Sheila Malcolmson

[Status of Women, May 15th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, without pay equity, women are robbed of an estimated 23% of their earnings. The government is an accomplice to that robbery.

Thirteen years have passed since the 2004 Pay Equity Task Force report. It was a comprehensive blueprint for pay equity. It was a three-year study of a proactive pay equity regime, consisting of 596 pages and 113 recommendations. Again, that was in 2004 when the Liberal government was previously in power.

If those recommendations had been implemented in 2004, women would have had $640 billion more in their pockets, money they are now owed. The wage gap has cost Canadian women $640 billion in lost wages since 2004. Imagine for a moment the improved quality of life women would have had if they had not had to wait. Imagine the boost to the economy if that money had been in their bank accounts or spent in our communities that whole time.

As Barb Byers, secretary-treasurer of the Canadian Labour Congress, who very recently retired, and I thank Barb, testified at committee hearings held a year ago:

Let us also be mindful that women have been waiting for longer than 12 years. We've been waiting for decades and decades, and while we wait, the debt owed to those who are caught in the wage gap continues to mount. These are women with children to raise, women who deserve a dignified retirement, and many are women who face multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination both in the workplace and in the community.

In June 2016, almost a year ago, the Special Committee on Pay Equity, created by a New Democrat motion, tabled a report called “It's Time to Act”, but the government decided not to act. It is not a hard fix.

There is no reason for the delay. Women are still being denied pay equity. We have models and best practices within our country. There has been proactive pay equity legislation for public sectors for several decades: Ontario since 1987 and Quebec since 1996. Those regimes also include the private sector. Ontario and Quebec found that the cost of these provincial proactive pay equity laws was not significant and not as costly as employers had initially feared when the regimes were introduced. Plus it is a human right and it is the right thing to do.

This year, the Liberals sent a delegation to the 61st session of the Commission on the Status of Women. Interestingly, its focus was #stoptherobbery and #payequity was everywhere. The United Nations asked all countries to #stoptherobbery, but justice has not happened in Canada. We have just learned through the media that a senior ministerial staffer to the former employment minister lost classified documents going to cabinet that explained why pay equity legislation was still being hung up.

I want to know when the government will table those lost documents so we can learn what possible excuse the government has for failing to deny women legal pay equity.

[Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, May 15th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, Nanaimo, the city I am honoured to represent, had 13 fatalities in the first three months of this year and 28 fatalities last year. We are a smaller city but people are dying in this emergency at the same rate as people in Vancouver. While the government delayed action for a year and a half and then the Senate delayed it for another three months, inexcusably, the human impact has been colossal.

Could the member for Vancouver Kingsway tell me who is picking up the pieces in the meantime? Who are the front-line people who are filling the gap around the lack of inaction from the federal government?

[Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, May 15th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, in my riding of Nanaimo—Ladysmith, in Nanaimo itself, we have lost 13 people to fentanyl overdoses in the first three months of this year. We lost 28 people last year. We have people dying from this crisis at the same rate as Vancouver, although our population is much smaller. I am interested in the member's comments about this input from our chief medical officer for Central Vancouver Island, Paul Hasselback. He said:

Legislating unproven care such as required through the offering of an alternate pharmaceutical therapy on every visit may be a barrier to the unfettered use of the site and compromise the establishment of a trusting and therapeutic relationship that will increase the likelihood of sustained recovery treatment. As the Supreme Court indicated, these are health services and should be treated with the same oversight as other health services and not legislated in relation to how health care is provided.

In light of that statement from someone who is on the front line of this crisis in my region, does the member agree with the Senate's recommendation that such therapies be part of the bill?

[Petitions, May 15th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to present a petition calling for federal leadership to clean up the coast and take action on abandoned vessels. This would have helped this weekend when volunteers in Cadboro Bay, on Vancouver Island, brought together dozens of volunteers to remove abandoned vessels but met a shortfall in funding.

I look forward to Parliament's support for my bill, Bill C-219, to ask the Coast Guard to take the lead on the removal of abandoned vessels and to be the singular responsible agency. I look forward to Parliament's support toward ending the long-standing economic and ecological harm done by abandoned vessels and the oil spill risks they pose.

[Judicial Accountability through Sexual Assault Law Training Act, May 15th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, in a moment, I am going to propose a unanimous consent motion. It is in relation to Bill C-337, a private member's bill to provide for sexual assault training for judges to prevent any more of the terrible headlines we have seen in this country on how victims of sexual assault might be treated in the courts.

The amendments that have been proposed by the status of women committee include training that is informed by the work of grassroots organizations that protect, serve, and navigate these victims of sexual violence through the court system.

Mr. Speaker, I believe that if you seek it, you will find unanimous for the following motion:

That, notwithstanding any standing order or usual practices of the House,C-337, an act to amend the Judges Act and the Criminal Code (sexual assault), be deemed concurred in at the report stage and deemed read a third time and passed.

[Child Care, May 15th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday Canadians celebrated Mother's Day and all the contributions mothers make to their families and to Canada, but what we cannot celebrate is the lack of affordable child care for Canadian families.

Fees are more than $1,200 a month in Toronto, closer to $1,400 in Vancouver. Affordable child care in Canada would be good for families, for women rejoining the workforce, and for the economy.

Is the government ready to do what is right for mothers and families and bring in national affordable child care?

[Community Organizations, May 15th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, over these past few weeks I have met with Nanaimo—Ladysmith groups, such as Haven Society, the Nanaimo Family Life Association, and community centres for indigenous peoples. They have one worry in common: a shortage of reliable, stable funding to keep the lights on.

These groups make sure women fleeing domestic violence have a safe place to go, that food is delivered to seniors, and that indigenous youth have a safe cultural space. Community groups need operational funding, not short-term grants that are too complex to apply for and that organizations might not get.

One community leader said that the Liberals are saving money off the backs of the vulnerable. I agree, and it needs to change. Let us honour and fund the operations of our front-line community organizations to support their vital work.

[Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, May 15th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, shameful would characterize 10 years of Conservative inaction, followed by a year and a half of Liberal foot-dragging, followed by three months of Senate stalling, studying the exact same questions that were debated and rejected at committee, while people continue to die at rates way beyond other countries. In my community of Nanaimo, 13 people died just in the first three months of this year alone, and 28 people died last year. We are losing people at the same rate as Vancouver.

The west coast has been hit very hard by the opioid crisis for all kinds of reasons, such as over-prescription, access to west coast shipping, untreated pain, improper way of supporting people with PTSD. The causes are myriad, but the solutions have fallen completely to the front line: ambulance, paramedics, firefighters, social workers, NGOs that train people in naloxone. If the House cannot get it together and actually remove the barriers to the solutions that have been identified, that is shameful.

Specifically, the member is talking about the community consent amendment that the Senate has brought, an idea that was rejected at committee. Specifically the legislation already requires the Minister of Health to consider expressions of community support when they consider licensing a new site. Why on earth would the member continue to propose and support the Senate amendment, which just gets in the way of the approval of treatment facilities for addicted people?

[Public Service Labour Relations Act, May 12th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I represent Nanaimo—Ladysmith, a region that is served entirely by RCMP members, who are doing fantastic front-line work. I would like to know whether the member agrees with this encapsulation of the problem as identified by one of the members in my region.

This is a letter to me from Clay Wurzinger, who has been a member of the RCMP since 2005. He says:

We as a membership are now approaching 2 years without contract, we have lost all representation within our organization and we are arguably further from a union now than we were 6 months previous.

He goes on to say:

If trends are to continue and members are not provided a comparable payment package to our municipal counterparts you will very likely see manpower issues becoming even more prevalent in your district as recruiting and training will not be able to keep pace with attrition, all the while we will continue to lose our best and brightest and the futures they had to dedicate to tax paying canadian citizens.

Is that a problem the member is seeing echoed in his own region, and does he think this bill, finally allowing RCMP members the right to unionize, will ameliorate those problems?

[Petitions, May 12th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present petitions from people all over the country concerned about the establishment of five new commercial anchorages for vessels up to 300 metres long in the Salish Sea, on the forested and wild coastline of Gabriola Island. The petitioners note the potential for the scour of chains, impacts from the anchorage, risks of oil spills on spawning beds in the region, on commercial and sport fisheries, and on tourism. The anchorages are initially intended to support thermal coal exports from Wyoming to China, which is the icing on the cake as to why this is such a terrible proposal for our coastline.

The petitioners urge the Minister of Transport to reject the application for five new commercial anchorages off Gabriola Island.