Sheila Malcolmson

[Canada's Oil and Gas Sector, November 28th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, in what imaginary world did any of those things happen under the Liberals' watch? During the election, they promised they would redo the Trans Mountain Kinder Morgan pipeline and did not. They added on this funny ministerial panel, which said to the government that there were six pieces of work undone, all of which were barriers to the project. The Liberals chose to do none of them. Then the courts told them they failed in all the things the member just said, things like indigenous consent, environmental assessment and protecting endangered orca. They failed all those things and the court said so. The bragging on the other side of the House does not make any sense.

Now we are doing a court ordered new review, where people have to make their submissions by fax machine. Who owns a fax machine? In what world is this part of the government's innovation agenda? It is crazy. There is still no climate change considered and there is still no cross-examination of evidence, so there is no basis for the expansion of the project that risks our coasts. The process is certainly not in place. Could the member explain himself?

[Petitions, November 28th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, because bulk commercial anchorages, basically free parking in the Salish Sea, are causing threats to sport fishing, fish habitats, tremendous light and noise impacts on waterfront property owners, and a risk of oil spills in Plumper Sound, with near misses of three bulk carriers, I have two petitions to table in the House.

In one petition, petitioners from Ladysmith, Chemainus, and Saltair call on Transport Canada to suspend the use of “outside of port anchorages” in the area targeted by the interim protocol and call on the Government of Canada to develop a comprehensive strategy to address the inefficiencies that are leading to the port of metro Vancouver being jammed. Bulk commodity exports have increased 40%, while anchorage use has increased 400%. We have a problem.

Also, the petitioners from Gabriola Island are asking that five new bulk anchorages not be established off the coastline of their island.

[Canada Post Corporation, November 27th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberals are blocking equal pay and safer workplaces at Canada Post.

A postal worker in my riding said, “Social assistance cheques were held back [by Canada Post]. We were instructed that we could not deliver these cheques even though they were in our Nanaimo facility.”

Workers want to deliver assistance cheques. They also want to be treated fairly, but Canada Post and the Liberals are painting posties as the enemy. Why are Liberals using the most vulnerable people to undermine workers' rights?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2018, No. 2, November 27th, 2018]

Madam Speaker, 42 years ago Prime Minister Trudeau promised to legislate pay equity for Canadian women's equal pay. It did not happen. Successive Liberal and Conservative governments delayed action.

Three years ago the NDP had the current Liberal government to change its agenda and include pay equity. We were delighted that the Liberals said yes. The next three years were a black hole. We did not know what was happening. Ostensibly there were consultations with the NGOs. Then pay equity legislation was bundled into this 800-page omnibus bill. It has been rushed through at every stage. Even still, the NGOs that had been working on this and the human rights lawyers who had been litigating this issue in court for three decades proposed very specific amendments, which I was honoured, along with the member for New Westminster—Burnaby, to advance at the finance committee a week ago.

I spent from 9 a.m. until noon moving amendments that had been recommended to pay equity legislation by the Teamsters, by CUPE, by Equal Pay Coalition Ontario, by the Canadian Labour Congress and the Liberals voted every amendment down. They said that they knew best, much better than the labour activists and the human rights lawyers who had been litigating this.

Why did the government refuse every amendment on pay equity and why is it ramming this budget bill through now with no changes?

[Petitions, November 26th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, vision loss is set to double over the next 20 years, and petitioners from Nanaimo and Ladysmith draw the House's attention to the fact that vision loss hits the most vulnerable, particularly youth, seniors and indigenous people. They urge that with better early detection and better access to health care services, preventable vision loss could be addressed by this Parliament. They call for recognition that vision care is a growing health care problem, and urge a reduction of vision impairment by acting proactively on eye health.

[Accessible Canada Act, November 22nd, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I want to ensure that members of the House have a full appreciation for what is at stake and how much Canadians were counting on the Liberal government to get this accessibility bill right. It is long overdue. It is true that the Conservatives should have done it in the 10 years they were in power, but Bill C-81 is so far from what our constituents and fellow Canadians need.

Terry Wiens, a man in my riding of Nanaimo—Ladysmith, was a victim of polio. He wrote to me, saying, “Remember that Paul Martin Sr. made a promise to polio victims in 1955 that they would never have to pay for the cost of health care that resulted from the federal government's failure for two years to introduce the polio vaccine.” That was a solemn commitment. He says, “Now that polio has been so successfully eradicated, the federal government has forgotten that polio should be part of health care.” This man who has worked all of his life. Now he finds that from the effects of polio, he has increasing disabilities. He has not been able to get the support he needs to get a specialized mattress and wheelchair. He pulled $10,000 out of his RRIF, his registered retirement income fund, to pay for these things.

He further described the cascade of impacts that happened from that. He said, “I didn't realize the ripple effects of that decision. It raised my annual income enough to eliminate me from the guaranteed income security, all $18 a month worth. I have no doubt that next year I'll qualify again, but in the meantime, we are penalized for our independence. To add insult to injury, losing that GIS also cost me my premium medical services subsidy, another $420 a year cost. My opportunity for subsidized assisted living, the GIS qualification is required for the payment and on it goes.”

Therefore, what in this legislation will fix things for Terry and the many other Canadians who were counting on the government to take their advice and get this bill right?

[Marine Transportation, November 20th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, this is what the BC Ferry & Marine Workers' Union is saying to me. Transport Canada just released the draft regulations on November 8. It held the national consultation meeting on November 14 and the Vancouver consultations took place yesterday. The closing comments are in February, but if they are not in by January, they will not be addressed and the regulations will not be brought back for any further national consultation prior to gazetting.

It sounds like it is drafting these new regulations on the fly. As a representative of coastal communities, I certainly have not been informed of it. Again, how does this square with the government's commitment to consultation and marine safety? It looks like a lowering of the bar.

[Marine Transportation, November 20th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, when I picked this issue up initially, I was talking with the transport minister about an issue of key passenger and marine safety in my riding, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, which I am honoured to represent. I asked if it was true that the transport minister would allow passenger vessels to sail with engineers five decks above critical machinery and steering equipment, an arrangement that we do not allow on boat cargo ships. I asked the minister whether this was what he meant by increasing marine safety and he mostly avoided the question.

When I posted this online, I got a huge response from people in the riding. They certainly were concerned about the issue. In fact, we had described a scenario as a possibility. If there were a loss of power incident, an engineer, as opposed to being in the engine room, in the machinery space, to help shut parts of the engine down or to turn other parts of the engine on, would have to travel a great distance, in this case six floors between the bridge and the engine room. An incident just like that happened a week after I had asked the question in the House, so it certainly got people's attention.

Since then, this is what some of the crews working with this arrangement, this great separation between machinery space and the bridge, have had to say.

This is a quote from Dan Kimmerly, who is the president of the Ships Officers' Component of the BC Ferry and Marine Workers' Union and marine engineer second class. He said, “Coastal passenger ferries regularly sail in congested waters very near land. These sort of passenger ships regularly go almost full speed a few hundred feet from the rocks, with pleasure vessel traffic making the task even more difficult. Having personnel in the machinery spaces to immediately take local control of machinery and emergency steering is essential. Interpreting the control room as being part of the machinery space, while being five decks above, is putting the safety of unsuspecting passengers and pleasure boaters at an unnecessary risk.”

If that were not enough, in the draft marine personnel regulations, which are now under consideration, the transport minister is proposing that passenger vessels under 2,000 kilowatts can operate without any certified engineers on board at all. The transport minister now proposes replacing marine engineers, who have years of specialized education and experience, with small vessel machinery operators, who have a three-day course and a month's sea time. This means the minister is allowing these passenger vessels to sail our waters without anyone trained or certified to make safety critical repairs.

The passenger vessels that are affected by this proposed regulatory change are not small vessels. For example, the MV Quinsam, the ferry that takes me and my family, neighbours and constituents back and forth to Gabriola Island where I live, is 89 metres, just under 300 feet in length, weighs 1,400 tonnes, has four engines, carries large volumes of commercial cargo, including dangerous goods, and carries up to 400 passengers and crew at a time.

How could that not be interpreted as a watering down of marine regulations and a threat to marine safety?

[Child Care, November 20th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, today, over a hundred advocates are here calling for universal affordable child care. Costs here are among the highest in the world. Some families pay more for child care than they do for rent, and our system barely serves one in four kids. Canada is investing a fraction of what is needed to solve the child care crisis.

After voting down every progressive fix to pay equity in committee this morning, when will the government take some real action on gender equality and invest in affordable universal child care?

[Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, November 19th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, replacing the lottery with a cap that is all a first-come, first-served system is not remedying the problem.

As members of Parliament, people come to us when the system is not working for them. We try to help guide them. Here is an example of what a constituent told me by email last month: “You are the first person who answered us about my immigration issue in the past ten years. We have hired a lawyer for 3 times to request information. We tried any way we can to make contact with the immigration office, but nothing has happened so far.”

All we did was use the back-door number that members of Parliament have to ask Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada to check the status of her permanent residency application. It was not a big effort.

Again, and we just cannot state this enough, if we could restore our front-line public services and allow people to get clear answers on why their applications are being held up, it would not leave them waiting interminably. It is heartbreaking for these families. Simply changing the style of the program has not made the change we need.