Sheila Malcolmson

[Status of Women, November 2nd, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, not a single witness at the pay equity committee asked for the timeline the government has suggested and not a single witness asked for consultation. This legislation was written in 2004, the last time a Liberal government was in power. No reason has been given to delay until 2018.

A further frustration is instead of actually making equal pay for work of equal value for all women across the country, the government has chosen to table legislation that deals with pay equity in a strange way, among its cabinet ministers. There is nothing more elite than that.

I was at a conference the other weekend where I heard speakers say that trickle-down feminism did not work any better for women of our country than any other trickle-down economic theory did. It is very much the wrong priority to bring in Bill C-24 instead of bringing in an act now. We could do it next month.

Again, what is so special about 2018? What will the government learn that it does not already know?

[Status of Women, November 2nd, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I want to bring the House back to the conversation we were having about pay equity and the advancement of that issue in the House. Canada remains without federal pay equity legislation despite having made that commitment 40 years ago.

I am going to describe a few leaders in our country who are urging action.

Margot Young of the University of British Columbia has pointed out that “talk about gender equity, slogans like ‘it's 2015’, are purely empty rhetoric without such things in place as proper and full pay equity law.”

Barbara Byers, secretary-treasurer of the Canadian Labour Congress, has stated:

After 12 years, working women deserve nothing less than proactive pay equity legislation.... We can't let it languish in the archives any longer. 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.

I was honoured in the House as a new MP to stand and present the NDP's motion on pay equity. I was so glad to have the government's support. The government did agree to strike a special committee, and my colleague, the New Democrat MP for Saskatoon West, was our representative on that committee. Her recommendation was that there be pay equity legislation tabled this December. That would be six months from the time of the report and it is what witnesses had said.

The committee itself recommended that it be June 2017, but, sadly, the government has just let us know that it will not be until 2018 that it tables that legislation. There is no rationale for that.

We just heard a report from the Canadian Bar Association that says:

So to recap: a 1956 federal law requiring equal pay didn’t close the gender wage gap. Neither did the 1977 law establishing a complaint-based system for equal pay for work of equal value. In 2016 a special committee suggests the government get around to drafting proactive legislation based on a report tabled 12 years ago that said it was time for women to be paid the same as men for work of equal value.

It is time to act, indeed.

Fiona Keith of the Canadian Human Rights Commission has argued that, compared to alternative options, “the task force's recommendations will likely lead to the most robust and most effective right to pay equity, both in terms of implementation and cost.”

So, we have the right models. I want to know why the government is asking us to wait until the end of 2018. Even the President of the Treasury Board has said that “equal pay for work of equal value is a human right”. Why is his government still denying women their human right?

[Holidays Act, November 2nd, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, Remembrance Day is a vital time for Canadians to reflect and honour the service of men and women who put their lives on the line for our country.

On November 11, we honour our veterans, our fallen soldiers, peacekeepers, and their families and we recommit to stand up for them as they have stood up for us. It is our solemn responsibility to ensure that every veteran has the care our country owes them.

Hundreds of volunteers conduct Remembrance Day ceremonies in my riding of Nanaimo—Ladysmith, and I am very grateful for their work. Nanaimo—Ladysmith has four legion branches. Members should listen to this rundown of ways our community honours veterans and remember on November 11. There are at least seven distinct events.

On November 11, I will be at a breakfast for veterans, service members and their families at Legion 256 at 8 o'clock in the morning in Nanaimo. Lantzville and Ladysmith both have parades that lead to their local cenotaphs where wreaths are laid.

I will be at Lantzville luncheon for veterans, service members and their families, following that Remembrance Day ceremony.

The Gabriola Island veterans association holds a ceremony at the Gabriola cenotaph, which is at the RCMP detachment. I have been laying wreaths there for 12 or 14 years as a local government representative. It is a great honour. Hundreds of people come out in the community.

Both legions in Nanaimo work together to hold a hugely well-attended ceremony that includes a parade also. Two legions co-operate together to have that ceremony happen at the cenotaph in downtown Nanaimo.

Finally, I will see community members at 1:45 p.m. at Cedar Memorial Gardens, where Ladysmith's legion holds an afternoon ceremony in the community of Cedar.

Air Cadets, Girl Guides, Scouts and Beavers are always there. We have this fantastic wave of young energy, people who are learning lessons from the experiences of veterans and honouring together.

In my home province of British Columbia, November 11 is a holiday already. We really recognize that when families are able to come together to attend all these ceremonies. They can spend all day in my riding honouring veterans. It really has an impact.

Another powerful learning place in our riding is the Vancouver Island Military Museum. It has 25 exhibits showcasing Canada's military efforts. It has a Wall of Honour where local community members can honour veterans and their fallen loved ones. It has free admission on Remembrance Day, 11 o'clock to 4 o'clock. It has special exhibit this year highlighting the achievements of the African-Canadian Battalion of World War I, which worked with the Canadian Forestry Corps to ensure safe access, particularly to rescue fallen soldiers at the front.

In my community there is a great deal of support and a deep recognition of the sacred responsibility to honour and respect. I look forward to standing with my community on November 11 in this way.

[Petitions, October 21st, 2016]

Madam Speaker, I rise today to present a petition from residents of Nanaimo—Ladysmith opposing the establishment of new commercial bulk anchorages off the coastline of Gabriola Island.

They are intended to transport Wyoming coal to China, exacerbating climate change. The anchorages themselves have oil spill risks. The anchors will scour the sensitive seabed, interfering with commercial and recreational fishing in the region.

I am disappointed that the Prime Minister and the Minister of Transport have not replied to my call for them to urge the proponent to withdraw the application. We hope that this petition will urge the government to take leadership on this important economic and environmental issue.

[Transportation, October 21st, 2016]

Madam Speaker, Canada needs a national action plan on abandoned vessels. They pose terrible risks to our economy and our environment, but the government's ship-by-ship approach is too slow and too expensive. At the rate we are moving, it will take a century to clean up the 600 abandoned vessels littering Canada's coasts. B.C. has heard dozens of motions of good intentions. Do we really need another?

When will the government deal with a clear action plan and table it in the House to, once and for all, deal with abandoned vessels in Canada?

[Status of Women, October 20th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, it is easy to call oneself a feminist, but standing up for gender equality takes action. My colleague from Burnaby South did just that with his bill designed to get more women into federal politics. However, yesterday, 126 Liberal MPs voted with the Conservatives to defeat the bill. Even the Minister of Status of Women voted to defeat the gender equality act. When women make up only 26% of the House, why did the Liberals vote to defeat the bill?

[Status of Women, October 18th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to be in the House to celebrate the groundbreaking Persons Case for women's equality.

On this day in 1929, five courageous women forced a ruling that women were in fact persons in Canada. Who knew?

This was a landmark victory for Canadian women, but 87 years later our progress has stalled. We rank 60th in the world on gender parity in Parliament, and at only 26% in the House, we have not met the United Nations' threshold of female legislators required to ensure that women's issues are forefront in our policy-making.

Tomorrow, I urge my fellow parliamentarians to vote in favour of the gender equity act. We need concrete action much more than good intentions.

Let us continue the work of the Famous Five and a history full of trail-blazing Canadian women. Let us ensure our Parliament reflects the diversity of our Canada.

[Paris Agreement, October 5th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague and I share a salmon connection—I on the coast and my colleague in the interior. This is such a valuable industry for our province. Our province was built on salmon. We are salmon people and we have a very strong commitment around the indigenous relationship in British Columbia to stand up in every way we can for salmon. This is a 100% federal responsibility.

Sockeye salmon at our latitude, which are already at their southern range, are threatened with extinction by 2050, and maybe all species of salmon, beyond sockeye, by 2100. It would be a disaster economically and environmentally. We cannot let that happen.

What is happening is that, as rivers get hotter, the salmon either cannot go up to spawn, or else they wait in the hope for cooler water at which point they get preyed on by seals and other animals.

When we lose our salmon population, not only are there human impacts, but the endangered orca whale that is resident in the southern Strait of Georgia, also known as the Salish Sea, is losing its primary food. Therefore we have a commitment as the federal government, a deep responsibility to protect the Chinook salmon on which the endangered orca rely. It is a mammal identified as a species at risk, and we have a strong responsibility to act. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is the best way for us to do that.

[Paris Agreement, October 5th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I believe the member was in the House the three times that New Democrats brought climate change legislation to the House. Twice it was passed in the House, and one time it was stopped in the Senate.

The member knows our commitment to actual, measurable, enforceable emission reductions that would help climate change. I do not think either of the parties across the House, whether New Democrat or Liberal, believes that a price on carbon alone will deal produce the reductions we need. We are in trouble in this country, coastal communities especially. We need emission reductions fast, and we need the government to take strong leadership.

As the member knows, it was a cap-and-trade program on which we campaigned. I was very involved with the success of cap and trade in reducing emissions causing acid rain. We know that it works to get emissions down to a reliable, measurable level, but it also gives industry the flexibility to work together. That is a way to price carbon while ratcheting emissions down. Until we see the government's plan to actually act on emission reductions, we will continue to ask these questions in the House.

[Paris Agreement, October 5th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Victoria.

Because climate change is the challenge of our time, I stand in support of ratifying the Paris agreement. Here is why action is so badly needed. Climate change impacts are already being felt in my riding. We already see hotter water harming chum, chinook, and coho salmon returns on the Englishman, Cowichan, and Nanaimo rivers and at Mill Creek. Salmon are also harmed by drier rivers resulting from reduced snow pack.

Two decades of pine beetle infestation in our province have led to dozens of mill closures and tens of thousands of job losses. Ocean acidity has increased 30% and is expected to increase up to 150% by the end of the century. Worldwide, since 1975, oceans have absorbed 90% of the excess heat from global climate change.

This has already had big economic costs for us. B.C.'s $2.2 billion fishery and aquaculture sector, with its 14,000 jobs, is at risk. Worldwide, fisheries stand to lose $10 billion of their annual revenue. Climate-change-caused ocean acidification killed 10 million scallops just north of my riding. That was three years' worth of production, and the CEO of Island Scallops Ltd. said:

I'm not sure we are going to stay alive and I'm not sure the oyster industry is going to stay alive.

Power generation is affected too. In 2009, we saw the lowest water inflows in 46 years at Vancouver Island power plants.

Forest fires cost British Columbia $877 million over the last five years.

Drought, disease, and pests threaten food security on Vancouver Island, which already imports 95% of its food.

The good news is that acting on global climate change can boost small business and good local jobs. Climate action is a win-win for our local economy and our global environment. We are already innovating and cutting greenhouse gas emissions in my riding and are adding good-paying, sustainable jobs.

Nanaimo Harmac Pacific mill is energy efficient and uses biofuels, including wood waste, to generate 55 megawatts of power.

The Greater Nanaimo Pollution Control Centre captures methane to convert to electricity, and it is powering 300 homes.

Nanaimo is home to Canadian Electric Vehicles, which for 25 years has been making industrial vehicles, from electric trucks to Zambonis to electric bobcats.

Two groups are right now building energy conservation affordable housing in Nanaimo. Low energy use equal low operating costs equals greater affordability.

Vancouver Island University carpentry students dedicated 5,000 hours of volunteer time to building Habitat for Humanity's most recent build.

Nanaimo Aboriginal Centre is building affordable housing right now using passive energy designs, which use 80% less power than normal.

This is good news countrywide. Canada's green-building sector has $128 billion in gross annual output, and it employs more direct full-time workers than the forestry, mining, and oil and gas industries combined. We need our government to support local initiatives and remove barriers to innovation right here at home.

We have the know-how here in our communities. We want climate leadership that supports, and does not impede, cutting greenhouse gas emissions right here on our coast.

I talked with Nanaimo renewable energy entrepreneurs at the Vancouver Island Economic Alliance Summit a few years back. They said that the Harper government and our B.C. government put up more barriers to their industry than anywhere they know in the world. They are both manufacturing and selling outside our community and outside our province. That is a lose-lose for the environment and the economy.

Canada cannot afford to stand on the sidelines when it comes to tackling climate change and transitioning to a cleaner, greener economy. With 50,000 people employed directly in more than 800 clean-tech firms, Canada could be a global leader, but it needs federal government financing and policy support.

It is time we had a truly balanced, sustainable approach to developing our energy resources in Canada. This means creating lasting, sustainable prosperity while making Canada a global leader in the clean technology sector of tomorrow.

The bad news is that it feels as if the Liberals are repeating their old pattern of breaking promises. In the early 90s, I was involved through the environmental NGO community with a group called the Economic Instruments Collaborative. We were working with the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, TransAlta, and Lafarge cement. These were the biggest polluters in Canada. We were working together to try to design economic instruments to deal with air quality problems, one of which was global climate change. The Liberals at that time had been elected in 1993 on a platform to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by 2005. Instead, the Liberals ignored the collaborative regulatory design on which we had worked together and had achieved this amazing consensus between disparate groups. They chose not to implement that. Instead, emissions increased by over 30%. By 2005, to our shame, the United Nations reported Canada's pollution had increased more than any other signatory to Kyoto.

Therefore, while the New Democrats support the ratification of the Paris agreement, we are concerned that the Liberals have shown no plan and no real effort toward achieving its targets.

Canadians elected the Liberal government on the promise to establish national emission-reduction targets. That was in the Liberals' platform. Now in government, they are backtracking to what they used to call “catastrophic” Harper targets, and Canada is still without a national greenhouse gas reduction plan. All spring, Liberals in the House kept telling us we have committees. However, committees do not reduce emissions.

Carbon pricing will not guarantee a greenhouse gas reduction either, and it will not meet the Paris targets. Carbon pricing without emission reductions leaves it to the market to decide how much pollution we get; and leaving it to the market is how we got into this mess in the first place.

Conservatives compounded the mess. There is no question. They disgracefully put Canada on the climate fossil map, as the first signatory to withdraw from Kyoto. They defunded the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, a group we sorely need right now. They failed to monitor or regulate emissions from the fossil fuel industry. Also, they continued to give their corporate fossil friends billions in annual tax breaks.

Liberal decisions are not looking very climate friendly right now either. Approving the Pacific NorthWest liquid natural gas project is inconsistent with the federal government's commitment to lead on climate change and clean innovation. At 10 million tonnes, it will be one of the largest carbon polluters in the country. There was no meaningful consultation and accommodation with indigenous communities. That feels to us like the Site C dam problem as well. This summer, at the site of the proposed dam, indigenous leaders showed me B.C. Hydro pulverizing old growth forests and mulching a carbon sink during reservoir preparation, and this is all to power further fossil fuel production. It is an embarrassment for us.

We are looking for real climate action. We are looking for ratification of the Paris accord, but we need regulation, reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, and support for innovation to create sustainable jobs.

As legislators in the House, we have a sacred duty to future generations, to the people, to the animals, to make it right for our planet, and for the first time in Canadian history, to actually lead on climate change.