Hon. Marilou McPhedran: Would Senator Duncan take a question?

Hon. Marilou McPhedran: Thank you for the question, Senator Cardozo.

I think even a quick scan of major media today answers your question. For those of you who noticed, there was more coverage about Grassy Narrows and the mercury poisoning — which we had been assured a number of times was being dealt with — and we now have a current media report on the fact that that is not true and that the Indigenous community of Grassy Narrows continues, on a daily basis, to suffer terrible health consequences. By no means are we talking about history. We are talking about the combination of history that has not stopped and is the current reality as well.

Hon. Marilou McPhedran: Honourable senators, I rise today to speak in support of Bill C-226, which seeks to establish a national strategy to assess, prevent and address environmental racism while advancing environmental justice in Canada.

The goal and intent of what this legislation will accomplish cannot be overstated. Environmental racism may not be a well-known concept, but it is a profoundly damaging reality that many Canadians face with little acknowledgment or redress.

The Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources heard from a number of witnesses of varied backgrounds representing First Nations, Inuit, Black and other racialized communities. They also heard from renowned academics and legal experts. In essence, the possibilities presented by this legislation amount to a new lease on life for many of the most marginalized individuals, peoples and communities that are often tucked away in rural and remote regions across Canada.

This is an important note to highlight. Environmental racism, by virtue of it being a type of racism, impacts upon already marginalized peoples and communities. This, colleagues, is the exact segment of the population in Canada to which senators are supposed to be most responsible.

As set out explicitly in the Supreme Court of Canada’s 2014 ruling on the Senate reference:

Over time, the Senate also came to represent various groups that were under-represented in the House of Commons. It served as a forum for ethnic, gender, religious, linguistic, and Aboriginal groups that did not always have a meaningful opportunity to present their views through the popular democratic process . . . .

Colleagues, is there a better example of a bill that responds more directly to this obligation to represent the voiceless than the bill before us now? Bill C-226 seeks to offer tangible remedies to racialized Canadians who continuously struggle against the juggernaut that is the resource extractive industry.

Bill C-226 is truly a life-and-death proposition for many communities. This bill deals with premature deaths and premature morbidities — scientifically and empirically proven causality related to resource extractive activities.

This is not a frivolous or abstract bill. It has been a long time coming, and it has gone through all the necessary steps of review. Other countries around the world have already understood and adopted the concept of environmental justice, with Canada now close to catching up to those forward-thinking and just-minded societies. The opportunity is before us. After lengthy due diligence by senators, today is the time for us to vote on this opportunity.

Regrettably, a final vote has now been jeopardized because of a highly politicized process from which the bill’s sponsor, Senator McCallum, has been excluded.

Colleagues, Bill C-226 has had a long journey to where we are today — first introduced in a previous Parliament in February 2020, only to languish and die upon dissolution of that Parliament.

In February 2022, the leader of the Green Party in Parliament, MP Elizabeth May, introduced an enhanced version of the bill. It is before us after passage in the other place, without amendment.

Bill C-226 has been thoroughly reviewed by the Senate’s Energy Committee. Unanimously, without suggestion or discussion of amendment, it has returned to us.

Honourable colleagues, after ample due diligence, this bill has been closely examined. Its virtues and benefits have been well-established to the satisfaction of a range of senators, paying close attention to their responsibility to carefully and thoughtfully examine all dimensions of a bill brought to this chamber and to committee, now returned to all of us to follow proper, established procedures.

Today, I stand before you because, in discussion with Senator McCallum — the sponsor of Bill C-226 here — I have come to share her disappointment with some of the senatorial actions that have gone on behind the scenes.

Honourable senators, please keep in mind that Senator McCallum took this on as an unaffiliated senator, without the favour of a leader, liaison or scroll representative — in other words, without the support and privileges reserved only for caucused senators.

It has been incumbent on Senator McCallum and her office to shepherd this bill through the Senate of their own volition. I hope we can agree that “Team McCallum” has done well, that our colleague Senator McCallum has sponsored this bill with grace and tenacity at every turn.

Senators, I invite you to recall that, last spring, Senator McCallum had to fight to bring Bill C-226 to a second reading vote, which was delayed for many months until October 2023. Essentially alone, she acted with tremendous patience, restraint and — as hard as it may have been — even some deference to the “wink, wink, that’s the way things work here,” which resulted in a suite of agreed-upon bills passing before Bill C-226, that is, bills that belonged to caucused senators thereby ensuring that those bills now have priority at committee. Unfortunately, it is looking like Senator McCallum may be facing similar tactics this time around, awaiting a third reading vote.

Senator McCallum disclosed to me that in April she met with and communicated with group and caucus leadership to advocate for a fairly paced third reading vote, and that a consensus was reached to include her Bill C-226 in the recent suite of C-bills originating from the other place in the leader-brokered process that saw multiple bills expedited through this chamber.

In light of Government Motion No. 167 and the current discussion around the discriminatory realities facing unaffiliated senators, this agreement for expedition was welcome, excellent news. It is not every day that unaffiliated senators are considered favourably in such high-level discussions.

But was this predictably, sadly, short-lived fairness?

I’m advised that Senator McCallum was informed yesterday evening that, due to leaders being unable to agree to the passage of a further suite of bills, Bill C-226 has been dropped and now its final vote is excluded from the deal. It was suggested that perhaps a vote could be held at some nebulous point in the fall.

Honourable senators, I thank you again for your attention to my speech this week setting out the daily discrimination experienced by unaffiliated senators under the Senate’s practice of Aristotelian equality, where those of us who are different are treated differently and unfairly.

Please allow me to reiterate and underscore a critically important point here. Unaffiliated senators do not have the same leverage or equal opportunity to advocate for our items to progress through the legislative process. We have no bargaining chips of our own. We are excluded from discussions that produce decisions. We have no representative or champion within these discussions. We are shut out and shut down.

Being advised after the fact that a previous verbal agreement to have Bill C-226 receive its final vote will now not be honoured is disheartening. The long-standing and normalized process of horse-trading bills or paring off bills is a practice that is oppositional to the tenets of modernization.

Should not bills be considered and weighed on merit through careful consideration at committee with ample opportunity for senators to speak at readings? How does it make sense that a bill lives or dies based on the timelines and favours accorded to other unrelated legislation? We have just seen some bills advance to committee without a single senator speaking at second reading, for example, Bill C-275.

Let’s be honest about the impact on bills such as Bill C-226. This favouritism, this truncated due diligence, impedes the fair, final disposition of bills such as Bill C-226 that has succeeded at every stage of comprehensive review in both houses. How can this disparate treatment be viewed as acceptable?

Honourable colleagues, I stand before you today to call upon each of us to act responsively out of respect for our own careful, thoughtful standards on legislative review. Supporting this bill respects our standards and a primary purpose of the Senate: giving vulnerable minorities from coast to coast to coast a lifeline by which they can begin to improve their lives, health and environments.

Colleagues, I urge you to support our colleague Senator McCallum. Support Bill C-226 and support the voiceless and underrepresented Canadians to whom the Senate has a particular duty of care.

In conclusion, Your Honour, I call for the question on Bill C-226. Thank you. Meegwetch.

Hon. Marilou McPhedran: I have a question for Senator Moodie, if that is allowed.

Senator Moodie, it was a very comprehensive speech, and I know it reflects extensive work by you and your team, and I thank you most sincerely.

I want to zero in on child poverty. Could you tell us a bit more about how this act and the strategy would accelerate, galvanize and inspire much more concrete action to eradicate child poverty in Canada?

Senator Moodie: The question you ask is so important, because it speaks to the entire strategy. How will the strategy do what it claims to want to do?

First of all, it allows us, as a country, to decide what we value and what we want for every child, and setting that principle down in writing and establishing it as our goal — the desired outcome — that we follow through with the information, frankly, we already have.

We have a lot of this information. There is a lot of civil society that can provide us with reams of data which tell us where we are failing, where things are actually working and what interventions have the most impact. If we can use an evaluative process that follows through on a declaration that starts with, “We want to eradicate child poverty,” then we can revisit and reassess as we go along from month to month and year to year in order to understand if it is working. What is working? How can we repurpose investments over here — that are not impactful — into the types of interventions that we know work? Then, we can accelerate, build momentum and move things along with real investment.

Many may actually say, “What is the cost of this?” I would propose that we save money by understanding where our investments work, and by pulling money from areas where, frankly, we are throwing mud against the wall and it is not sticking.

We need to understand that, and we need to bring in new policies that align so that we are constantly building, constantly refining and moving the needle more effectively — so we are distributing and upscaling what works in smaller areas and communities more broadly across our country, and we are allowing children to benefit from this well-organized, deliberate approach.

(On motion of Senator Martin, debate adjourned.)

[Translation]

On the Order:

Resuming debate on the motion of the Honourable Senator Housakos, seconded by the Honourable Senator Seidman:

That the Senate take note of:

(a)the deteriorating humanitarian crisis occurring in Nagorno-Karabakh as a result of Azerbaijan’s ongoing blockade of the Lachin corridor and increased military aggression against indigenous Armenian civilians in the region; and

(b)the actions of the Aliyev regime as being dictatorial, and in violation of international law; and

That the Senate call on the Government of Canada:

(a)to support the liberty of the people of Nagorno-Karabakh and their right to self-determination;

(b)to immediately impose sanctions against the Azeri regime;

(c)to demand the immediate reopening of the Lachin corridor and the release of Armenian Prisoners of War;

(d)to provide a significant aid package through NGOs to those Armenian people forcefully displaced from their indigenous land; and

(e)to protect the Armenian people of Nagorno-Karabakh through the presence of international peacekeeping forces.

(On motion of Senator Petitclerc, debate adjourned.)

[English]

On the Order:

Resuming debate on the inquiry of the Honourable Senator Boyer, calling the attention of the Senate to the positive contributions and impacts that Métis, Inuit, and First Nations have made to Canada, and the world.

Hon. Marilou McPhedran: Senator Gold, because I don’t belong to any Senate caucus I wasn’t able to ask this question of the President of the Public Service Commission at Committee of the Whole last December, so I’m pleased to be able to ask you the question.

Can you inform this chamber if whole-of-government policy directives regulating the use of non-disclosure agreements, or NDAs, in resolving employee grievances about harassment exist? Does the government track frequency, cost and other related metrics related to the usage of NDAs in departments, Crown corporations and other entities receiving federal funding?

Hon. Marilou McPhedran: Would the honourable senator take a question?

The Hon. Marilou McPhedran: Therefore, honourable senators, in amendment, I move:

That Bill C-29, as amended, be not now read a third time, but that it be further amended in the preamble, on page 1, by replacing lines 1 and 2 with the following:

“Whereas, since time immemorial, First Nations and Inuit peoples — and, post-contact, the Métis Nation — have thrived on and managed and governed”.

Thank you, meegwetch.

Hon. Marilou McPhedran: Honourable senators, I thank the Progressive Senate Group for my time to speak today. I want to speak to the escalating threats of nuclear strikes, and how senators may choose to respond.

In an article published today, Nobel Laureate Dr. John Polanyi issues a clarion call of warning that nuclear disarmament represents “the very best hope” for humanity. He cautions that despite:

. . . the dictum that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” we continue to plan for nuclear war. This is the source of our peril.

A recent The Hill Times article by the publisher emeritus termed this “a global suicide pact.” In fact, in 2022, nuclear states spent $83 billion on nuclear weapons — spending that has been steadily increasing year over year, with no resulting measurable improvement in our global security.

With this context, I am pleased to announce the launch of the first-ever Youth-Parliamentarian Nuclear Summit to be held 13 days from now here — on Parliament Hill — on November 20 to November 21, for high school-aged and university-aged youth across Canada who will be attending in person and online.

This summit will include interactive panels for parliamentarians, youth leaders, diplomats, Indigenous leaders and civil society leaders. Invited keynote speakers include Ambassador Maritza Chan, permanent representative to the UN in New York, and a young dynamic, diplomatic leader in nuclear disarmament; Setsuko Thurlow, the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize recipient, and Hibakusha/Hiroshima survivor; and renowned Canadian disarmament expert Dr. Jennifer Allen Simons, as well as my parliamentary co-host.

Summit participants will engage in an intergenerational multilateral dialogue across all aspects of nuclear policy, disarmament advocacy, climate justice, peace and security. These are intergenerational issues that will have compounding effects on youth.

I praise the hard work of co-organizers of this summit, which include Reverse the Trend Canada; The Simons Foundation Canada; Nuclear Age Peace Foundation; International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons; Mines Action Canada; Project Ploughshares; Canadians for a Nuclear Weapons Convention; Canadian Voice of Women for Peace; as well as my parliamentary co-hosts, Senator Kim Pate and MPs Lindsay Mathyssen, Heather McPherson and Elizabeth May.

In addition to the excellent work sessions, a parliamentary reception is organized for Monday, November 20, at 5 p.m. You are all enormously welcome.

Thank you, meegwetch.

Hon. Marilou McPhedran: This is my lucky day, Your Honour. Thank you. I have a question for Senator Gold.

Sustainable Development Technology Canada is a federally funded agency mandated to find, fund and foster Canadian innovation in the green/clean technology field, providing more than $1.5 billion to Canadian start-ups to date.

Unfortunately, it has also been rocked by allegations of financial mismanagement, conflicts of interest, workplace harassment and a volatile, toxic work environment. Canada’s Ministry of Innovation, Science and Economic Development ordered a review of the agency’s practices, which is now done.

Senator Gold, I was contacted by some potential whistleblowers with knowledge of this workplace who indicated that some staff were pressured to sign non-disclosure agreements, or NDAs, to conceal information about their negative experiences. Because the review has been described —

Hon. Marilou McPhedran: With appreciation to the Independent Senators Group, or ISG, and Senator Gold for allowing me time today, I rise as a feminist activist senator to pay tribute to the pioneering Québécois feminist the Honourable Monique Bégin, who passed away some six weeks ago.

In the words of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau:

[Translation]

In 1972, Ms. Bégin was elected as the Member of Parliament for the Montréal riding of Saint-Michel, making her one of the first three women from Québec to serve in the House of Commons. . . .

Ms. Bégin was a passionate advocate, who left a lasting mark on Canada.

Before she even took her seat in the Commons, Ms. Bégin rose to prominence as a pioneer of the feminist movement in Quebec.

In 1966, she was a signatory of the Fédération des femmes du Québec’s founding charter and became the organization’s first vice-president. The following year, she was appointed to the role of executive secretary of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada, whose 1970 report remains important to this day.

[English]

The Honourable Monique Bégin went on to have a distinguished career as Minister of National Revenue, then Minister of National Health and Welfare, bringing in both the child tax credit and then the Canadian Health Act. As one of only two women in cabinet during the 1980-82 era of constitutional renewal, Monique and her colleague the Honourable Judy Erola were protective of women’s equality rights in the draft Charter of Rights.

From personal experience, I can assure you that Monique quietly and effectively supported our activist efforts that protected the sex-equality guarantee in section 28 from the section 33 “notwithstanding” clause.

After her political career, Monique became a distinguished scholar, first as the Joint Chair of Women’s Studies at the University of Ottawa and Carleton University, followed by years as dean of Health Sciences. I reached out to her 20 years ago to ask if she would write the foreword to a book I co-authored about an unpopular subject, entitled Preventing Sexual Abuse of Patients: A Legal Guide for Health Care Professionals. Her endorsement helped to situate the book on curricula across Canada.

Her honorary degrees and awards are numerous: the Governor General’s Award in Commemoration of the Persons Case in 2017 and elevation to Companion of the Order of Canada last year. Her friend Deborah Davis wrote to me this morning to remind me that Monique was much more than her awards: she was a role model and an inspiration. She was generous in nurturing new generations. As I conclude, one of the first and most memorable dinner invitations I received as a senator was from Monique, who prepared a delicious repast shared with Senators Pamela Wallin and Nancy Ruth — it was quite the conversation.

[Translation]

You are a great woman, Monique, and we’ll meet again.

Hon. Marilou McPhedran: I shall be very brief. I want to speak in support of the concerns that have been set out very well today by Senator McCallum. She certainly speaks for me in the comments that she made.

I would ask all of us in responding to this point — and I realize this is something that will have to be ruled on by you, Your Honour — to think about the fact that every time we come into this chamber and begin a sitting, you start with a prayer. We are all part of that. I just want to remind us of the import of the comments made by Senator McCallum about the kind of representation that we have taken on as our responsibility — which takes time. The nature of this motion is to reduce time and opportunities.

The prayer that I’m referring to points out that we ask the following:

. . . let your spirit preside over our deliberations so that at this time assembled, we may serve ever better the cause of peace and justice in our land and throughout the world.

Thank you.

[Translation]

Hon. Marilou McPhedran: Would you take a question, please, Senator Tannas?

Hon. Marilou McPhedran: Honourable senators, hello, tansi.

As a senator from Manitoba, I acknowledge that I live on Treaty 1 territory, the traditional lands of the Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota, and Dene, and the homeland of the Métis Nation.

I also want to acknowledge that the Parliament of Canada is situated on unceded and unsurrendered Algonquin Anishinaabe territory.

[English]

Honourable senators, I rise today to speak to Bill C-22, the Canada disability benefit act, with appreciation to Minister Qualtrough and Senator Cotter, the bill’s sponsor here, for best efforts to shepherd it through the legislative process culminating in our review today.

Many parliamentarians understand how crucial this bill is. It is long overdue and deserves support for the millions of people with disabilities across Canada who live in poverty.

We can be proud of the thorough and thoughtful contributions made by members of the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology, or SOCI, and of the trust placed in us by colleagues in this chamber in their support for these amendments, which result in a stronger Bill C-22 returning to us today with all but one of our six amendments incorporated.

The accepted amendments include an appeal mechanism by which applicants can contest decisions about their eligibility to receive the benefit and the amounts to which they are entitled. Also adopted was the expanded list of factors that must be considered in the benefit calculation, among which are Canada’s poverty line, the costs created by systemic barriers to accessing work, the intersectional needs of applicants and Canada’s human rights obligations as they relate to the disability community.

The final amendments accepted are those that provide for an expedited implementation timeline for the benefit by requiring that all the regulations must begin to pay out under the act and be in place within 12 months of the new act’s coming into force date. These changes bolster this framework act by ensuring crucial implementation mechanisms rather than risking them to the uncertainty of regulations yet to be drafted.

One amendment has been rejected. I doubt Senator Gold intended to ghost me, but it was proposed by me on behalf of disability rights experts and organizations. Proposed for clause 9(c) of the bill, this amendment would have protected recipients of the Canada disability benefit act by preventing private insurance companies from deducting the amount of the benefit paid out under the act from payments made under long‑term disability policies.

These clawbacks by private insurance providers were not discussed in committee in the other place, but they were studied extensively when Bill C-22 was examined by the Senate’s Social Affairs Committee. The amendment to stop rich insurance companies from clawing back the benefit from poor people with disabilities was endorsed by over 40 legal aid clinics, community leaders, academics and disability advocacy groups. On the question of its constitutionality, every provincial trial lawyers’ association in Canada supported the amendment as viable in law.

Therefore, we have before us a bill that enables private insurance companies to claw back the new, publicly funded disability benefit regardless of whether Minister Qualtrough calls it a social benefit or not.

Many private insurance contracts are clear that they can set-off any government benefit, effectively subsidizing private insurers instead of providing additional financial support for members of the disability community as intended by the act.

Colleagues, concerns about industry clawbacks are not far-fetched or hypothetical. Clawbacks are happening now to available public benefits. Old Age Security benefits, for example, are already explicitly set-off from long-term disability payments by many private insurance companies while similar deductions have been made from insurance payouts to recipients of the dependent benefit under the Canada Pension Plan, or CPP.

Further, the courts have sided with private insurers. For example, in a 2008 class action, the court affirmed the legality of deductions from long-term disability payments of this nature absent any provision in either the policy or in the legislation prohibiting it, and private insurers leaped to enforce those deductions through litigation against disabled recipients.

For example, in a case involving the State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company, the appellant’s insurance company sought to enforce the deductibility of the CPP dependent benefit on the basis of the 2008 class action ruling. And in Industrial Alliance Insurance and Financial Services Inc. v. Brine, the private insurer sought to enforce deductions from a long-term insurance policy in the amount of benefits received by the policyholder under both the Canada Pension Plan and the Public Service Pension Plan.

Time does not allow me to list the many other cases wherein private insurers went to court to claw back payouts under long‑term disability policies premised on the policyholder’s receipt of public benefits. The rejected amendment prohibiting clawbacks of the new benefit by private insurers would have done what the courts have said needed to be done in order to protect recipients and ensure that benefits are received by those for whom they are intended rather than function to subsidize private insurers.

The time to respond to this concern is sooner rather than later. When the CPP dependent benefit offset was challenged in 2008, industry relied on the fact that its premiums were adjusted on the assumption that it could offset CPP benefits but held that without the availability of that offset, insurance premiums would undoubtedly rise. No such adjustment can presently be relied on by industry in relation to the Canada disability benefit, as premiums taking the new benefit into account have yet to be calculated.

Concerns were raised at the Social Affairs Committee and in this place as to the constitutionality of a provision that engages with the insurance industry by purporting to regulate insurance contracting as falling outside the jurisdiction of the federal parliament. The fact is that such a provision is not unprecedented in Canadian benefit regimes. For forty years, the Merchant Seaman Compensation Act, for example, has protected recipients with wording closely similar to that proposed in the rejected amendment. Forty years, honourable senators, with no court challenges, constitutional or otherwise.

Another relevant precedent can be found in the 2020 reference regarding the Genetic Non-Discrimination Act, which grappled with the constitutionality of a federal legislative scheme to regulate aspects of insurance contracting by preventing private insurers from requiring genetic test results as a precondition for health insurance eligibility. In reviewing the legislative scheme, the court determined that its overall goal was not regulation of the insurance industry per se, but rather the prevention of genetic discrimination in the provision of goods and services such that the insurance provisions at issue comprised only part of a broader regulatory scheme and were necessary in order to preserve the purpose of the federal legislation. Sound familiar?

Absent the act’s protective insurance-related measures, the scheme’s purpose would be seriously undermined, justifying the minor incursion into a matter traditionally falling within the ambit of provincial jurisdiction.

These real-life cases support the viability of a provision like the rejected amendment prohibiting set-offs by private insurers of payments under the Canada disability benefit act. It is clear in the act that the Canada disability benefit is designed to be supplementary for those who qualify under the act.

The legislative purpose of making a supplementary sum available to eligible recipients is undermined if private insurers are permitted to correspondingly claw back payments under their policies because, in practice, the recipient is left with substantially the same amount they were receiving before introduction of the benefit. Absent this simple operational protection, the bill before us today will effectively indemnify private insurers and deny the intended recipients the benefit.

Lifting disabled people out of poverty is the stated fundamental purpose of this bill. In this regard, it will become a mockery of Minister Qualtrough’s promise to disabled people, who desperately need and deserve the Canada disability benefit. The exclusion of this amendment to prohibit benefit clawbacks by private insurers is a choice the Trudeau government has made: to not ensure that certain eligible recipients under the act receive the full supplemental benefit promised to them.

Time will tell how many private insurers will exploit this loophole given to them, and perhaps some day Parliament will have a second chance to bring justice to those disabled recipients who are now exposed to the legal force of rich private insurers.

But let’s not pretend that the real cost will be borne by poor, disabled recipients who would be made to suffer because this government chose not to protect them. They will suffer, and the cost will be borne by them.

Last week, Senator Pate and I received a letter from Mr. Duncan Young, whose standard of living is determined largely by a private insurer. I share the following with his permission:

I am not one of the many selfless volunteers who advocate on behalf of the disabled. Neither am I an activist or lobbyist for any such person or group. I am simply an “average” 55 year-old working-class Canadian, who happens to love his job, and is looking forward to working at it for as long as he can. Or at least I was...

3 years ago, I received a diagnosis of spinocerebellar ataxia 3 (SCA3): an extremely rare, hereditary, neurological disorder that causes the cerebellum to atrophy, thus completely destroying a person’s motor skills; impairing walking, talking, swallowing, bladder control, etc.

It is progressive, has no known treatment(s) to abate its development-and there is no cure. Of note, an affected person typically does not present symptoms until somewhere between ages 40-55: Meaning I (and most like me) are enjoying a full life, still in its ascendency, when suddenly your brain will not allow your legs to form the motion necessary to let you run to catch the bus, or let your fingertips stay still long enough to do up the tiny buttons on your button-down collar.

Let me be clear: Without that amendment enshrined in statute, as worded, I will receive $0 from the creation of the benefit. It would be-in its entirety-an eligible clawback according to my LTD provider’s contract. In short, the only beneficiary of such a benefit would be the shareholders of a publicly-traded insurance company-while I continue to slip below the poverty line. Both points here are not conjecture: They are quantitative facts.

So now you know exactly, unquestionably and with detail, exactly what the passing of C-22 without this amendment will mean to myself and every disabled person in similar positions: Nothing.

I’m so sorry, Mr. Young, but at this stage we must hope that Minister Qualtrough and this government can somehow turn this around by actively convincing provinces and territories to ban private insurance clawbacks of the Canada disability benefit within their respective jurisdictional authority. Such advocacy should not be left, again, to the disability community to take on alone.

Honourable senators, we all know this disability benefit is long overdue and desperately needed. The disability community in Canada has advocated for stronger and more reliable income support for far longer than this bill has been in contemplation by Parliament.

I am grateful for the many insightful comments and valuable contributions to the development of this bill from community leaders and advocates, both in committee and various other capacities. Mindful of time, I can acknowledge only a few. I extend appreciation for the legal expertise provided to the Social Affairs Committee by witnesses who brought the clawback to our attention: David Lepofsky, Robert Lattanzio, Steven Muller and Hart Schwartz. For the sake of those eligible recipients who are unlikely to ever see a penny of the Canada disability benefit, I fervently hope that those experts will continue to be vital contributors to the minister’s promised consultations to fill in the framework legislation.

Let us now pass this bill into law before we leave for the summer. Thank you, meegwetch.

Hon. Marilou McPhedran: My question is to Senator Gold, please. It relates to the follow-up to Bill C-65.

In 2008, Canada committed to addressing the pervasive problem of workplace violence and harassment by enacting Bill C-65 with new reporting requirements in the Canada Labour Code, such as tracking occurrences of sexual violence, discrimination and harassment in federally regulated workplaces, including in this place for the first time.

Given the dearth of Canadian data on workplace harassment and violence and the severe effects on the affected workers, who are disproportionately women, members of visible minorities, persons with disabilities and gender-diverse people, this new law promised to shine a light on the nature and prevalence by requiring federal employers to submit annual reports to the minister and by committing the Minister of Labour to table annual reports in both houses of Parliament, summarizing the information submitted by employers. However, annual employer monitoring and reporting was delayed nearly three years after Bill C-65 became law.

As the five-year anniversary approaches since the bill came into force, and two employer reporting cycles have now come and gone, Canadians have yet to see the publication of any report by the Minister of Labour on the results of monitoring efforts so essential for strengthening harassment and violence prevention efforts and holding perpetrators accountable.

Senator Gold, why has the government delayed addressing the prevalence of federal workplace harassment and violence, in particular, sexual misconduct? When can Canadians expect to see the Minister of Labour’s overdue reports? Will the minister’s reports note if non-disclosure agreements have been secretly used to settle sexual misconduct complaints?

Hon. Marilou McPhedran: I have a question. Will Senator Omidvar take it?

Senator Omidvar: Of course.

Hon. Marilou McPhedran: Senator Plett, would you take a question from me?

Hon. Marilou McPhedran: Honourable senators, hello, bonjour, tansi.

As a senator for Manitoba, I acknowledge that I live on Treaty 1 territory, the traditional lands of the Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji‑Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and the homeland of the Métis Nation.

I acknowledge that the Parliament of Canada is situated on unceded and unsurrendered Algonquin Anishinaabe territory.

[English]

I rise today to speak in support of Bill C-226, introduced in the other place by Member of Parliament Elizabeth May, Co-leader of the Green Party of Canada, and sponsored here by my esteemed Manitoba colleague Senator M.J. McCallum.

Honourable senators, it is heartening to note that this is one of the rare private member’s bills that received government support, as you heard when Senator Gold spoke in favour earlier this week.

It is my hope that I can best voice my support for this bill — which asks the Minister of Environment and Climate Change to develop a national strategy to counter environmental racism — by noting the ways in which passage of this bill will bring Canada more into alignment with existing international obligations including the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Let us recall that apologies have been issued by Canada to Indigenous peoples, and now we must see actions to match. Bill C-226 could well galvanize such actions.

Having reviewed other contributions to this debate, the international context has certainly been mentioned, but I hope it will be helpful if I add some more detail to this aspect of why Bill C-226 is so deserving of our support.

Allow me to begin to observe why alignment with and implementation of our international human rights obligations is important and relevant to this bill on countering environmental racism.

To quote the Institute for Research on Public Policy just yesterday:

While Canada has long had a stellar reputation internationally for protecting human rights, our domestic track record is more dismal than that reputation would suggest. Time and again, decision-makers have failed to implement United Nations human rights treaties and recommendations at home on issues including the rights of Indigenous peoples, racism, gender equality, refugees and migrants, disability, housing, law enforcement and corporate accountability.

At the core of Canada ratifying any international rights treaty is our constitutionally entrenched commitment to equality rights, as well as the practical outcome that people in Canada can not only know and claim their rights, but — through implementation — they can also live their rights.

In the international context, Canada has recognized various human rights implicated by hazardous substances and wastes through its ratification or accession of seven United Nations human rights treaties. Under these treaties, Canada has specific obligations. These obligations, assumed voluntarily by Canada in signing and ratifying such treaties, clearly set out commitments to protect, respect and fulfill universal human rights, including the right to life and dignity; health; security of the person and bodily integrity; safe food and water; adequate housing; and safe and healthy working conditions.

Canada has specific obligations regarding the human rights of all people in Canada — all underpinned by protection from discrimination. These rights and obligations combine to create a duty for Canada to counter environmental racism.

In Bill C-226, we see a practical, measured way for Canada to take some big steps forward in bringing Canada more into alignment with existing international human rights obligations.

With the bill’s short title, national strategy respecting environmental racism and environmental justice act, it is set out in this bill that the national strategy must include measures to examine the link between race, socio-economic status and environmental risk; collect information and statistics relating to the location of environmental hazards; collect information and statistics relating to negative health outcomes in communities that have been affected by environmental racism; and assess the administration and enforcement of environmental laws in each province. It must also include measures to address environmental racism in relation to possible amendments to federal laws, policies and programs; the involvement of community groups in environmental policy-making; compensation for individuals or communities; ongoing funding for affected communities; and the access of affected communities to clean air and water.

In his 2020 report on Canada, the UN Special Rapporteur on the implications for human rights of the environmentally sound management and disposal of hazardous substances and wastes — after visiting a number of racialized communities, and meeting with government representatives in British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec — noted:

Canada has obligations regarding the rights to information, participation, access to justice and remedies, and specific obligations regarding the rights of Indigenous peoples, children, different genders, workers, minorities, migrants, and persons with disabilities, among other vulnerable groups . . . .

Together, these rights and obligations create a duty for Canada to prevent exposure to toxic and otherwise hazardous substances. The only way to protect against violations of the above human rights is to prevent exposure. . . . However, businesses have critical responsibilities to prevent exposure as well.

To respect my time boundaries today, I’ll limit references to former UN special rapporteur Baskut Tuncak in his report on Canada, but I do want to note that he acknowledged that Canada has ratified all international chemicals and wastes treaties, and is in the process of moving toward adhering to the Basel Ban Amendment to the Basel Convention, which Canada adopted in 1992, with the primary objective of protecting human health and environments from the adverse effects of waste. If Canada respects and implements the Basel Ban Amendment, hazardous waste can no longer be exported to other countries from Canada.

The UN special rapporteur also noted numerous concerns; for example, he noted the “jurisdictional quagmire” faced by Indigenous peoples — where reserves often fall between the cracks of federal and provincial jurisdiction, posing a risk for unregulated exposures. For example, throughout Canada, provincial drinking water quality standards are not applicable on reserves, and federal standards are not legally binding, as they have yet to be set. As stated by the UN special rapporteur, “Jurisdictional separation is not an excuse for shortcomings by the Government in taking prompt action to address toxic exposures.”

He also noted:

. . . marginalized groups, and Indigenous peoples in particular, find themselves on the wrong side of a toxic divide, subject to conditions that would not be acceptable elsewhere in Canada.

Honourable colleagues, environmental racism has two main components: distributive spatial injustice and procedural injustice. The first is concerned primarily with the inequitable location of industrial polluters and other environmentally hazardous projects, and the second focuses on institutional mechanisms and policies that perpetuate inequitable distribution of those activities.

Close to home for me, year after year, Indigenous leaders in Manitoba present well-documented actions of Manitoba Hydro that — as they have noted — show how these two components of injustice operate in systemic ways to the detriment and, far too often, the destruction of First Nations communities.

According to Wa Ni Ska Tan, an alliance of Manitoba First Nations:

Manitoba Hydro has profited for over a hundred years at the expense of its First Nation partners. It pushes for the development of devastating hydroelectric mega projects to make millions of dollars exporting power to the United States, and Indigenous communities pay the price a thousand times over. New partnerships . . . are more of the same, with communities being saddled with millions of dollars in debt — on top of cultural and environmental costs — for a generating station that provides little or no economic benefit.

Colleagues, there is a cruel irony in the fact that many First Nations families report high electricity bills — often upward of $500 per month. This seems particularly unfair, as the power is generated from their now-destroyed ancestral lands.

In short, in Manitoba, Indigenous traditional livelihoods and ways of being are often undermined or destroyed by environmental racism. For example, Senator McCallum has spoken here about the negative impact of “man camps” — how the influx of external workers for hydroelectric developments can lead to increased sexual exploitation, substance abuse and social disruption, exacerbated by incidents marked by racism and sexism that have led to violence and loss.

In concluding his report on Canada, the UN special rapporteur made a number of recommendations that are addressed positively in Bill C-226. I will note one that relates directly to the adoption of this bill: “Establish a sound environmental justice framework based on the principles of procedural justice, geographic justice, and social justice . . . .”

Colleagues, given the importance of the issues discussed, and being conscious of how time will become more limited for non‑government bills as we navigate the precious — and pressured — final weeks before we rise in June, I now invite your active support for this bill. Let’s send it to committee for continued study as soon as we possibly can.

Thank you. Meegwetch.

(On motion of Senator Martin, debate adjourned.)

[Translation]

The Senate proceeded to consideration of the eighth report of the Standing Committee on Internal Economy, Budgets and Administration, entitled Amendments to the Senate Administrative Rules, presented in the Senate on May 16, 2023.

Hon. Marilou McPhedran: Thank you, Madam Speaker. May I add both my congratulations and my great pleasure to see you in that chair.

My question is to Senator Gold. Senator Gold, I’m compelled to raise serious concerns about the escalating role of nuclear weapons in international affairs, as evidenced by the veiled threats and aggressive military posturing of both Russia and North Korea. Just weeks ago, the Washington Declaration issued by U.S. President Biden and South Korean President Yoon established the Nuclear Consultative Group and the Extended Deterrence Strategy and Consultation Group, both designed, we’re told, to operationalize nuclear and strategic planning. Notably, both are signatories of the UN nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

This tilts our world toward normalization of nuclear warfare. This is horrifying.

As senators know, the G7 summit will soon convene in Hiroshima, a city bearing the indelible scars of nuclear devastation where only a few hibakusha — remaining survivors of the World War II nuclear strikes — still live. Instead of progressing to realizing the vision of a nuclear-free world, the U.S., South Korea and other states, including Canada and NATO members, are stepping away from the promises of safety and peace, instead threatening deployment of nuclear devastation.

Senator Gold, what is the government doing to lead diplomatic efforts to denuclearize the Korean peninsula? Will Canada work within the G7 to condemn nuclear threats and promote disarmament in line with the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and the disarmament treaty?

Hon. Marilou McPhedran: Would you take a question, Senator Tannas?

Hon. Marilou McPhedran: Senator Gold, After more than eight years of armed conflict in Yemen, damning evidence reveals human rights violations and breaches of international humanitarian law by all warring parties, including the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which has led a military intervention in Yemen since March 2015 and has conducted widespread attacks against civilian targets.

Since the beginning of the war, Canada has exported more than $8 billion in weapons to Saudi Arabia, including the types of arms deployed in battle. Since I previously questioned the government through you, multiple reports by expert international monitors have specifically denounced Canada’s continued arms exports as perpetuating the crisis.

Through an access-to-information request, there was recently a report, internal to Global Affairs, that further documented that Canada discusses internally the economic value of continuing with this practice with Saudi Arabia. These arms transfers violate Canada’s obligation under the Arms Trade Treaty to which this government acceded in 2019. Under Article 11, Canada is obligated to take measures to prevent diversion of its arms exports to third countries. While other countries have ceased their arms exports, Saudi Arabia is now the top non-U.S. destination for Canadian weapons.

Senator Gold, why won’t Canada comply with its obligations under the Arms Trade Treaty by ending its arms exports to Saudi Arabia?