Sheila Malcolmson

[Status of Women, May 10th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, the problem is that the good words of the government are not being matched with action. The federal government spends 1.6% of the actual cost to women, which is $12 billion in economic impact every year, to actually end violence against women. It is just $189 million.

We have heard again and again that funding five additional shelters on reserve over the next five years, which is one new shelter every year for the next five years, is completely inadequate for indigenous communities. Pauktuutit, which is an Inuit women's group in Canada, estimates that there are only 15 shelters across 53 communities. The gap is tremendous.

When will the government act to actually make women safe?

[Status of Women, May 10th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, rates of violence against women have remained largely unchanged for the past two decades. There are some sad facts that back this up.

One million women report having experienced sexual or domestic violence in the past five years. Indigenous women are more than three times more likely to experience sexual assault than non-indigenous women. Women living with disabilities experience violence two to three times more often than women living without disabilities. Domestic violence costs our economy more than $12 billion a year. More than 500 women and children are turned away from shelters on any given day.

There is not enough room at the inn, and funding is not adequate for the work that is done by the front-line organizations. Provincial and federal governments have conceded it is going to be front-line organizations that deliver safety and shelter to women experiencing violence in their home, but they do not have the funding they need to carry out the work. We have heard this again and again at the status of women committee. The lack of access to long-term, predictable operational funding is one of the biggest problems for these brave organizations that are doing this key work in our communities. We heard also at committee again and again that inadequate funding to provide enough shelter space can actually prevent women from leaving their abuser.

A witness at status of women committee, Mélanie Sarroino, said:

The woman had been waiting for months and it took all her courage just to pick up the phone and call.... I know very well that when she calls the centre, she'll get a message on the answering machine saying that they will call her back, but presently they have a six-month waiting list. You can guarantee that woman will never call back.... That's the first impact.

Since the Liberals were elected, despite good, strong words about their commitment that no women and children will be turned away from a shelter, that they are going to work to end violence against women, nothing has changed on the ground. The budget that was announced in March provided $100 million over the next five years on spending within government and for the RCMP, rather than a plan to fund direct services to women.

I am concerned about the government's spending priorities. Budget 2017 promised $80 million over the next five years for space exploration. There were no new dollars for operators of violence against women shelters. We need to see that spending get to the organizations that will deliver the services directly. We need to recognize that as opposed to $20 million a year which is what the federal government has offered for a strategy to end violence against women, the non-governmental organization movement thought that $500 million a year for a national strategy to end violence against women is what would be needed every year from now into the future until the strategy is established.

This brings me to my question for the government. If gender equality really matters, why were women shortchanged again in the budget?

[Child Care, May 3rd, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the member opposite articulates a good vision. The intentions of the government are good, but as with so many things, we are not seeing the action associated with them.

Increasing the child benefit does not help parents unless more child care spaces are created in which to spend that money. This is our big disappointment. No action has been taken to tackle the out-of-control child care costs. No action has been taken to create new child care spaces. The budgets of this year and last year had zero money allocated to create new child care spaces.

The 2017 budget of last month also fell far short of the international standard of 1% of GDP spent on child care. Oxfam Canada and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives are just two of the groups that called the alarm on this.

As Morna Ballantyne from the Child Care—

[Child Care, May 3rd, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, there should be no question about what we need to do to advance child care in Canada.

We need a universal child care system that is national, so all families have equal access; affordable; and with quality care. It is the smart and responsible thing to do. The cost of child care in large cities rose almost 10% in the last two years, sometimes as high as $1,700. My sister paid more for child care than for rent.

Canadian families need action now. There is no doubt child care is essential to getting women into the workforce. Dr. Pierre Fortin, professor of economics at the Université du Québec in Montreal, told the status of women committee last month the Quebec child care system increased the number of women in the workforce by 70,000 in 2008.

In my riding, women's groups, student unions, and community child care centres all agree, accessible and affordable child care is absolutely necessary, so that women can go to work, attend school, and live in safety. As Supreme Court Justice Rosalie Abella said, “Child care is the ramp that provides equal access to the workforce for mothers.”

If that were not reason enough, universal child care is good for the economy. Professor Fortin studied the Quebec child care model, and concluded there is no net cost to taxpayers. In fact, he calculated that in 2008, the provincial and federal governments got a surplus of $900 million from the universal child care program in Quebec. The economic benefits of universal child care could also be felt in other provinces.

Economist Robert Fairholm predicts that the $10-a-day child care plan proposed by the B.C. NDP in this current election would create 69,000 jobs, and will make enough revenue for the government to build and operate the child care system.

Investing in child care will also create good jobs for those who work in the child care sector. Last week, I heard from day care operators in my riding that they cannot pay the early child care educators what they need to make a good wage. That is unjust to the women educating our children, and means they often have to leave the field, which is disruptive to children in their care.

Parents cannot afford to pay child care fees that are any higher, so the government must act to invest in a system with fair wages for early childhood educators.

If the federal government is unsure about what action on child care should look like, the Liberals can look to models that already exist in Canada. In Quebec, the universal system of low fee child care is a real success, providing quality care for children, and helping women get back to work.

My province of B.C. used to have a universal provincial child care system. It was cancelled by the B.C. Liberals when they first took office in 2001. The B.C. NDP has pledged of $10-a-day child care which would have real economic benefits.

This week, the Alberta NDP government launched its $25-a-day child care, which parents and working mothers say is just what they need to balance child care costs and work.

Access to affordable child care is what is needed to lift people out of poverty, and to make sure that women can get to work. It is time for the government to take leadership on child care. Why is the government not keeping its child care promise to Canadian children, women, and families?

[Petitions, May 3rd, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to bring the voice of coastal communities, Nanaimo, Ladysmith, and Nanoose Bay, calling again on the government to act on the long-standing problem of abandoned vessels.

The petitioners urge this Parliament to end the runaround to make the Coast Guard responsible for directing the removal of abandoned vessels, to fix vessel registration, to build a coast-wide strategy in co-operation with local communities, to act before vessels become an oil spill risk, and to create good, green jobs by working with local marine salvage companies.

This is based on decades of resolutions from the Union of BC Municipalities, and, based on Sunday's announcement, is consistent with the platform of the British Columbia New Democratic Party which is ready to work in co-operation with this Parliament if this issue is addressed.

[Privilege, May 2nd, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I share the optimism of the member opposite about PROC being able to do its work. While I have the floor, I will remind the member that while in opposition he said:

The government, by once again relying on a time allocation motion to get its agenda passed, speaks of incompetence. It speaks of a genuine lack of respect for parliamentary procedure and ultimately for Canadians.

I would urge the member and his government to cease using time allocation to stifle debate in the House.

[Privilege, May 2nd, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I want to begin this debate by reading from one of our national newspapers some words of Chantal Hébert:

[The Prime Minister] does not much like the House of Commons and the feeling is mutual....[The Prime Minister] rarely engages with the opposition in a meaningful way. For the most part he speaks past his critics’ arguments. The attentive hearing he affords those who challenge him in town halls does not extend to opposition parliamentarians. When not on his feet, [the Prime Minister] can be the picture of adolescent boredom....All of which brings one to the wide-ranging House reforms the Liberals have recently brought forward under the guise of what they call a discussion paper.

For the four opposition parties the proposals add up to a heavy-handed bid to erode their already limited capacity to hold a majority government to account.

This resonated with me and it resonated with my very Liberal father, who was embarrassed to see a journalist he admired speaking in such a way of the party he used to support.

The reason we are in this debate today is that on March 22, two members of Parliament were blocked from accessing the House of Commons by the Prime Minister's motorcade. That is quite an emblem, the privilege of being in the Prime Minister's limousine blocking those of use who come to work using the parliamentary public transit. These members of Parliament were unable to fulfill their principal role as parliamentarians, which was to come to the House to represent their constituents in a vote of this Parliament.

When the member for Milton raised this question of privilege in the House, the government made the decision to end debate, to shut it down, and the Speaker of the House ruled this decision to be “unprecedented”. The Speaker of the House ruled that no other government, Liberal or Conservative, had gone so far as to end debate in this fashion on a reasonable question of privilege.

The actions of the government members on March 22 to me speak volumes about their level of disrespect for members of Parliament and for the work we do in Parliament. By shutting down debate in the way they did, the government acted in blatant disregard for the way some members were treated, that they were prevented from getting here by the physical transportation logistics outside, and that then the government did not want to debate the fact that they were unable to do the very thing they were elected to do in the House.

The government's so-called modernization of the House has proved to be much more of a power consolidation process, drastically reducing the resources available to the opposition to hold it to account. I am very much reminded of the Prime Minister's invitation and welcome to new parliamentarians, and 215 of us in the House are new parliamentarians. My colleague, the member of Parliament for Kootenay—Columbia, reminded us of that invitation, that reminder from the Prime Minister to new parliamentarians that the opposition's job was to hold the government to account. For the government to now have tried, I believe, three times to remove those tools from the opposition is in stark contrast to the Prime Minister's sunny ways message to us just a year and a half ago.

I am afraid these government actions set precedent, whether they are refusing to allow debate on a question of privilege or whether the government is unilaterally pushing through changes to the Standing Orders, thereby changing the very process for establishing these rules. This long-standing convention of securing all-party approval before overhauling the Standing Orders of the House of Commons must be preserved. That all-party consensus is the tradition that includes Harper and Chrétien.

Consensus is something we have talked about quite a bit in the House on other matters, and it is confusing for all of us. The government says that consensus is not needed to change the House rules, although that has been the parliamentary tradition. The government says, though, that consensus was needed in order to change the voting system, although the promise the Liberals made to Canadians was to make every vote count, which in every case is interpreted as proportional representation, if we follow Fair Vote and some of the other NGOs that have been holding this light up for so long to bring democratic reform to Canadians.

There was nothing in the Liberal platform that said we needed a consensus of parliamentarians. This was a solemn promise, repeated more than 1,000 times, apparently, by the Prime Minister to change the voting system. However, once he got here and did not like the way the committee recommendation was going and the consensus of Canadians, he said we needed consensus in this House.

We do not need consensus to change the Standing Rules of the House, but we did need consensus to change the voting system.

Then consensus was, again, not needed when it came to approving the Kinder Morgan pipeline and its associated oil tanker traffic. The government's campaign platform was that the pipeline approval would not be forced through without revamping and redoing the regulatory process that had been so undermined by the Harper Conservative government. That was a solemn promise again, with hand on heart, that they would change the regulatory review process before pushing through the pipeline, but then, in the end, consensus was not needed, although we will find virtually every coastal community, especially around the hub of transportation, having opposed the pipeline; municipal government bodies like the Union of BC Municipalities, and a significant number of first nations opposed the pipeline approval, particularly in my area, coastal British Columbia, where our $8-billion maritime marine industry is threatened by the potential of an oil spill.

Again, no consensus was needed there, and that very much feels like a broken promise, I must say.

Women rely on public transit, such as buses, to get to and from work. If they do not have access to that public transit, their employment is put in jeopardy. Not only that, but tragedies like the Highway of Tears show that women's safety is put at risk when they do not have access to proper transportation. We are hearing about this right now at the status of women committee. Jane Stinson, who is a research associate with the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women, said:

If you think about it, it's particularly people who have lower incomes who use public transit, because they can't afford their own cars. Women have lower incomes, so it's not surprising....

[Public transportation] is a big issue, for some of the reasons that you mentioned....

...the absence of public transit in northern communities is a major problem. It puts women at risk, as you mentioned. The Highway of Tears is perhaps the most shocking example, but I'm sure it's not alone; it's just better known. In lots of cases in the north women have to hitchhike, as do others, to get around.

In urban locations, our research in Ottawa showed that it was very serious. It was accessibility, and that meant cost—the cost was too high for people—and also lack of schedules, and sometimes where the routes went.

Again, there's a responsibility with the federal government, even in local transportation. It's a question of transfers.

We also heard testimony from United Steelworkers. Meg Gingrich said:

We call on the government to invest in social infrastructure, such as affordable housing and public transportation, and...for procurement provisions and policies that meet gender and equity standards with clear enforcement mechanisms and that do not simply continue occupational segregation.

I am hearing this in my own riding, as well. Lack of public transit, again and again, is a barrier to women accepting jobs and being able to carry out their responsibilities.

Disappointments about implementation of such promises are epitomized by the government's current approach. Sunny ways and hope and hard work seem to be election promises that have now been abandoned. We have had time allocation imposed in the midst of very emotional, vital debates, such as physician-assisted dying. Three times, I was ready to give my speech, trying to convey constituent concerns. Three times, I was unable to deliver it. I never could stand to debate that vital issue for Canada because of time allocation imposed by the government. Motion No. 6 last year seemed designed to neuter the opposition, and so did the so-called discussion paper that we have been debating these last few weeks.

Again, it is so out of step with the promise of the present government. I ask the government, in every way, to return to being co-operative, collegial, recognizing it can use its majority, recognizing the opposition has a job to do as well.

[Canada Shipping Act, 2001, April 13th, 2017]

moved for leave to introduce 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).

Mr. Speaker, for decades now, all three of Canada's coasts have been experiencing repeated calls from coastal communities about the repeated occurrence of the issue of abandoned vessels. These risk oil spills . They risk jobs in our communities, jobs in aquaculture and the commercial fishery. A no man's land of jurisdiction, a hole in responsibility, has been identified.

My predecessor, Jean Crowder, brought similar legislation to the House. Last February, more than a year ago, I tabled Bill C-219. Today I rise to update that legislation in response to repeated calls from local government and the failure of the Liberal government to meet its six-month deadline imposed by this Parliament to table solutions before the House.

Together, let us end the runaround and name the Canadian Coast Guard as the agency responsible to act on abandoned vessels. Let us fix vessel registration and get the costs off taxpayers. Let us build a coast-wide strategy in co-operation with provinces and municipalities. Let us act before vessels sink and spill oil by piloting a vessel turn-in program. Let us create good green jobs by supporting local marine salvage companies and recycling.

This legislation is built on the good work of many local government associations, the Union of B.C. Municipalities in particular. Just this Sunday its local chapter for Vancouver Island and the Sunshine Coast unanimously endorsed this legislation in an emergency resolution. I am grateful for the support, I look forward to the debate, and I look forward to receiving the support of the House for this long-standing marine pollution problem.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Fisheries and Oceans, April 12th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, coastal communities have been calling for action to protect waterways from abandoned vessels for decades.

The six-month deadline on the government's latest promise is just two weeks away, and the Minister of Transport's answer yesterday was old news with no impact.

On Sunday, coastal communities passed an emergency resolution to support my abandoned vessel legislation. Will the Prime Minister support our bill to protect our treasured coast so that communities can stop carrying this burden?

[Committees of the House, April 11th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, let us come back to the report that we are debating, which is the consensus report of the New Democrats, the Conservatives, and the Liberal majority on the committee, saying that by June 2017, the government would have tabled legislation in the House to implement gender-based analysis, a commitment that the previous Liberal government made 20 years ago. It was 20 years ago.

I am going to go to the budget in my question. Does the member not concede that his Liberal government had 14 years in which to implement a fully funded, universal child care system and that it was only at a time that the government was falling into deep corruption scandals that the government was brought down? Yes, in the final weeks the government made a commitment to child care, but it was certainly not the issue on which the government fell. They had 14 years to do it, and we are afraid that they are not going to do it again now.

There was zero money last year and zero money this year for new child care spaces, whereas when New Democrats were campaigning to form government, we said we would spend $1.2 billion in this year to create new child care spaces. The member's arguments do not hold water.

If the member's government is so committed to gender equality, why will it not introduce this June, as the committee report recommended, legislation to enact gender-based analysis so that it is transparent and available to all, not just a cabinet secret? Will the government accede to the committee's unanimous recommendation that a gender equality commissioner be established?