Sheila Malcolmson

[Business of Supply, June 8th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, it is not too late for Canada to take this step. The negotiations start again in another couple of weeks. Canada would be lauded the world over. We were reminded yesterday that a great number of Canadian NGOs, in the absence of the Canadian government, have been participating in the negotiations. The statement by the International Committee of the Red Cross supports Canada being involved. Mining Watch, Project Ploughshares, and a lot of experts in Canada have been fighting this fight for a long time. Were Canada to step back into it and take full responsibility, it would be well supported and lauded on both sides of the House.

[Business of Supply, June 8th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, with all the talent in the House, including my friend, who I know has been involved in United Nations work for a lifetime, I know the government can walk and chew gum at the same time. These are both important, but they do not replace each other, and that is why the United Nations is taking both tracks. Canada's presence at one table but not the other is inconsistent with positions of this Parliament and with resolutions passed by the Liberal Party itself.

In relation to the argument that there is no point in Canada joining in negotiations without the participation of all nuclear states, Canada itself is not a state that has nuclear weapons, but that has not prevented it from being involved in other processes. All international negotiations worth their salt are difficult and have to bring members in. The Ottawa treaty on land mines took political will. The creation of the International Criminal Court had people outside and inside the process. Nevertheless, it prevailed. Work on the Kimberley Process took political will, and not all states participated in those negotiations, but we got results. Canada was proud to be a participant in all those processes. Canada, in every case, adopted an ambitious approach and took the lead on the international stage.

The process my colleague describes is one element, but it is not a nuclear weapons ban. That is the negotiation happening right now, and Canada, to our embarrassment, is outside that process.

[Business of Supply, June 8th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to stand to speak to Canada's role in peace and security and restoring our reputation on the world stage. I thank my New Democrat colleagues who initiated this debate and everyone who is participating in it today.

Where we must start is that human rights are not optional. If the government wants to show that Canada is a leader in human rights, then it needs to ensure that we are indeed walking the talk.

Canada was once a leader on nuclear disarmament issues. I honour the shoulders we stand on. When I was a young woman in Toronto, I was especially inspired by the work of Dr. Rosalie Bertell and Ursula Franklin, women with amazing minds who worked very hard to push Canada to take the important action we needed to on the world stage. However, the international community is now negotiating a nuclear weapons ban convention, and Canada is boycotting the process. It is a shameful position. With this, Canada has effectively removed itself from nuclear disarmament diplomacy.

We do not understand how Canada can “be back”, in the words of the Prime Minister, on the international scene when we are turning our backs on the most important international negotiations in years. Arguably, with the election of U.S. President Donald Trump, who has pledged to increase the nuclear arsenal in the U.S., and the troubling actions taken by North Korea, the threat of nuclear war is so present on the international stage right now that it is even more important that the international community work together at this time.

The world is watching Canada. This motion today gives the government an opportunity to reaffirm Parliament's support for nuclear disarmament. We certainly hope cabinet will follow, in line with the motion, to re-support Parliament in that initiative.

On the waterfront of Nanaimo, one of the communities I represent, there is an annual honouring of the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing on August 6. Members of the Women's International League for Peace & Freedom, a long-standing activist organization across the country, with particularly strong roots in my riding of Nanaimo—Ladysmith, were talking about the UN vote that was coming up at that time on nuclear disarmament. They shared my optimism that given the campaign commitments the Liberal Party had made on peace, security, and restoring Canada's international reputation on the world stage, our Prime Minister was going to direct Canada to vote in favour of negotiations to end the nuclear weapons trade. We were all stunned when Canada voted against negotiations for a global treaty banning nuclear weapons. It was seriously a shock to all of us.

These negotiations have been called for by former UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon. Sixty-eight countries voted in favour of the motion, so Canada was completely outside the international consensus. The vote was called the most significant contribution to nuclear disarmament in two decades by one of the UN member countries, and Canada was not on board.

That vote by the Canadian Liberal government also flew in the face of a 2010 resolution of this House encouraging the Canadian government to join those negotiations. I will talk more about that in a few minutes. I want to say what a sad point it was that government did not follow through. Now that is has the power, why would it not carry through with that commitment? It would have made us all proud on the international stage.

We want to move forward in a more positive way, and there is even more United Nations consensus that Canada could move on theoretically.

Canada's responsibility in this area is particularly strong. At a session that two of my New Democrat colleagues hosted yesterday on the Hill, I was reminded of Canada's special responsibility with respect to nuclear weapons. The bombs that fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were made from uranium that was mined in Great Bear Lake in the Northwest Territories. It was refined in Port Hope. As well, Canada has sold CANDU reactors around the world, which have a unique design capability that makes them particularly susceptible to nuclear weapons uses. They are of course not designed for that. It is a design flaw and an unintended consequence. This is how Pakistan and India got the bomb. It was by using Canadian power-producing technology.

Our responsibility is deep. We are reminded by the CCNR, the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, in the summary of a book written in the eighties, that:

Through its dealings with other countries, Canada has played a major role in fostering the proliferation of nuclear weapons [around] the world. This brief history concerns itself with Canada's involvement as a supplier of nuclear reactors and uranium, leading to both “vertical proliferation”—the ever-accelerating competition for bigger, better, faster and smarter bombs among existing nuclear powers—and “horizontal proliferation”: a more insidious process whereby dozens of national and subnational groups are slowly but surely acquiring a nuclear weapons capability.

CCNR has been raising the alarm on this for decades, and the danger is greater for us right now.

It is powerful to be reminded of the human toll when a nuclear bomb falls on a community. Yesterday we heard the testimony of Setsuko Thurlow, a Canadian citizen but a Japanese schoolgirl, age 13, when the bomb fell at Hiroshima. She said that there were mostly children, women, and elderly people who were vaporized, incinerated, contaminated, and crushed in the wake of the bomb at Hiroshima, again, that Canada was complicit in.

She described her four-year-old nephew transformed into blackened, melted flesh. She said the family was relieved when he died. It is an appalling image she has carried her whole life. She said they made a vow to their loved ones at that time that his death would not be in vain, that all the deaths in her community would not be in vain.

Now, as a Canadian citizen, she says she is deeply disturbed by the absence of the Canadian government at the negotiations. She said she felt betrayed by Japan, of course, but also by her adopted country of Canada.

We have a responsibility to honour Canada's complicity in this and also the opportunity we have to enter the negotiations and make ourselves proud again on the international stage.

As New Democrats, we have been asking the new Canadian government to participate fully in the nuclear weapons ban multiple times since September. It has consistently hidden behind the excuse that it is working on the fissile material cut-off treaty, which is important and related but is not a nuclear weapons ban. That is what we are holding out for, and this is what we have the opportunity for on the world stage right now.

We had a unanimous vote of the House in 2010 committing Parliament to take this action. We had a very powerful vote by the Liberal Party at its last convention just a short time ago. It campaigned on this issue also.

The Liberal government has made multiple promises that are not being upheld. At a time when Canada is proclaiming its commitment to peace and security, its commitment to the United Nations, we see, on this side of the House, that Canada is not honouring its commitments to the United Nations. It is not too late, though. I urge the Liberal side to vote in favour of this motion to move forward in good faith, to have the country move forward, and for us to do the right thing collectively.

Please let us make Canada proud on the world stage again.

[Petitions, June 7th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I stand once again in the House to call for a legislated solution to the long-standing economic and environmental problem of abandoned vessels. I am urging the federal government, along with petitioners in my riding, to end the runaround and make the Coast Guard responsible for the first action on abandoned vessels, fixing vessel registration to get the costs off taxpayers, acting before vessels sink and spill oil by piloting an abandoned vessel turn-in program, and creating good green jobs by supporting local marine salvage and recycling.

I am grateful to local government leaders for supporting my legislation, Bill C-352, and I stand with them in recognizing that the $1 million per year announced last week by the government is not enough to deal with the thousands of abandoned vessels that litter Canada's three coasts.

[Status of Women, June 7th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, because almost half of Canadian companies have no women on their boards, zero, Canadian women expected our self-proclaimed feminist Prime Minister to turn words into action. However, Liberals are using the failed, discredited comply and explain model of the Conservative Party in Bill C-25. The government should adopt my legislation, Bill C-220, to get gender balance.

Quebec legislated quotas, and in five years reached parity on crown boards. The same success came with legislation in France, Norway, Finland, Iceland, and Sweden.

Without quotas, Canadian women will wait 72 years for equity. As Caroline Codsi from La Gouvernance au Féminin said, “When we legislate, we find women. When we do not legislate, we find excuses.”

Let us no more excuses. It is time for the government to act on women's equality.

[Petitions, June 2nd, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, because bees are in peril, because they are facing habitat loss and pesticide deaths, because they are vital pollinators and contribute over $2 billion a year to Canada's agricultural economy, I present to Parliament petitions signed by members of the Nanaimo Beekeepers Club. They gathered these signatures in support of federal action to protect bees on the Day of the Honey Bee.

[Petitions, June 2nd, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, on behalf of residents of Nanaimo—Ladysmith, I rise to present two petitions today.

To end the runaround on abandoned vessels, to fix vessel registration and get the costs off taxpayers, to build a coast-wide strategy in co-operation with local governments, to act before vessels spill oil and contaminate our coasts, and to create good, green jobs, I present this petition. I am grateful local government leaders are supporting my Bill C-352 and have been pushing for a decade and a half for solutions to the problem of abandoned vessels.

We all recognize that the $1 million a year announced this week by the government is deeply inadequate, just a drop in the bucket. We are going to continue to push hard together for a long-term solution to abandoned vessels.

[Indigenous Affairs, June 2nd, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the member cites the funding of domestic violence shelters on reserve, but it only funded one building a year for the next five years, with nothing offered for Inuit women in the north.

The Native Women's Association of Canada said, “it's not anywhere close to being enough. This is nothing less than a crisis. There are basic services that are needed immediately. [...] We don't need more pilot projects on this.”

How can the federal government continue to go bit by bit? How much longer do women have to wait? Instead of keeping up with the traditions that we had with the Conservatives for 10 years offering too little, why is the government not stepping up to end violence against indigenous women right now?

[Indigenous Affairs, June 2nd, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, this week we are thinking of the families of murdered and missing indigenous women as the inquiry finally begins its first week of hearing testimony. I hope it is going as well for them as possible now that they are finally being heard. Getting at the cause of thousands of murdered and missing indigenous women is crucial to our country, but almost a year after the inquiry's launch, families are still feeling left out and now concern and frustration is growing, as articulated by the families.

We have this one week of hearings, but then things will be suspended until the fall. It is time for the government to own up to its mistakes and to remedy them. The commissioners and the government cannot continue on the path they have taken so far. Is appropriate funding fully available to the commissioners and is the government doing everything it can to support the families of murdered and missing indigenous women?

Many times we have heard government members on the other side say, and I quite agree with them, that they are committed to concurrent implementation, that we do not need to wait until the end of the inquiry to take action on the things we already know as a country we need to do to make women safe and bring justice to indigenous families.

Here is one set of directions New Democrats would have hoped the government would have taken already.

Ten years ago, Cindy Blackstock filed a human rights complaint about discrimination against first nations children. Since then, the government has not taken action, despite a court order and three non-compliance orders. The federal government is guilty of racially discriminating against 163,000 first nations children, says the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. An investment of $155 million is all that the government needed to end this discrimination. It was not found in last month's budget and last week's Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ruling said that two teenage suicides in the Wapekeka First Nation reserve might be blamed on the federal failure to implement Jordan's principle and comply with the now four Canadian Human Rights Tribunal orders.

Following the budget tabled for 2017, Cindy Blackstock said:

There’s nothing new in the budget for First Nations children and their families, in child welfare, or their implementation of the Jordan’s Principle...even though they’ve been found out of compliance with legal orders to stop that inequality.

It’s a moral issue: is Canada so broke that the finance minister and the Prime Minister have made a deliberate choice to discriminate against little kids?

That was said by Cindy Blackstock with the First Nations Child & Family Caring Society.

A second large area of action that I would have thought the government would have moved forward on already is domestic violence shelter funding for indigenous women. Only five additional shelters on reserve have been funded. That has been loudly identified as inadequate and Inuit leaders, the Pauktuutit Inuit women's association in particular, says 70% of Inuit communities have no access to any violence against women shelters and there was nothing in the budget for them at all.

When will the government finally act to make indigenous women safer and rebuild the trust that this country needs so much?

[Cannabis Act, June 1st, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, a major employer in the riding that I represent in Nanaimo is a company called Tilray. It is one of 27 licensed under the MMPR federal framework that the Conservatives put in place. It hires 120 professionals: horticulturalists, Ph.D.s, and people who left the silviculture industry and now cultivate marijuana. It is among the top five private-sector employers in my region. Its $26-million capital investment, in year one, turned into a $48-million economic output in Nanaimo. It has created 215 direct jobs. This was zoned by the municipality.

I am curious as to whether the member has had any experience with similar municipally zoned operations that seem to work within the legal framework and benefit the local economy.