Sheila Malcolmson

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

Mr. Speaker, I was so proud as a brand new MP last February to have the House endorse the New Democrat opposition day motion that this government implement the recommendations of the 2004 Liberal task force on pay equity, and then last year to have the all-party committee recommend to the House that pay equity be legislated. Those were very powerful moves and very powerful commitments by this place.

Three weeks ago we were at the United Nations for its annual convention on the status of women, and almost every issue about women's economic place in the world was connected to pay equity. Every country talked about it. The coffee sleeves in the United Nations cafeteria all had #payequity on them. I felt among friends. However, it is discouraging to come back to this place. Although the all-party committee recommended that June 2017 be the date that legislation be brought to the House, the government is now saying late 2018.

Labour organizations and women's justice organizations that have been pushing this for a long time say it would make a huge difference to federally regulated employees, and the government says it is going to wait until 2018. There is no rationale, no justification. We need to make this change now so that women can start to benefit from it. We cannot wait until the eve of the next federal election. If the government really believed its words on gender equality and on feminism, then it would act and legislate. It would drop the talking points and it would bring legislation to the House to make a real difference in the lives of women.

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

Mr. Speaker, the question is timely because this morning at committee we are studying Bill C-337, which is to require sexual assault training and gender sensitivity training for judges, following on the just terrible headlines. The few women who report sexual assault, the few women who get police to agree that their assault was real and that there should be criminal charges, then have these terrible headlines about judges who show disrespect, who do not understand the law. We are very afraid that this is going to have an inhibiting effect on women's willingness to report. It is so important that this is an all-party commitment that we get judicial training right.

The evidence we heard at committee this morning is that the judicial training is really great right now and that it is going to be a lot better in the next few months, which is awkward, honestly, because if it were really being done well, we would not have these calamitous headlines about how some victims and survivors of sexual assault have been treated.

However, it does remind me of the testimony we heard at the same committee around gender-based analysis, which is the focus of this report, that although successive Auditor General reports had given both Liberal and Conservative governments a fail on implementing gender-based analysis, the current government now had taken internal measures and things were going a lot better inside some of the government departments.

I will say again that, until this is legislated, we will not have the transparency we need to know how the government is making its decisions in relation to its gender commitments.

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

Mr. Speaker, that is a good question that the member opposite asks, but in the absence of any transparency or any legislation, on this side of the House we have no idea. Women in Canada have no idea.

The pre-budget media got top-of-the-fold headlines that this was going to be a gender budget, but when we actually open it up, we see it gives a whole long list of all the economic injustices against women in the country. It is well known that there is a sustained and widening gender gap, that women do not have access to high-paying jobs, that they are not on corporate boards, and that they are not even on the crown corporation boards that the House and the government oversee. We are still one of the few G7 countries that does not have a universal child care program, and elderly women continue to retire in poverty.

Instead, the budget had some programs, it is true, but a number of them, as detailed at great length, do not provide access for women who actually need the help. Now women can get 18 months of parental leave, and that is nice, but they still only receive the same amount of money to spread over a longer period of time.

This is why I brought a motion to the status of women committee this morning that the finance minister come to this committee and describe the benefits of the budget for women. The Liberal members of the committee voted it down.

We thought that, if the minister had a good news story to tell, he would have wanted to come to the committee and explain why, in the absence of gender-based analysis legislation, his version of a gender lens on decisions—inside cabinet, not transparent—was working. The Liberal committee members refused to have him appear, and so we remain in the dark.

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

moved:

That the Fourth Report of the Standing Committee on the Status of Women, presented on Wednesday, June 15, 2016, be concurred in.

Mr. Speaker, I had not appreciated that it has been almost a year since this report was tabled in the House. This was a unanimous report of the all-party Standing Committee on the Status of Women. It reported to this Parliament that after successive Auditor General reports that had denigrated both Liberal and Conservative governments' abilities to implement gender-based analysis as had been a commitment 20 years ago to the United Nations, progress had stalled.

The committee came together and made constructive recommendations to the government. First and most, it followed from how we interpreted the Auditor General's disappointment that until there is legislation requiring the government to actually run all of its policy and budget decisions through a gender test, the Auditor General will not have the teeth to say that the government failed to uphold its own law. A commitment to the United Nations is not the same as legislation.

Of the most striking consensus recommendations of the all-party committee, one is that the federal government introduce legislation by June 2017 setting out the obligations of federal departments and agencies with regard to implementation of gender-based analysis.

Recommendation 17 went into more detail:

Gender-Based Analysis Plus (GBA+) is applied to all proposals before they arrive at Cabinet for decision-making;

GBA+ is a mandatory portion of Privy Council Office, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat and Department of Finance submissions for all departments and agencies;

The Privy Council Office and Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat are mandated to return policies and programs that do not demonstrate the application of GBA+.

The third striking recommendation is that the Government of Canada create the office of the commissioner for gender equality based on the model of the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages.

There are many other recommendations in the report, but those are the three most meaty ones.

We did have a response from the minister some months later saying that it was good work, that the government is doing lots behind the scenes and that it will get back to us in 2018 about whether or not it will bring in legislation. It is certainly a great disappointment that there was not even a commitment about when legislation would be tabled. The committee was convinced by the arguments that with the current government's backlog of legislation and all the work that needs to be done to repair some of the damage done during the Conservatives' tenure in power, plus the unprecedented spending announced by the Liberal government, all of the policies, laws, and budgets should go through a gender test to make sure that women and men are benefiting equally and at least that there are not unintended consequences.

The New Democrats submitted a minority report saying that we agree with the spirit of the entire committee recommendation, but we think that the need is greater and the speed should be faster. We asked that the legislation be tabled in December 2016. That deadline has passed, and the government has already told us that the June 2017 deadline for legislation will not be met and in fact this may not be legislated at all.

The government has just tabled a budget that it described as a gender budget, but because we do not have legislation in place, we do not have the transparency to know how the government made its measures, what the criteria were, and whether the policy was actually upheld. These all happen at the cabinet level, and cabinet confidence means we do not get to peak in. Although it was much lauded as a gender budget, it was more a list of the various discriminations against women in Canada, which we are certainly well aware of, in particular, the gender pay gap. Many of us are wearing red today to recognize that this is the day in Ontario that women get out of the red. Women are working for free up to this point in the year.

This is pay equity day in Ontario. I recognize all of the labour and social justice activists who are pushing the cause forward. The government still has not committed to pay equity legislation. That is a 40-year-old commitment. The first Trudeau prime minister made that commitment, and it still has not been implemented.

The budget did not fund child care this year. It did not fund the operation of domestic violence shelters, something that women's groups call for again and again. All of these pieces point out to us repeatedly that gender-based analysis legislation would give the transparency and accountability this country needs if it is to fulfill its human rights commitment that genders be equal.

The well-documented history in the committee's report is that multiple studies have identified the need for action and the failure to implement. In 2009, a departmental action plan was established on gender analysis in response to the Auditor General's report. No real action was taken on that. In 2012, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Accounts tabled a report saying that gender-based analysis should be a priority. Again, there is still no legislation. In 2015, the Minister of Status of Women's mandate letter said that this was a priority, and I applaud that.

In 2016, the Auditor General's report concluded that selected departments were not always performing gender-based analyses to inform government decision-making and the departments that had implemented the GBA framework were not always conducting complete or high-quality analyses. The committee concluded in this area, “despite the long history of work on the topic of GBA and GBA+ as outlined above, a great number of recommendations from the aforementioned reports have not been implemented, and as a result the federal government’s 1995 commitment has still not been fully realized.”

On March 31, the minister tabled an interim report on the implementation of gender-based analysis, which again is happening at the cabinet level, so we are not able to see how that is working.

Just this morning, the Standing Committee on the Status of Women debated a motion that I brought forward on behalf of New Democrats that the minister come before the committee and discuss her March 31 interim report, so that she can answer questions and explain more completely the government's commitments and progress on implementing GBA in the absence of legislation.

I am very sad to say that the Liberal members of the committee voted that motion down. I would have thought that if the government had a good news story to tell about gender-based analysis and why it could do this without legislation, it would be willing to bring the minister forward to have that discussion. We were not able to get consensus, I am very sad to say. That is a mistake on the government's part. If it has good news, it should want to shine a light on it.

I will wrap up by saying that since 1995, Canada has been committing to put its budget and legislative decisions through a gender lens to make sure that men and women benefit equally, to make sure programs and policies are designed in a way that men and women have an equal opportunity to benefit and that we do not have unanticipated consequences. For example, megaproject development can have impacts related to work camps that are predominantly male. Women may lose good jobs in that region. There may be unanticipated consequences around gender violence. This has been well amplified by organizations such as KAIROS and Amnesty International on projects happening in our own country.

The government, with its commitments on indigenous rights, sustainable development, and environmental protection, should want the transparency that gender-based analysis legislation would bring. The Standing Committee on the Status of Women unanimously recommended that this be legislated and that there be a gender commissioner to oversee the implementation. We are disappointed that a year later, these key recommendations have not been acted upon.

I continue to commend the committee's 2016 report to the government. If the Liberals really did want to walk the talk, if they really wanted to put their words into action, they would cede to the committee and would want to return to the committee to discuss how to make a gender lens apply to everything this Parliament does.

[Indigenous Affairs, April 10th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, the answer is so disappointing, at every level.

The ministerial panel specifically named six different questions that the government has to ask before it can go ahead and approve the pipeline. None of them have been answered. One example is how cabinet might square approval of the pipeline with its commitment to reconciliation with first nations and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, with its principles of free, prior, and informed consent. That was a campaign promise of the government. It was raised again by the minister's own panel. It is still not answered, there is still no clarity, yet still the government gave the thumbs-up to the Kinder Morgan pipeline.

It is blowing this relationship with coastal first nations people. There is no way that the list of good deeds that the minister's representative has listed comes anything close to squaring the environmental and social costs of this pipeline approval. It is very sad for Canada.

[Indigenous Affairs, April 10th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, I want to take the House back to the Prime Minister and his cabinet's approval of the Kinder Morgan expansion project in November of 2016. This was in complete contradiction to promises made by the government around its relationship with indigenous people and first nations governments.

The approval would violate the campaign vow of the Liberals to conduct relations on a nation-to-nation basis. In the Kinder Morgan approval process, or the backdrop to it, was one of the promises of the government, which was to recognize the relationship between indigenous peoples and the land and to respect legal traditions and perspectives on environmental stewardship. I agree and I wish that promise had been kept.

In the Kinder Morgan approval process, the government cannot say that it is fulfilling that promise when in September of last year a coalition of indigenous leaders from across the entire continent, including Stewart Phillip of the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs, a very strong leader in my province, said that there was unprecedented unity against the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.

In my riding of Nanaimo—Ladysmith, the Snuneymuxw First Nation feels betrayed. Former Chief Kwul'a'sul'tun, also known as Doug White III, said, “this project puts at risk our way of life”. He also said that the decision was “premised on a denial of aboriginal people’s rights and voice”.

Many indigenous governments in British Columbia are challenging this decision in court. Three first nations in January announced legal actions against the federal government, challenging the approval of the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline.

Tsleil-Waututh Chief Maureen Thomas said, “We do not consent to the Kinder Morgan pipeline project in our territory. We are asking the court to overturn the federal cabinet's decision to approve this project.”

We have also heard in the House that the government is blocking access, again breaking a promise, to indigenous women's organizations. The Native Women's Association wanted to be involved in the last first ministers meeting around climate change, asked repeatedly, but was denied.

Against all of this backdrop, part of the decision making, as articulated by the federal cabinet, was that this project was so in the national interest that it was justified to break its promise on indigenous relationships and to cause cost to the B.C. coast.

Just last week, a new report came out from Simon Fraser University, authored Tom Gunton. Given a recent forecast for oil demand and what he predicts as a massive overcapacity to move oil in Canada because, both federal on the U.S. and Canadian side, a new pipeline approval is coming, he says, “there are clearly viable options to Trans Mountain that have significantly lower environmental risks”.

My question for the government again is this. How can it say that this is in the national interest given the growing evidence that it is not? When will the government wake up and admit that the approval of the Kinder Morgan pipeline is a violation of its promise to indigenous peoples in Canada?

[Status of Women, April 6th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, while the Prime Minister never misses a photo op to proclaim his feminism, his government's credibility does not add up on the world stage. The Prime Minister has given Donald Trump, a misogynist, cover on women's issues, and still defends arms sales to a country that systematically discriminates against women. A report just released says that Canada ranks fourth last on the gender wage gap.

If the Prime Minister really wants to impress his friends at the UN, he should take real action for Canadian women. Will the Liberals implement child care and pay equity legislation now?

[The Budget, April 5th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, our first priority on the NDP side is with front line responders: ambulance, firefighters, the people who are dealing with this crisis every day.

In my own community, Mid-Island Hiv Aids Society has trained 800 volunteers on how to use naloxone. The human commitment to alleviating the suffering is tremendous. We certainly want to see the federal government doing everything it can to support front line workers, doing everything it can to keep drugs out of the country, and to keep the drugs from being made illegally with pill presses and so on.

Again, we want to see spending now to get ahead of this crisis. It has a huge human cost. I am stunned to have heard from my colleague from Vancouver Kingsway that this budget offer is an 80% reduction over what the Conservatives had planned to spend. Another real problem is that the $110 million is mostly backloaded into future spending years. We need to spend it now.

[The Budget, April 5th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I really wish the member opposite would not patronize members in the House. We are both doing our work for the first time. There is no need for the hon. member to belittle me for only having been elected for a year and a half just as he was.

Regarding the cut of the tax credit, if we were to look at #transittaxcredit, we would see all kinds of people describing, across the whole country, that if individuals bought a transit pass, they would be able to claim it against their income. Certainly, people in my community who were working at the hospital, who were back and forth on the ferry every day, were saving hundreds of dollars every year and more. In my region, the evidence does not support that this was a benefit for wealthy people riding on the bus. It is crazy.

There is no way around the member's argument. The affordable housing offer is not as rich as what the Liberals promised, and most of it is offered after the next election. It is extreme arrogance to make promises with taxpayers' money for a period in which the voters have not supported the government spending their money.

[The Budget, April 5th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to stand on behalf of Nanaimo—Ladysmith and the New Democrats to speak about the hits and misses in the 2017 federal budget.

I will be splitting my time with the member of Parliament for Elmwood—Transcona.

On affordable housing, there is a huge built-up demand, a great need, both on pricing and on volume. There is only $20 million in affordable housing for 2017 and, reading the fine print, 90% of the money for housing will not go out the door until after the next election.

On home energy retrofits, we hear repeatedly that voters, homeowners, renovators, and small businesses want incentives to reduce emissions, enable households to save electricity, and get people to work doing these renovations. This is a good, local, sustainable job-creation exercise. The budget does not include any allowance for the home energy retrofit program.

For 15 years in my seat in local government before I was elected here, I have been advocating for federal leadership on abandoned vessels. There was a big announcement by the federal government in November, but there are zero dollars in this budget to deal with abandoned vessels. This weekend I am meeting with community leaders elected on Vancouver Island and the Sunshine Coast in British Columbia, the Association of Vancouver Island and Coastal Communities. They were hoping I would have some good news specifically about how we will be partnering and funding community work to remove the oil spill risks posed by abandoned vessels. There is zero in the budget for them.

The transit tax rebate is another disappointment in my region. It made the daily use of public transit a little more affordable for bus riders, but it also made public transit a little more affordable in ferry-dependent communities, such as the one that I represent, as well as Gabriola Island, where I live. Lots of commuters go back and forth every day. That was a way to help make ends meet and to accommodate the tremendously high, way-beyond-inflation, fare increases that have been brought in under the British Columbia Liberal Party over the last 14 years. Inflation, in some cases, is almost as high as 10%. That transit tax rebate program has been cut in this budget to save $170 million.

We say instead that if the government were really serious about closing tax loopholes, it would have kept its election promise and closed the CEO stock option loophole, which would have provided $750 million in revenue every year. Instead, inexplicably, yesterday in question period, the representative for the finance minister said that this tax rebate was used disproportionately by wealthy people. It boggles the mind, honestly. The transit tax rebate was cut to save $170 million on the backs of working people. It is extremely disappointing. It is not leadership and not walking the talk on either the middle class or climate change.

There was a huge need expressed for home care that I heard daily when knocking on doors throughout the federal election campaign. The Liberals promised $3 billion over four years. Instead, this budget commits $2.25 billion over four years. It is one year late and 25% short, and that again is on the backs of families.

For coastal communities, I really thought, given the government's election promises, that there would be commitments around salmon enhancement and the implementation of the Cohen commission recommendations, every single one of which the government said it would implement. There is nothing in the budget for salmon, which are at the foundation of indigenous communities on the original settlement pattern on the coast and which, in our modern economy, are so much at the root of tourism and commercial and recreational fisheries.

The opioid crisis has hit the community of Nanaimo particularly hard. There were more deaths per capita than anywhere else in British Columbia in the early part of this crisis, I think, because of drug dealers testing out this bad product and using my community as a test market. It is no fault of the community, but the community and our firefighters and first responders sure are taking the brunt of it.

This budget allocates $110 million to the entire drug and substance strategy over the next five years. The Conservatives had planned to spend $556 million on their anti-drug strategy over the same period, and honestly, it is a sad day when the Conservatives are spending more on drug treatment and the opioid emergency than the Liberals are. It is stunning, really.

As well, the budget fails to allocate a single dime in emergency funding for the opioid crisis, as my colleague, the member for Vancouver Kingsway, has pointed out. It is unacceptable. To think that the opioid crisis is over is not supported by the evidence. Let us say it that way. The crisis is getting worse, if anything, and there is nothing allocated. There is $14 million this year for the entire drug strategy across the whole country, whereas last year $16 million was spent by the federal government in B.C. and Alberta alone.

Regarding small business, again it is a big disappointment to see the government continuing to dishonour its election promise to lower the small business tax rate. Small businesses are our job generators and are a huge part of the Nanaimo—Ladysmith economy hub.

There is also nothing to reduce the unfair credit card merchant fees that gouge small businesses and raise costs for consumers.

As for people living with disabilities, the Liberals have once again ignored loud and clear calls to make the disability tax credit refundable to ensure that it provides the support that low-income individuals need.

Then we move to the gender budget. There were big headlines on this issue, and a lot of expectations were raised. In fact, the budget named dozens of barriers women face, but it did not actually implement very many solutions for them. The budget mentions the word “women” 274 times, but there is very little action taken.

With regard to murdered and missing indigenous women, no money is allocated in the 2017 budget for implementation of the inquiry's work. As for violence against women, the offer is $20 million a year over the next five years for federal services. This is only a little more than the government is committing to space exploration. NGOs had asked for $500 million a year, and some of that would go to the operators of domestic violence shelters, who, with no support from the current government, are doing very good work on the part of the country to shelter women and children escaping domestic violence.

For addressing pay equity, there are zero dollars. For child care, there are zero dollars last year and this year for any child care spaces. This is quite different from the New Democrat election promise of $1.2 billion in new investments that would have happened this year, which during the election campaign the Liberals said was too little and too slow. It is a head-shaker.

I like the idea of extending parental leave. That is good for families and it is good for women. However, the government did not commit any new dollars, so again only the wealthiest families, those who can afford to live on one-third of their salary, are able to take the full benefit.

Regarding unpaid care work, there is also a good general direction, but many female caregivers will not qualify, because they do not have a high enough income to qualify for this tax break. As well, the Liberals are delivering less than they promised in their platform.

We are also disappointed that the Liberals failed to use the budget opportunity to close the problem that we identified around the Canada pension plan expansion. Doing so would have helped women and people living with disabilities so that they would not be penalized.

Indigenous children, again, are left behind. There is just $155 million, to come into compliance with the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. Again, it is such a betrayal of the government's promises that it does not specifically allocate money in this budget.

In closing, many Canadians are struggling with part-time and precarious employment, rising costs, and record debt, and they were hoping that this budget would lift them all up. Instead it looks like a tremendous amount of government spending without any effect on people on the ground, in their lives, this year, right now.

I urge the government to reconsider, to make its budget more generous and bring it more in line with its election promises.