Sheila Malcolmson

[Petitions, December 11th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, to protect the coast, the jobs, and the ecology dependent on it, petitioners from Gabriola, Nanaimo, Langley, Port Alberni, and Vancouver all urge the Minister of Transport to cancel the proposal for the establishment of five new bulk anchorages off Gabriola Island. These are each 300-metre freighters. The risk of oil spills and the damage from scouring from the anchor chain are untenable, unnecessary, and of no benefit to our community. It is all downside and no upside. I urge the Minister of Transport to hear their cry.

[Fisheries and Oceans, December 6th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, through you, I ask the representative of the transport minister if the belief is shared with me that vessel registration needs to be repaired before the minister's legislation can be implemented? Why not include fixing vessel registration in the legislation?

Also, what on earth does $260,000 for small craft harbours this year and $300,000 for the whole country even begin to deal with this backlog of thousands of vessels provide?

[Fisheries and Oceans, December 6th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, through you, I ask the representative of Transport Canada if you are recognizing—

[Fisheries and Oceans, December 6th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, last month a 90-foot vessel, the Anapaya, sank in Ladysmith Harbour while leaking fuel into the ocean. In 2014, Transport Canada had identified this 100-year old boat as a vessel of concern. The government knew it posed a threat, but took no action until it sank. We are grateful for the Coast Guard's swift action. However, this is yet another example of the failed Liberal boat-by-boat approach to abandoned vessels.

For too long, jurisdictional gaps have left coastal communities with nowhere to turn when an abandoned vessel presents an emergency situation in their communities. Oil spills and marine debris from thousands of abandoned vessels pollute our waterways and put local fishing and tourism jobs at risk. We have raised this in Parliament, I think now, 86 times since the 2015 election.

I built 15 years of coastal community solutions into my legislation, Bill C-352, to fix vessel registration, to pilot a vessel turn-in program, to support good green jobs and vessel recycling, and to end the run-around by making the Coast Guard the first-responder and the receiver of wrecks, with a one-stop shopping approach for coastal communities.

Over 50 coastal organizations across the country supported my bill, from Tofino, B.C. to Fogo Island, Newfoundland and Labrador, to the Union of B.C. Municipalities, the City of Victoria, the Town of Ladysmith, and the BC Ferry and Marine Workers Union. There has been so much support from all sectors.

On November 9, the Liberal majority on the procedure and House affairs committee blocked my bill, which was an unprecedented interference. The government's new legislation, Bill C-64, tabled on October 30, complemented my bill. However, I do not believe the transport minister's bill will succeed without mine. For example, how can a penalty be imposed on an abandoned vessel owner, as the minister proposes in his legislation, without his being able to find the owner? That is where the element in my bill to fix vessel registration was so vital. Moreover, the transport minister's bill does not deal with the backlog or specifically support vessel recycling.

With the help of members of Parliament, both of the bills could have proceeded. No one had used the appeal tool before that we used in the House to have a secret ballot vote, in this case on the question of whether my bill should be deemed votable. It was a really historic moment and I am grateful to the Conservative, Bloc, Green, and New Democrat caucuses for saying that they planned to support making my bill votable.

Had the majority of members voted yes, it would have meant yes to over 50 coastal organizations who had endorsed the bill, yes to the 27,000 letters that were sent from Canadians to Liberal MPs that week, yes to standing with local governments and having their solutions brought into this House, yes to filling gaps in the transport minister's bill, yes to cooperation across party lines to solve intractable problems like the oil spill risks that come from abandoned vessels, and yes to restoring the one chance I had as an MP to have my community's legislation heard in this House.

Why would the transport representative not support hearing my bill?

[Canada Shipping Act, 2001, December 6th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, just to make sure I do not run out of time, I want to profoundly thank the coastal leaders who built this legislation and who kept this dream alive all this time.

The North Pender trustees on the Islands Trust Council, Steeves and Hancock, worked with me for years on this. Denman Island trustees Bell and Graham also worked closely with me. There was trustee Peter Luckham, who is now Trust Council chair, and Islands Trust staff, Adams, Gordon, and Frater. There was amazing female leadership and great wisdom that found solutions and helped coastal communities find their voice together to propose solutions and pitch them to provincial and federal governments.

From the Regional District of Nanaimo, I want to thank regional directors Stanhope, Houle, Veenoff, and Dorey, all within my region and all very strong partners. We would not have gotten as far as we did without them.

From Ladysmith, I thank former mayor Hutchins, current mayor Stone, and councillor Steve Arnett, who has been on this file with me the whole time, for 12 years at least. Duck Patterson and Carol Henderson, both councillors, have been very supportive. I thank the Ladysmith Chamber of Commerce. Rod Smith, at the Ladysmith Maritime Society, has been a treasure of information and someone on the water who gets these problems.

In Nanaimo, city councillor Diane Brennan has been working for years with me on this. Mayor McKay and councillor Bill Yoachim have both been really supportive. A former chair of the Nanaimo Port Authority, Jeet Manhas, has been a strong partner. I thank the Nanaimo Chamber of Commerce CEO, Kim Smythe. I thank the Georgia Strait Alliance and the BC Ferry & Marine Workers' Union. They are all right in Nanaimo and Ladysmith and have all been strong partners committed to finding a solution.

The men and women of the Coast Guard have again and again come to the fore. I want to thank the mayors of Victoria and Oak Bay and also my fantastic staff team: Jennie, Michael, Hilary, Lauren, and Mikelle. I also thank Scott and Karen, who used to work on my team. They have just blown this out of the water. We have finished our campaign significantly earlier than we intended to, but they put all horsepower into it the whole time.

I want to thank tremendously all the coastal voices, in multiple ridings, on both sides of the country, who, over the last couple of weeks especially, emailed coastal Liberal MPs, imploring them to give coastal voices an opportunity to be heard in the House and voted on. Together they sent 27,000 individual emails to coastal Liberals. They made phone calls directly to their offices and sent Twitter messages. I thank them. We pushed as hard as we possibly could have. We could not have worked harder to get consensus here to have the bill heard. That is a real point of pride.

That said, I want to flag, for our next chapter, that this is a problem across the whole country. There are thousands of abandoned vessels Transport Canada has identified. In Newfoundland, the Manolis L is one that 25 years later is still burping up oil and harming fisheries. My colleague has been fighting for six years, at least, the Kathrine Spirit , an abandoned vessel threatening drinking water in her riding in Quebec. There is the Cormorant, in Nova Scotia. All over we are seeing these. We have to work together.

We cannot characterize my proposal to make the Coast Guard the receiver of wrecks as turning the Coast Guard into a salvage operation. If I can say anything to the government, it is that it must recognize that asking people to take a constitutional lesson or read an org chart to figure out who might be able to help them with the problem is untenable. We are not asking the Coast Guard to do the salvage. We are asking it to hold the expertise and to navigate the system and talk to the relevant federal agencies to figure out who is actually going to take action. However, it should not be up to local governments, or ratepayer groups, or environmental organizations, or businesses, such as in Cowichan Bay, where they themselves paid to helicopter out abandoned vessels when they got fed up waiting for federal action.

Please, let us pull together on this for our economy, for the environment, for jobs, and to give people faith that the federal government can work together and solve problems that coastal communities identify. Let us work together. Let us get this done.

I thank everybody who tried their best to make it happen.

[Canada Shipping Act, 2001, December 6th, 2017]

moved that Bill C-352, An Act to amend the Canada Shipping Act, 2001 and to provide for the development of a national strategy (abandonment of vessels), be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Mr. Speaker, oil spills and marine debris from thousands of abandoned vessels across the country pollute our waterways and put local fishing and tourism jobs at risk. For too long, jurisdictional gaps have left coastal communities with nowhere to turn when they need help with abandoned vessels.

I first encountered this on Parker Island, a small island off Galiano. Constituents came to me saying that for 10 years they had been trying to get an enormous abandoned barge off of their white sand beach. They had asked every single department, provincially and federally, and got the runaround for 10 years. Someone had had a big dream of turning one of the old Expo 86 barges into a floating bed and breakfast, or something like that, but by the time it beached on the shore, it was rotting. My constituents would phone the Coast Guard, which would say it was a hazzard to navigation and that maybe they would have a look at it. The Coast Guard would then simply tie on the rotting pieces of rebar or the chunks of concrete or asbestos insulation that had fallen onto the beach. Children could not play there and the fisheries were harmed. It was a total mess, and no one would help.

I was chair of the Islands Trust Council at the time. We did not have any authority to deal with this, but we tried to find out whether this really was a result of a hole in jurisdiction and if other communities were having the same problem. We went to the Association of Vancouver Island and Coastal Communities, the local government association for the Sunshine Coast on Vancouver Island. We took past resolutions, asking for action, to the Union of BC Municipalities, representing 180 municipal and rural governments all bound together.

One time, I led a delegation of 19 different local governments to meet with the Liberal B.C. minister of forests, lands and natural resource operations. There were 19 different local governments all in one room asking for help, saying that the minister should get it fixed or implore Ottawa to assume its responsibilities, that this was a marine issue, that it was about the oceans and vessel registration, and that the minister should be acting. Other countries act in regard to such vessels, but Canada fails to act.

For 10 years, we were completely ignored. That is one of the reasons I wanted to get elected as a member of Parliament: to bring the solutions here and to fix this once and for all.

During the course of the election campaign, the Viki Lyne II came into prominence in the riding I was hoping to represent. In Ladysmith Harbour, four years earlier, Transport Canada had found a beautiful old 100-foot fishing trawler adrift, the Viki Lyne II. She had been built in 1961 and had met a bad end. Transport Canada towed her into Ladysmith Harbour, which was viewed as a safe harbour, and there she sat for four years at anchor. Ladysmith had put an awful lot of effort into waterfront beautification, tourism promotion, and yet this horrific rusting hulk was sitting there, a hull that the Coast Guard, in a marine survey in year one, had said was maybe only being held together by the rust, yet it was a vessel with 125,000 litres of contaminants on board.

Ladysmith has jobs invested in aquaculture, tourism, and fisheries. All of them were threatened if the worst-case scenario happened to Viki Lyne II, and still we could not get action. A huge rally during the election campaign was organized by Take 5, one of the great local newspapers. Former MP Jean Crowder had been very active, trying to bring solutions to this. The former mayor of Ladysmith, Rob Hutchins, and then his successor, Aaron Stone, had a very strong alliance with the Stz'uminus First Nation. Here I raise my hands to Chief John Elliott, who was a very strong partner, he and his council. They repeatedly wrote letters to the federal government asking for help.

The Ladysmith Maritime Society, a community-owned marina, pushed as hard as it could for solutions. Finally, having been loud about this in question period, which some members might remember, a former fisheries minister, now the member for Nunavut, said that he would find a way to fund the removal of the Viki Lyne II. A little more than a year ago, there was a huge community celebration when, five years after was had first asked, the Viki Lyne II was finally towed away. In our effort, the Ladysmith Chronicle, a great local newspaper, had really helped us keep the pressure on and tell the story.

After the Viki Lyne II was towed away, every person who had been involved in her removal recommitted to a comprehensive coast-wide solution. The one off approach of dealing with the problem on a boat-by-boat basis, and not dealing with it until it became an emergency, had not been tenable. All them said that no community should have to work as hard as Ladysmith had to get that one boat removed.

Therefore, I brought to the House legislation based on all of the years of advice from coastal communities to fix vessel registration; to pilot a vessel turn-in program; to create good, green jobs by working with local salvage companies and innovating with recycling. Maybe we can find some markets for fibreglass, which has just not been done yet. Finally, my legislation aimed to end the jurisdictional runaround by making the Coast Guard the first point of contact. If someone finds an abandoned vessel, they contact the Coast Guard, and the Coast Guard works it out between other federal agencies who should take the first action.

From Tofino, B.C., to Fogo Island, Newfoundland, my legislation has been broadly endorsed. Fifty coastal communities; businesses; harbour authorities; marinas; and labour groups, such as the the BC Ferry and Marine Workers' Union, Vancouver District Labour Council, and the Union of BC Municipalities all endorsed my legislation.

This summer I went to Nova Scotia and met with local leaders from all over who are facing the same problem, and they all agreed that this legislation would meet their needs and that we needed to accelerate it. We kept raising the pressure, along with many of my other Vancouver Island colleagues, some whom are sitting with me here today. We raised the issue of abandoned vessels 80 times in the House just in this Parliament alone.

The government kept promising that action was imminent. It did announce some funding back in the spring, which was better than a kick in the head, but, honestly, a drop in the bucket, with $260,000 this year for small craft harbours and $300,000 for removal from anywhere else in the rest of the country. The bill for removing the Silver King from my colleague's riding of Courtenay—Alberni was $300,000. This one vessel would have blown the whole budget for the entire year. The capital regional district, which my colleague, the MP for Victoria, represents in part, has applied to the federal government for $1 million to remove the backlog of abandoned vessels. Therefore, $300,000 is not going to go very far.

Then, on October 22, another vessel sunk in Ladysmith Harbour, the Anapaya, which had already been on Transport Canada's inventory of vessels of concern for three years. It certainly was a lot more expensive to recover, and more damaging to local jobs and the environment once it was sitting on the bottom of Ladysmith Harbour leaking oil than if, proactively, we had been able to remove it before it sank. I am very grateful to the Coast Guard, as it has so many times risen to the call for action without really having the proper resources, and without a super-clear authority. Those good men and women of the Coast Guard have acted. However, we need to support and resource their work and give them clear responsibility.

On October 30, just eight days after the Anapaya sank, the transport minister introduced Bill C-64. The bill is compatible with my legislation, as there is no overlap. When I saw that the minister had finally acted, I thought, great, my bill would really fill the gaps in his bill, and both pieces of legislation could move forward together. The transport minister's bill does not legislate on the most pressing issues with abandoned vessels. It does not deal with the backlog and does not fix vessel registration. The transport minister wants to be able send fines and penalties to the owners of vessels, but if there is no proper vessel registry, how will he ever know where to mail the bill?

Therefore, these two pieces of legislation should have been able to go forward together. Again, because the government's bill did not deal with the backlog, part of my bill suggested a vessel turn-in program, kind of like the successful cash for clunkers program for vehicles, which many provinces have worked on. Without that kind of turn-in program, we will just not be able to deal with the backlog.

We have heard of all the procedural games the Liberals used. They blocked my bill at the procedure and House affairs committee. I went to an appeal and showed them exactly all of the ways the bills were compatible and not in conflict, but they used their majority on committee to vote me down. We then used an unprecedented tool that had never been used in the history of the House of Commons, a secret ballot vote.

Even under the cover of the secrecy of the ballot box, I had an awful lot of Liberal colleagues say they were sorry but were voting with the government on this one. I wish they had voted with coastal communities, voted to have the solutions from all of those coastal mayors, brought to this House, and at least had the courage to have these debated in committee. To me, it felt like a real betrayal of the Liberal commitment to work across the aisle co-operatively, and to work with local communities to find solutions. I am disappointed. None of the B.C. coastal voices are included in this legislation, and I do not believe there are any B.C. Liberals on the speaking list today who are willing to speak about why they did not want to support this bill. In contrast, in the previous Parliament, when the Liberals were the third party, they voted for former MP Jean Crowder's version of this bill. That included the fisheries minister, transport minister, and the prime minister. Anyway, times have changed.

Tonight is the end of the road for Bill C-352. It is what coastal communities have been asking for for decades, but this is our consolation prize final hour of debate. Because of the Liberal push, this will not go to committee or a vote, which almost never happens. However, here we are making history again.

Yesterday, I was very pleased to have the support of all parties of the House to fast-track the transport minister's bill, Bill C-64, to committee immediately. Our communities are so hungry for solutions, and I am really glad there was agreement to move that quickly. The minister's bill will go to committee and I will do my best, along with my colleagues, to insert as many of those coastal solutions that remain from my blocked bill within the minister's bill.

I will finish by saying that I continue to be awed by the power and innovation of coastal communities. These are people who take matters into their own hands, find fixes, and use the system to advocate for them. Honestly, they should not have had to work this hard. This should have been solved 15 years ago, as every other maritime country has pretty much done.

I will not forget that the Liberal government tried to stifle coastal voices. However, my resolve to include the innovation and problem-solving nature of coastal community leaderships into the government's bill continues so that we can finally solve the abandoned vessels problem and get it off the backs of coastal communities. For ecology, the economy, and local jobs, let us respect that coastal wisdom. Let us honour the advice of these elected local leaders and bring their abandoned vessels solutions to this House and into Canada's legislation.

[Violence Against Women, December 6th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, twenty-eight years ago, 14 women were killed in the École Polytechnique massacre. Engineering students were murdered because they were women and dared to aspire to a so-called man's job. It is a tragedy we will never forget. These women held such promise.

This is not just a terrible story from the last century. Despite all the struggles of the past decades, women and girls continue to face crisis levels of violence in Canada right now. Young women between the ages of 15 to 35 are at the highest risk of violence. More than 500 women and children are turned away from domestic violence shelters daily. These are women who ask for help and are turned away.

Indigenous women are three times more likely to be sexually assaulted than non-indigenous women. Indigenous women are seven times more likely to be murdered than non-indigenous women. Women living with a disability experience violence two to three times more often than other women. Domestic and sexual violence cost our country $12 billion a year. Rates of violence against women remain largely unchanged over the past two decades. It is a terrible legacy.

Let us also be clear: poverty and economic injustice make women less safe. Without financial security, women are forced into unsafe work and precarious work. Without financial justice, some women stay in abusive relationships because they have no option. Violence against women puts women into poverty and denies women their voice, and that denies Canada the benefit of what these women have to offer.

Our country is impoverished by the absence of women's voices from our national conversation, legislatures, and parliaments. That is a real cost of violence against women and sexism. We give deep thanks to the front-line, heroic, brave organizations that, on a daily level across the country, support victims of violence in our communities. Their actions matter.

Canada should ensure these organizations have permanent funding to operate domestic violence shelters. Canada should lead national coordination of police responses to violence against women so that women have equal access to justice no matter where in our country they live. Canada should do everything it can to help the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls inquiry succeed, and support families of survivors. Canada should legislate pay equity for work of equal value, fix employment insurance, fund universal affordable child care, all of these things, because economic justice for women can help end violence against women.

Today, we all celebrate the silence breakers ringing the alarm on sexual violence in the workplace, reporting it, and accelerating the fastest growing social movement we have seen in decades.

The best way to remember the 14 women murdered on this day and to mark the Polytechnique tragedy is to use the power we have as parliamentarians, the great privilege we have, to act to eliminate discrimination and violence against women. Our actions matter. New Democrats stand with all Canadians to end violence and to ensure never again.

[Wrecked, Abandoned or Hazardous Vessels Act, December 5th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, because the abandoned vessel problem is so urgent and to give us a chance to insert, as early as possible, the solutions from coastal communities that used to be embedded in my non-votable Bill C-352, I ask for unanimous consent to move the following motion. I move:

That, notwithstanding any standing order or usual practice of the House, Bill C-64, An Act respecting wrecks, abandoned, dilapidated or hazardous vessels and salvage operations, be deemed read a second time and referred to the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities.

[Indigenous Affairs, December 4th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I note that for the second time, the government has chosen not to deny the Maclean's magazine report that $2 million of the inquiry's money have been spent directly on Privy Council Office bureaucracy, so I take that as a yes. That is a very sad state of affairs.

Two weeks ago, the Liberal majority at the indigenous affairs committee blocked a motion to hear from the Privy Council Office witnesses on how they were handling money for the murdered and missing indigenous women inquiry. Last week, at the status of women committee, we learned that Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada had declined our request to participate in the status of women committee's study on indigenous women's experience in the justice and correction systems.

Could the government please reconcile these refusals in light of the Liberal government's commitment to ending violence against women, standing with indigenous women, and also operating in a transparent manner?

[Indigenous Affairs, December 4th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, partway through the 16 days of activism to end violence against women, I note with great sadness that indigenous women are seven times more likely to be murdered and three times more likely to be sexually assaulted compared to non-indigenous women.

The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, evaluating Canada's actions on violence against women found that the government is failing to act on “The continued high prevalence of gender-based violence against women...in particular against indigenous women and girls.”

Over two decades, more than 58 reports on violence against indigenous women have been compiled by governments, international human rights bodies, and indigenous women's organizations like the Native Women's Association of Canada.

Shockingly, researchers found that only a few of those recommendations have been implemented, and more than 700 recommendations to end violence against indigenous women remain unimplemented; 700 remain on the table, not yet acted on after all these years.

Nine months ago, I urged the Canadian government, along with my New Democrat colleagues, to demonstrate leadership by walking the talk, and dedicating the political and financial support, resources, and funding to meet Canada's long-standing international commitments, and its constitutional commitments to make this a safer country where indigenous women and girls live free of violence. It is far beyond time to put those words into action.

Following the interim report of the inquiry into murdered and missing indigenous women, just a few months ago, the inquiry commissioners blamed Liberal interference for the slow progress of the inquiry. Eight out of the 10 challenges that the commissioners listed blame the federal government for bureaucracy and lack of resources.

For example, there were start-up issues, delays, and obstacles opening offices and hiring staff. There was an average of four months to hire a new staff person, eight months' delay in opening offices, which often lacked proper equipment, Internet, and office equipment, telephone connections, and shared drive. There was just an astonishing lack of support.

The Privy Council Office is repeatedly implicated, by the inquiry's interim report, but also by the Native Women's Association of Canada and a joint letter from 50 indigenous leaders and family members. On multiple occasions in question period I have asked the Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs if funding was fully accessible for the commissioners, and if the government was doing everything it absolutely could to support the families of murdered and missing indigenous women.

The government has always said yes, and yet Maclean's magazine reported that out of the $5 million spent by the inquiry, $2 million was taken completely by Privy Council Office bureaucracy. Can this really be true? Are the Liberals really spending 40% of the inquiry's budget on Privy Council Office bureaucracy?