimo, “We have been stymied by either lack of confirmations or the reception of refusal letters requesting all sorts of duplicate or impossible-to-find information. We have been made to fill out innumerable forms, both on paper and online, and, to date, have had absolutely no contact with real people, nor any confirmation of the services we carefully applied for.... Surely, there is some way to cut through this nightmare bureaucratic jungle.”

We must do better. We must restore Canadians' faith in the systems set up to support them in their time of need. We must invest in those front-line government agencies and the workers to improve accessibility, service delivery, and accountability.

Federal legislation addresses the issue of disability across a number of different policy areas. For example, legislation that touches on disability has been enacted at the federal level in relation to employment, employment equity, skills training, education, income assistance, tax, health, transportation, housing, as well as recreation and culture—many different ways. The Canada pension plan disability, the disability tax credit, registered disability savings program, veterans disability pensions, and the opportunities fund all operate as stand-alone programs with distinct and separate application processes. This reality makes it cumbersome for people living with disabilities to access the federal supports that they may be entitled to, and they have paid for them already in many cases.

I heard in detail about this from another man in our riding, Terry Wiens. He has had polio and he is facing extraordinary costs associated with his disability. He writes:

I recently had to buy a new RoHo Hybrid cushion for my wheelchair ($820) as well as a hospital bed ($1800 mattress not included) so decided to make a one-time withdrawal of $10,000 from my RIF.

What I didn't realize was the ripple effects of that decision. That raised my annual income enough to eliminate me from the Guaranteed Income Security (all $18/month worth). I have no doubt that next year I will qualify again but in the meantime we are penalized for our independence. You can't really compare the income of an individual that is facing costs that the average person never sees. To add insult to injury losing that GIS also cost me my Premium Medical Services subsidy (another $420/year cost), my opportunity for a subsidized assisted living apartment (GIS qualification is required for the subsidized program), a cut back to my current rental subsidy and doubling (from $450 to $900 yearly) of my Pharmacare deductible. It is not the $18/month payment but the status of qualifying for GIS that is important.

I thank Terry Wiens of Nanaimo. It is a really long letter and it is powerfully written, and it is maddening.

In that context, my New Democrat colleague from Windsor—Tecumseh has proposed Bill C-348. It is so simple, straightforward, and so humane to say we are not going to make everyone applying for these programs prove again and again that they actually face a disability. We are going to have navigators that help these people understand and work through the programs, the same way that veterans are asking for the same kind of navigation services, the same way that veterans affairs in Australia has put in place ages ago.

For people to be supported by a strong social safety net, to be supported by a good government, and to be able to access the programs they have paid into, Bill C-348 is specifically designed to crack the nut on this problem. We believe that people living with disability should not have to demonstrate or prove their disability to the government more than once. Anything more is unnecessarily punitive and disrespectful. It will cost the government nothing to fix this problem, so let us please vote together for Bill C-348, for humanity, for justice, and for the respect that people living with disabilities in our communities deserve.

[Canada Labour Code, January 29th, 2018]

Madam Speaker, the hon. member asked a fair question. I am reminded of the words of Carleton University's Jennifer Robson, who said that harassment policies on paper do not work if workers do not have all the information and, most of all, the trust. That is up to us.

However, the member is quite right that getting as much detail as we can in here right now would make implementation and understanding much easier to get at, both from the side of the employer and from the side of the worker. We have heard concerns, for example, that the bill may not protect the privacy of the people coming forward, as much as it might, when the competent person selected as their mediator is a co-worker. It is not clear what the actual penalties for the employers would be, whether that is a federally regulated industry or, in this case, a member of Parliament. Also, it is not clear how anonymity and privacy would be protected.

There are many details we will be taking in good faith to committee, and we will try to make this as specific as possible. That is what our brothers and sisters in the labour movement have called for.

[Canada Labour Code, January 29th, 2018]

Madam Speaker, I am really proud that 43% of the New Democrat candidates nominated for the federal election slate in 2015 were women, and we elected a 40% female caucus. I have a lot of strong women around me today. That is borne out again and again. If political parties offer women, voters say yes to women. I believe the Conservative Party nominated 17% women and about 16% to 17% of its caucus is female, while for the Liberals it was 30% and 30%.

My colleague, the member of Parliament for Burnaby South, proposed a private member's bill that would have given incentives for political parties to nominate more gender-balanced slates. Unfortunately, a feminist Liberal government voted that down, which was very disappointing.

We are now looking to the Liberals to see what they will bring to this Parliament that might also give political parties incentives. In the meantime, they could do what the NDP does: Riding associations are not allowed to go to a nomination vote until they show that they have exhausted all equity candidate nomination possibilities.

[Canada Labour Code, January 29th, 2018]

Madam Speaker, I am going to be sharing my time with the member for Essex. I am honoured in this astonishing time to be speaking to the vitally important issue of sexual harassment and violence in our public dialogue and in our workplaces.

I am going to talk about the brave young women who are coming forward, the legacy of social justice women's rights activists on whose shoulders we stand. I am going to talk about the support of my party, the NDP, for Bill C-65. I am going to affirm that no party is immune to the revelations and bad behaviour that are being reported. I am going to talk about the cost of shutting women out of politics. I am going to talk a bit about some of the changes to the bill that would help us to make it even better protection for workers.

The imperative for us to take this action as parliamentarians is fuelled by the terrible stories that we are hearing. I have a quote from a former parliamentary staffer, Beisan Zubi. She said that being a parliamentary staffer on the Hill was “a crash course in sexism and sexual harassment”. She said, “But if I’m being honest, I would have also warned them to stay away, that Parliament Hill, in my experience, was a fundamentally unsafe place for young women.” How can that be said about the Commons, the place for the people? Lauren Dobson-Hughes said, “You take your cues from people around you who are in positions of power, and if they don't think that's weird, if that didn't even momentarily give them a second glance, then you think, 'Maybe the problem is me; maybe that's just normal.'” It is not normal.

More than anything, I want to state it is a privilege for us to be in this House and to be able to make permanent change at this historic time. I want to honour the brave women who, after decades of holding these stories back, are risking themselves and their reputations and are telling their stories and ringing the alarm on deeply embedded sexism and violence in our common discourse and in our workplaces, including this workplace here. I recognize the great cost to women for coming forward. I want to say to them that I am really sorry it happened to them and that we are going to honour their bravery by doing the right thing here in this House. We recognize that we have the highest responsibility to act on the respect and importance of the words that we have been given. This is the global #MeToo movement. This is Time's Up, and time is up.

We are determined to ensure workplaces in this country are safe from sexual harassment. We know all workers everywhere deserve and are entitled to a safe and secure environment. The work before us today is to make sure there is zero tolerance for harassment and violence in our workplaces, and that when it does happen, there must be a transparent process where the complainants are confident that they will be treated with respect and privacy, and those who are accused know there is a process that will be adjudicated, and the public will have an idea about what that process is.

The labour minister's proposal, Bill C-65, amends the Canada Labour Code to include sexual violence and harassment, and it attempts to do a similar thing within parliamentary workplaces where the concern about parliamentary privilege has even prevented the Canada Labour Code from having effect in our constituency offices across the country and here on the Hill. I am very grateful to the labour movement for identifying changes that we can put in place that would improve the bill and also to my colleagues, the member for Saskatoon West, our former labour critic, and the member for Jonquière, our current labour critic, because the work by them and their staff is building our case and we are going to make this legislation even better.

I want to give thanks to the men in the NDP caucus who I serve with, as well as the members of Islands Trust Council, where I served for 12 years. I personally have had a very good experience as an elected woman in politics, maybe because Islands Trust Council had an exactly gender balanced 26-person council. Maybe that had something to do with the change in tone. However, what we are talking about today is the experience of workers and not so much about parliamentarians.

I want to acknowledge that if we can get more women into Parliament, they will change the tone. “Add women, change politics” is something we hear a lot. They will change the tone and also enact policies. We have seen across the world that by removing barriers to women's participation in public life, systems and countries protect all vulnerable people better than we do right now. We have seen this in other parts of the world. Canada is, sadly, really behind the ball on this.

The status quo policies that we have had in this Parliament have meant that the number of women elected to office has stalled out. If we could bump that number up, it might be that we would have less sexual harassment. We heard that specifically, maybe nine months ago. Daughters of the Vote was a beautiful initiative on International Women's Day, but one sister, Arezoo Najibzadeh, powerfully and symbolically left her seat empty to represent the cost of violence against women that keeps women from participating in public life and prevents them from taking their seats. Hands were raised to that sister. Both the member for Hochelaga and I saluted her efforts on that day. She is a reminder to me that we need all the diversity of voices in this House to change the country and bring proper representation.

That is the cost of keeping political staffers in an unsafe place and causing women to say that Parliament Hill is not safe for them. This is the power of social media. It makes it possible for us to transmit these stories, and it is bringing down some pretty amazing political leaders right now. Again, we are in quite a time.

I want to also acknowledge my Aunt Kim Malcolmson, who I have talked about in the House before. She was a pay equity commissioner. She was very challenging for my old grandfather. She was a hard-core feminist, a CCF-Waffle Party-Tommy Douglas aficionado. She shaped me enormously. She is in palliative care. On Friday morning, my fabulous Uncle Paul Barber told her that Patrick Brown had been forced to resign his seat, and although it was very hard for her to speak, she demanded to know more details. On Saturday, I was able to visit her in the hospital and let her know that the New Democrats were going to return to Parliament by calling out the need to act to end violence against women and sexual harassment, and at the end of the week we were going to be celebrating the two-year anniversary of the successful motion from me and the member for Jonquière in the House to legislate pay equity. I was able to let Kim know that we were coming into Parliament fighting. That was on Saturday, and yesterday she passed away.

I like to think, because she was a woman who knew she was going to Heaven, that she is looking down on this amazing time that we are living in and seeing that the work that has been done is carrying on and that the young women leaders in this country, with their deep bravery and astonishing ability to tell stories, are changing the way we will go forward with this legislation.

The labour movement is urging changes and New Democrats will be urging changes in committee. We are glad that with the new House leader of the NDP, we were able to accelerate the passage of this bill. We will debate its details and get changes as fast as we can so that we can make politics a safe place for all members of our country.

[Petitions, December 13th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, standing with the Union of Postal Workers, residents of Nanaimo, Duncan, Ladysmith, and Whitehorse in Yukon urge the federal government to recognize that many rural people do not have access to banking services. Nearly two million people are without access to banking services, and are instead dependent on payday lenders.

The petitioners call on the government to add postal banking to Canada Post's mandate, including a mandate for financial inclusion, and also that the secret study Canada Post conducted on postal banking be made available to the public.

We commend the petition to this Parliament.

[Indigenous Affairs, December 13th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, this week Liberals again excluded the Native Women's Association of Canada from high-level federal-provincial-territorial meetings, and it is not the first time. Indigenous women were shut out of first ministers meetings in October, March, and last December. NWAC was not even invited to a reconciliation meeting with the Prime Minister. We need a diversity of voices, and leaving women out means they only get half the wisdom. How can this so-called feminist Prime Minister call this reconciliation, when he keeps blocking indigenous women's voices?

[The Environment, December 12th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the question still remains. Of the very specific elements I mentioned, how will they be accommodated into the government's legislation? There is nothing in Bill C-64 that contains any of the elements I just mentioned. They are integral to its success. Dealing with the backlog is necessary for dealing with the overall problem, as opposed to the more forward-looking approach of the government's bill. Fixing vessel registration is vital. The government will not be able to send a penalty or a ticket to an irresponsible owner if it cannot find out who that owner is. They have to work together.

I ask again. The government's offer of $260,000 and $300,000 this year is a drop in the bucket compared to the thousands of boats that need to be removed. I would like to hear some specifics from the government.

[The Environment, December 12th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, this evening's debate is following on the eve of the Union of BC Municipalities convention in Vancouver, in September, where my legislation on the issue of a solution for abandoned vessels was finally, after decades of pushing, especially by coastal communities, on the convention floor. Eighteen-hundred delegates endorsed my legislation, Bill C-352, which I had built in co-operation with coastal communities. It included all the solutions they had asked for over 15 years of advocating both to the B.C. Liberal government and federal governments, both Liberal and Conservative.

As we know, two weeks ago, a number of Liberal majority manoeuvres killed the bill, sank it, so to speak. It did not even come to the floor for a debate and a vote, which is quite unusual. My question now to the government is how it will incorporate into its legislation, Bill C-64, the transport minister's bill, all that advice from coastal communities.

As a reminder, fixing vessel registration was a major part of my bill. Piloting a vessel turn-in program, kind of like what we have done successfully in many provinces with old abandoned automobiles by finding incentives and programs to encourage people to turn them in so they can be recycled and dealt with responsibly, would be a good way to deal with the backlog. Second would be creating good green jobs by supporting local marine salvage industries and co-operating with recycling organizations to find new markets for fibreglass and other difficult to recycle material. That links to the previous idea as well. A vessel turn-in program or a boat amnesty would help create the critical mass that might cause some economies of scale to deal with abandoned vessels.

Finally, to end the jurisdictional runaround, would be making one agency the go-to on dealing with abandoned vessels. What we proposed was the Coast Guard. The government's bill continues to have responsibility apportioned out over a number of different ministries, so one would need to have an org chart to figure out who was responsible. That is not tenable for coastal communities.

Since we last talked about this, I have had dozens of endorsements from local governments. I very much want to know how the Liberal government, having sunk my legislation, will still recycle and use the material in it in a way that reflects the multitude of asks from local governments. The Islands Trust Council, the City of Nanaimo, the Town of Ladysmith, the City of Campbell River, and the Regional District of Nanaimo all endorsed my bill. There was the City of Parksville; the City of Victoria; the Village of Queen Charlotte, in Haida Gwaii; the District of Tofino; the District of Oak Bay; the Alberni-Clayoquot Regional District; the Powell River Regional District; the Village of Tahsis; the District of Ucluelet; Sooke; Sechelt; Metchosin; the City of Powell River; the Township of Esquimalt; the District of Kitimat; the District of Fort St. James; the town of Burlington, in Newfoundland; the Township of Nipigon, in Ontario; the Town of View Royal; the District of North Saanich; and the list goes on.

The call is clear. Local governments need their solutions inserted into this bill. How will the government respond?

[Salaries Act, December 12th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, rumour has it that this is our second to last day in the House. This is a government that has underperformed, relative to any other new government, in relation to how many new pieces of legislation it has introduced in the House. We have a number of bills, almost as many as nine of them, introduced but not debated at all and not given any time in the House. The government still has not restored judicial judgment in sentencing. It has not removed the ruinous mandatory minimums the Conservative government brought in. It has not legislated pay equity. It has not fixed the navigable waters protection act. It has not fixed the Fisheries Act.

How does the member feel about this being the highest priority for these final two days for the government: paying cabinet ministers better than they are already?