Sheila Malcolmson

[Families, Children and Social Development, November 21st, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, here is the difficulty. The government has announced that it is lifting 300,000 kids out of poverty but will not provide the numbers, so we cannot verify that number. It has increased the Canada child benefit. That is a nice thing, especially if it is paired with creating new child care spaces. Most western countries do this, but Canada, federally, still has not. The budget in 2016 and 2017 creates no new child care spaces.

Child care advocates, such as the Canadian Child Care Federation, say that the extra money in the Canada child benefit will help families pay the bills, but with no new child care spaces, there is nowhere to spend that money on child care. It does not make child care any cheaper.

Morna Ballantyne, of the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada, says, “All the evidence shows that cash payments to parents will not make child care services...more accessible and will not resolve the...crisis that is putting children, families and economic growth at risk”.

What will the government do to help families and working women now with affordable child care?

[Families, Children and Social Development, November 21st, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I stand again in the House to talk about the deep need for Canadian women and families to have access to affordable, universal child care in our country. Something most other OECD countries have, Canada still does not.

This is the argument. Families need universal, affordable, accessible, publicly-funded child care to get women into the workforce. Universal child care would create jobs and the fiscal surplus generated would mean no net cost to taxpayers. Child care workers need better wages to ensure their own economic security and also to encourage their retention in the field.

Again and again, we hear the cost to families of unaffordable child care. Women tend to earn less than their male counterparts because there is no pay equity legislation in Canada. The government has still not legislated it.

When there is a lack of access to affordable child care, it tends to be the woman who drops out of the workforce to look after kids. When she returns to the workforce, she tends to only have available to her part-time, precarious work. Women throughout the world, and in Canada as well, have an unfair share of unpaid labour.

Not having access to unemployment insurance, or pension contributions or benefits because they are working part-time, means that many women end up behind, financially, and the lack of affordable child care is at the root of it. My sister and her husband had to leave Toronto because their child care costs were more than their rent. This is not sustainable for young families and it is not a good investment.

Last month, the OECD was in Ottawa investigating Canada's commitment to its feminist agenda and its gender lens on policies and programs. The OECD had observed previously about Canada that affordability and quality in child care overall was still an issue “forcing many women to drop out of the labour market or reduce their working hours during childrearing years. This affects women’s earnings levels: full-time employed women in Canada earn on average 19% less than men.”

On Friday, I was at a launch of the State of the Child report, which is done every couple of years in Nanaimo. It was the greater Nanaimo early years partnership, and I really applaud its work. It hosted all government agencies at all levels of government. The report found that children in my riding of Nanaimo—Ladysmith were living in poverty. The children were between the ages of zero and five. This has increased to 24% of the population. It is a terrible number and reflects a lack of access to government services and employment support in our community.

There is good news on the horizon. The IMF said that the Liberals could afford to spend $8 billion a year on child care and the program would pay for itself. Why did the Liberals' 2016-17 budget not allocate money for new child care spaces? Increasing the Canada tax child benefit does not help if there are no places to spend that money.

[Petitions, November 20th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I stand in the House once again to present petitions from voters in Nanaimo and on Gabriola Island, calling on the government to accede to their recommendations, bundled into my Bill C-352, to finally bring solutions to abandoned vessels.

The petitioners call on Parliament to get taxpayers off the hook for the cleanup of oil spills from abandoned vessels by fixing vessel registration, by creating good green jobs, by investing in recycling, and a turn-in boat program, and making, first and foremost, the Canadian Coast Guard the lead agency to be the receiver of wrecks so communities no longer get the run-around when they call for help.

How sad that the Liberal majority on PROC has called for the bill to be deemed non-votable and not debated in the House. We will appeal.

[Fisheries and Oceans, November 20th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, despite years of advocacy by coastal communities, the Liberals' Bill C-64 does not legislate on the most pressing aspects of the abandoned vessel problem. Last week another boat sank in Ladysmith.

For too long federal failures have left coastal communities with nowhere to turn. That is why my bill includes their solutions and fills gaps in the government's new bill. However, in unprecedented interference, Liberal members are blocking debate on my abandoned vessel legislation.

Why is the Trudeau government stifling coastal voices?

[Indigenous Affairs, November 6th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the murdered and missing indigenous women's inquiry says that its slow progress is due to Liberal interference. In fact, it reports that eight out of 10 challenges are barriers put up by the Liberal government, like strangling bureaucracy and lack of resources. It is clear the Liberals misled families when they promised they were doing everything they could to help this inquiry succeed.

Will the Liberals support the families of missing and murdered indigenous women, and when will they stop blocking the inquiry's work?

[Indigenous Affairs, October 31st, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, as the current government lobbies the Senate to pass Bill S-3, indigenous women and the Feminist Alliance for International Action are again calling on the Liberals to accept a Senate amendment to end all sex discrimination. This amendment, similar to one proposed by my NDP colleague but voted down by the Liberals on National Indigenous Peoples Day of all days, would fully remove sex discrimination from the Indian Act. Why would the feminist Prime Minister, whose most important relationship is with indigenous peoples, not remove all sex discrimination from the Indian Act?

[Canadian Coast Guard, October 30th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, the Coast Guard's men and women on the water just two weekends ago acted quickly when a 100-foot, 90-year-old vessel, the Anapaya, started to sink in Ladysmith Harbour. This is a vessel that had been identified in 2014 by Transport Canada as a vessel of concern, but nothing was done. When the vessel sank, and it still sits on the bottom of Ladysmith Harbour, it was Coast Guard employees who boomed it and prevented an oil spill from getting worse.

I am hoping that the government will hear the public pressure from coastal communities and enact an abandoned vessel legislation regime that is full and reflects what coastal communities have been asking for for 15 years. The minister's announcement today was a very good first step, but it does not deal with pleasure craft or with the backlog and problems with vessel registration.

I am hoping for the government's assurance that it will hear coastal communities' full concerns on abandoned vessels.

[Canadian Coast Guard, October 30th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, last time we were debating this issue, it was June, the government had quietly announced the phase-out of the Coast Guard's only team of emergency rescue divers on the British Columbia coast.

The Liberal government's plan to disband this specialized search and rescue dive team came as a great shock to B.C. mariners who had already lived through this once before. In 2001, when the Liberals were previously in federal government, they had cancelled the dive team as a cost-saving measure, but two days later a man crashed his vehicle into the Fraser River and the Coast Guard was unable to rescue him from the waters. People died.

On the same day in June of this year, the government also announced the ending of funding for the stream to sea salmon program. This program had provided over a million students with hands-on learning experiences around B.C. salmon, the province's fisheries, ecology, and the role of history of salmon in British Columbia's culture and particularly in indigenous culture.

Here is an example of the kind of mail that everybody was getting in June regarding a deep concern about the cancellation of the salmonid program. This is from Nina Evans-Locke, from Nanaimo, where I was elected. She writes:

I cannot imagine why DFO decided to cut the very successful salmon education programs from our schools here in BC. It is beyond belief. So many children are affected, as are thousands of streamkeeper volunteers and other volunteers who come out in droves to support these programs, including me.

...

The Salmon in the Classroom program is an important educational project where Coho eggs from the local hatchery are placed in aquariums in schools.... Departure Bay Eco School, one of our important partners in our projects to restore Departure Creek, is involved in this program.

...

These cuts involve 0.02% of your overall budget. Thanks for rescinding these cuts for this next year and please do not go ahead and cut these programs the following year.

Just weeks later, we were really pleased that the federal government, under great pressure from the NDP and fisheries critic, the member for Port Moody—Coquitlam, announced a reversal of its decision to cut the B.C. salmon enhancement program and the salmon education program, and the restoration of funding for the search and rescue dive teams.

My question is, first of all, why were these cuts ever proposed? It was a deep mistake, a blunder. Second, public pressure worked. It was a real win for coastal communities.

We also had public pressure applied to other decisions of the federal government, the fish farm bill, the transition to close containment, and closure of the Comox Coast Guard base, which happened just 18 months ago under the Liberal government's watch. In that case, there was tremendous public push-back. That was not a win for coastal communities. The Liberal government went ahead, despite that opposition.

That is my question to the member across, why are you not listening to coastal communities, despite the fact we got a win with salmon and the Coast Guard dive team? When will you listen to coastal communities in relation to other Coast Guard closures?

[The Environment, October 24th, 2017]

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

Why did the government do nothing to prevent this vessel sinking, and will the government support my legislation to solve abandoned vessels once and for all?

[Child Care, October 23rd, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the concern, given the tremendous backlog and the evidence we have, is that we know how much this harms the economic well-being for women, and how ultimately this harms the economy.

The International Monetary Fund recommended an expenditure of $8 billion a year on child care, which would be good for the economy. Through increased workforce participation and taxation, it would pay for itself. However, the Library of Parliament has calculated that the current government at this point has only committed 8.8% of that funding, which is a 91.2% funding shortfall compared to what the IMF recommended that this country spend.

Budget 2017 does not allocate funding for any new child care spaces until 2018-19. However, as the member said, with two provinces, British Columbia and Alberta, being ready to go with construction of new child care spaces and supporting child care workers, we need a government that is willing to make the significant investment early on to create those new spaces, to get women to work, and to get child care workers the secured spending.