- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- NDP
- Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke
- British Columbia
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $148,586.11
- Government Page
- May/10/24 12:04:44 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the Liberal government promised to remove criminal records for simple possession of drugs for more than 250,000 Canadians. After two years, we are still waiting for the government to act, because the Liberals are saying it is hard to do. What is hard is not being able to get employment or housing, or to travel to see loved ones, because of a criminal record. These records disproportionately impact indigenous and racialized Canadians, and all those living in poverty.
Will the Liberals keep their promise and meet the November legal deadline to make sure all of the simple possession records are removed?
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- Mar/21/24 4:43:49 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, since the Conservatives are constantly raising the costs, my question is whether the hon. members have had the same experience I have had.
I have had constituents come to me and say that they have been quoted a 100% increase in their fire insurance. They have come to me and said that they cannot get flood insurance and that the insurance companies say it is because of climate change.
While we talk about the carbon tax as increasing costs, I find that my constituents are facing far higher costs as a result of climate change than anything that is going on with the carbon tax. Of course, there is no rebate when insurance premiums go up by 100% or people cannot get flood insurance at all.
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- Feb/27/24 12:50:40 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member is the chair of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts. Does the committee have any plans to investigate accountability for the Phoenix pay system? It was planned by the Conservatives to cost $310 million and now has cost more than $2.6 billion, with more than 200,000 public servants still facing problems with their pay. Is the committee going to investigate that Conservative boondoggle?
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- Feb/16/24 10:56:42 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, like that of the hon. member, my riding is rapidly growing with lots of young families. What people are finding, whether they are talking about setting up a new public sector child care centre or a non-profit, even as new entrepreneurs, is that they lack the workers.
What is the government going to do to make sure that we increase the compensation that would help attract more people into this important field?
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- Feb/16/24 10:43:56 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I certainly share the importance of the $10-a-day child care for many families in my riding, but the problem of course still exists that there is not enough child care available.
I wonder whether the member would agree with me that one of the things we also have to do is make sure that those who work in the child care sector, primarily women and quite often those who are new Canadians, are properly compensated for their skills and for the hard work they do each and every day.
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- Feb/15/24 3:27:45 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is very clear that there is a class, racial and geographic aspect to being able to access mental health services. We have a problem for people in rural and remote communities. We have a problem in indigenous communities. We also have a problem for those who cannot pay for their services.
As a way of also attacking this problem, would the member support making mental health services fully a part of the Canada health care plan?
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- Jan/30/24 12:07:54 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, this is a difficult moment for me, not because I had to find a new seat near the exit, not because it took me two tries to get to Ottawa because of the fog and not because I come from an Irish family of criers, but because it is really a moving moment for me.
I want to thank the member for LaSalle—Émard—Verdun for the friendship we have developed in the House. He has a great record of accomplishment, about which he spoke, but I want to point out something someone asked me on the plane last night, and that was how I could go to work in such a negative place. My response was that, unfortunately, all people see is question period, which is theatre, where people have other agendas they are pursuing, but they do not see the hard work that goes on behind the scenes, the co-operation and the friendships that are built. I really meant that, and the member for LaSalle—Émard—Verdun is a great example of this.
I made a quick list, because I had 15-minutes notice that I had this opportunity, on the number of things he and I worked on together and his willingness to take action to ensure we improved the justice system in Canada, in particular for indigenous people and the work he did on Bill C-5 to reduce mandatory minimums, which fall very hard on the most marginalized in our society.
He mentioned the conversion therapy ban. His work with the leader of the Conservatives and all parties meant we were able to pass that ban unanimously, something which I remain very proud of the House for doing.
He worked on Bill C-40, with which we are not quite finished, on the miscarriages of justice commission. Again, miscarriages of justice fall very hard on the most marginalized, particularly indigenous women. My pledge to him is that I will work as hard as I can to get that done, hopefully by the end of this month. We only have a couple of days, but I think we can get that done.
He also helped shepherd medical assistance in dying legislation through the House when I was initially the NDP critic. This was the most difficult issue in my 13 years here because of the very strong feelings on all sides of the issue. The minister always demonstrated his ability to listen, to be empathetic and to try to find solutions that would keep us all together on this very important issue about reducing suffering at the end of life, not just for the person but for the families of people who need that assistance at the end.
One last one is that I approached the minister about the publication ban on survivors of sexual assault and how many of them felt stifled by the publication ban. He asked what we could do to fix it. Eventually he agreed to add the ability to lift the publication ban in Bill S-12, and it came to the House. This was an example of how, when I approached him with an idea and a problem, he always looked for solutions and a way to bring us all together.
I know he will continue to contribute to Canada once he leaves the House, though I am not sure in exactly what way or if he is sure in exactly what way. He is one of the finest members of Parliament I have ever had the privilege to work with, and I thank him for his contributions here.
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- Dec/14/23 11:30:15 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I always enjoy working with the member, and her questions are always as they are today: to the point.
One of the concerns I have about the bill is the 18-month delay before its implementation. New Democrats are supporting the bill at second reading so it can go to committee, where there would be a fulsome debate. I too am hoping we can convince the government that the 18-month delay is too long.
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Mr. Speaker, I am particularly pleased and proud to be able to rise in this debate on Bill C-58.
It should go without saying in this country that workers deserve respect, fair wages and safe working conditions. However, success in achieving those things has depended largely on the free collective bargaining process. The success of every business, every enterprise and every government program depends on all the workers involved: Those who clean, those who provide security, those who drive and those who provide child care. None of our economy functions without all of us working together. In fact, I would speculate that if the top CEOs and directors stayed home for a day, their businesses would continue to function, because workers would carry on providing those services to the economy and to the public.
However, we should also recognize today that increasing inequality will eventually undermine social stability in this country. We have had the spectacle of Galen Weston, a CEO, appearing before a House of Commons committee and saying it is “reasonable” that he earns, in one year, 431 times his average worker's salary. I would say to Mr. Weston that it is reasonable only in some other universe than the one the rest of us live in. In fact, it is actually even out of scale for the top 100 CEOs, who only, on average, earn 243 times what their average worker does.
A study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives demonstrated to us that, in a typical year, and we have a new year coming up, before the end of the second day, the top 100 CEOs will earn more than their average worker in the entire year. By my own calculations, by the end of that year, the CEOs will have earned more than their average worker will earn in a lifetime. Therefore, we have a serious problem with growing inequality in this country, and one of the only ways that we can, on a practical basis, see progress is through free collective bargaining.
We face huge challenges in our society, and I could spend time talking about the challenge of climate change. We face huge challenges, as I said, in inequality. We face all kinds of challenges in our workforce, with labour shortages. How do we address them? We certainly are a wealthy and well-educated country. We have a dedicated workforce, and if we all work together, and everyone pays their fair share, we can meet those challenges. We know what we need to do.
I would cite the NDP dental care plan as an example of how we can meet the challenges we face. This is a health challenge, in particular, for many seniors I hear from in my riding. They worked very hard all their lives but did not necessarily have a job in which their health benefits continued into retirement, if they had them at all. I have had many people approach my office to say that the quality of their life is really impaired by their inability to afford dental care. How is this relevant? If everybody pays their fair share, we can afford dental care for all Canadians.
Some of my Conservative friends have said, “Well, you always support spending. Why is that? You will just support deficits.” I try to correct them by saying that, as a New Democrat, I do not support deficits; I support fair taxation. If we apply the principles of fair taxation, including a wealth tax in this country, we can afford to take care of each other, which is an important principle.
However, where did that principle of taking care of each other come from? It came from trade unions and collective bargaining, where workers joined together and said, “Let us not have some of us succeed at the cost of the rest of us in the workplace.” They negotiated contracts that provided fair benefits, fair wages and better working conditions for everybody in the bargaining unit, and the employers could not just reward those they favoured in the workplace.
I will tell members a door knocking story from an election campaign. I went out one Saturday morning, too early for me and obviously too early for some of my constituents. A gentleman came to the door and said, “Oh, you're the New Democrat. I can't support you.” I said, “Why can't you?” He said, “You're way too close to the unions.” I said, “What day is it?” He said, “What do you mean, what day is it?” I asked again, “What day is it?” He said, “It's Saturday”, and then he looked at me and said, “I see where you're going with this.” I said, “Yes, you're home on the weekend because collective bargaining got people weekends off, which made it a standard in our society.” He said, “Oh, next you're going to talk to me about health care and all kinds of other things unions got.” I said, “That's absolutely what I'm going to talk to you about.” He said, “I still can't vote for you”, and shut the door. I did not succeed in convincing him that day, but even he understood that a lot of the benefits he enjoyed as a non-union worker came from the work of trade unions.
Why am I giving all these examples when we are talking about anti-scab legislation? We know the importance of collective bargaining. We also know, if we stop to think for a minute, that most collective bargaining processes do not lead to strikes or lockouts; the vast majority of them do not. I have seen various statistics. In some sectors, up to 90% of contracts are completed successfully without any work stoppage at all.
What happens when replacement workers get involved? Again, the studies will tell us quite clearly that if replacement workers are hired by an employer, two things happen. One is that the strike, on average, will last six times longer than if replacement workers were not involved. The second thing the use of replacement workers does is to introduce an element of hostility and division in the community, because workers who are on strike see replacement workers as a threat to their livelihood. Quite often, replacement workers are hired through employment agencies or other ways in which they have no idea that they are being sent into such a position of conflict as a replacement worker.
What I think is really good about the legislation is that it would bank this practice. British Columbia and Quebec have already had this kind of legislation for years. Of course, the NDP has been trying to get it introduced at the federal level. We have introduced a bill eight times in the last 15 years. The last time we introduced it, in 2016, both the Liberals and the Conservatives voted against anti-scab legislation.
The Conservative Party leader likes to talk about working people and how he is a friend of working people. I would say that the bill gives him a chance to demonstrate that concretely. His previous record does not show that. His party voted against minimum wages. His party, I guess I would say, has never seen back-to-work legislation it did not like. The record is clear on one side. If the Conservatives want to change that record, the legislation before us gives them an opportunity to demonstrate that they really are friends of workers and friends of progress, in terms of our economy.
Who are the workers most affected by the use of replacement workers? I am going to make a strange argument here, but quite often it is actually the non-union workers, because it is unionized companies and unionized sectors that set the standard that employers have to meet, even if those standards are not legislated. When we talk about the people who work in the lowest-paid, non-union jobs, they would actually be protected by the legislation as well, because it would allow unions to have shorter work stoppages and to negotiate better conditions, which would eventually spread through our economy.
Once again, I am back to the point I want to make. We hear a lot about how society and Parliament in Canada are suddenly dysfunctional. I do not believe that is true. I believe what we have are the choices that we are making. We make choices in the economy. It is not inevitable that we have great inequality. It is not inevitable that we have homelessness in our society. We make policy choices that have real outcomes that disadvantage many Canadians. We can make better choices and we can make different choices.
When we are talking about whether the House of Commons can do that, if the House of Commons appears dysfunctional to people, I believe that it is currently the result of choices being made by one party in the House to make the House of Commons appear dysfunctional and to make sure, as the party's leader declared, that we cannot get anything done anything in the House. He said he is going to grind the House to a halt, and we have seen him trying to do that. What is the impact of that on workers? It means we cannot get to legislation like the bill before us. It means we cannot get to a fair bargaining process for workers in the federal sector across the country. I represent a riding where there are lots of workers in the federally regulated sector. I know that this is important to them because they know it would shorten labour disputes and result in less hostility around the picket lines.
One last thing I want to talk about is that the improvement this legislation would make over what exists in B.C. and Quebec is that it considers the issue of remote work. One of the challenges we have now is that, in many industries, if there is a picket line, there is no need for employers to get someone to actually cross a physical line; they can hire people to work remotely. The federal legislation would actually be an improvement over what exists in British Columbia and Quebec, and I look forward to being able to vote in favour of it.
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- Dec/11/23 5:42:55 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the member could comment on the question that I think perplexes many of us, which is this: Why, having debated this concurrence motion in June, do we have it back before the House again today? Does he know of any situation in Afghanistan that has changed significantly or of any reason we would be debating this for a second time when apparently everyone in the House agrees on this motion?
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- Dec/11/23 5:13:52 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, my question is really about whether the member for Edmonton Strathcona is as perplexed as I am when the Conservatives today are saying that women and girls internationally are so important. I do not remember any initiatives from the Conservatives for their opposition days, when they could have made this a topic, in their demands for special debates or in the proposals they put before Parliament that would actually support women and girls internationally.
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- Oct/24/22 6:18:04 p.m.
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- Re: Bill S-5
Madam Speaker, I appreciate the member's positive comments on the bill, but I think she may know, as others do, that one of the things I really want to see is mandatory labelling of heavy metals and toxic chemicals on consumer products, which is not in the bill at present. As I have referred to several times in this debate, we found that in dollar stores, lots of the products that have been tested contain heavy metals and toxic chemicals.
Would the member's party be willing to consider amendments that would make mandatory labelling of these consumer products available to parents so they can decide what they are going to expose their families to?
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- Nov/27/23 5:39:55 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I wonder whether the hon. member shares with me my confidence that the new bill would do a better job than those in both British Columbia and Quebec, in that it attempts to address the question that is important in areas where the federal government has jurisdiction of remote work, especially in telecommunications.
I wonder whether she shares the optimism that the bill would help address the use of replacement workers working from home.
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Madam Speaker, of course, I am very much a supporter of free trade with Ukraine and anything else we can do to help a democracy stand up against an invasion of its territory.
I am a little concerned by the Conservatives saying that their support for Ukraine is unequivocal and then saying that it has limits, and that they seem concerned about the cost. There seems to be a bit of a contradiction in the speech, saying there is unequivocal support and then saying that we have to know how much it costs before that support is unequivocal.
I know that the government and New Democrats certainly stand with Ukraine. We do not want to offer any hope to Russia that we are somehow going to abandon Ukraine, which I am afraid the member's speech did toward the end.
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise in support of Bill C-316 at second reading. This is a bill that would amend the Department of Canadian Heritage Act to require the minister of heritage to maintain the court challenges program. In other words, it would simply take an existing program and entrench it in legislation.
Why do we have to have something to entrench an existing program in legislation? It is because the Conservatives, twice before, have eliminated the court challenges program. I do not necessarily believe there will be a future Conservative government, but the fear is that a future government would be able, in the absence of this legislation, to simply eliminate this program without coming back to Parliament. Therefore, this is an important change.
As always, the Liberals have done the minimum here. There are some other things we could have done to support the court challenges program. As a Parliament, we could expand its mandate because, right now, it is severely limited to only minority language rights and equality rights under section 15. There have been many calls from the legal community to expand the mandate of this program so it could apply to other cases where, frankly, the government has not taken leadership in protecting rights but where people lack the resources to bring these cases themselves. Court challenges can take years. They can cost literally hundreds of thousands of dollars.
What this program does is level the legal playing field for those who want to defend their rights against the government or against abuse by others in Canadian society. This program has been in existence, off and on, for 30 years, but it has played a very important role in helping defend women's rights, indigenous rights and the rights of other marginalized Canadians, so it is important that we make sure this program endures.
The program was created in 1978 on the issue of minority language rights. When the Charter was adopted, it was expanded just a tiny bit to add equality rights. The program was cancelled by the Conservatives in 1992 before being brought back by the Liberals in 1994, only to be cut again by the Conservatives in 2006. Then we had a big gap. In 2015, both the Liberals and the New Democrats campaigned to restore the program. The justice committee, in 2017, recommended not only that this be entrenched in law, but also that the mandate be expanded. That part is missing from this bill, but in 2018, the program was restarted.
Let me give some examples of kinds of things this program has done. It financed the case that resulted in ending discrimination related to access to what we used to call “maternity benefits” under what was then the UI act. It helped establish what is now known as the rape shield law, which prevents the accused from using the sexual history of a sexual assault complainant as a defence.
The program funded the cases that resulted in restricting access to victims' personal records, such as counselling records, in sexual assault cases. Again, this ruling would not have happened otherwise because women who have been the victims of sexual assault do not have the resources to bring forward this kind of case and fight it through court. Therefore, the Women's Legal Education & Action Fund, LEAF, applied to the program and received funding, which resulted in this very important decision.
One more example is that sex-based discrimination under the Employment Insurance Act for part-time employees who are women was ended as a result of the case. Again, it was brought by LEAF with funding from the court challenges program. We have a very strong history of defence of women's rights.
There are a couple more cases I could provide, but a favourite of mine, as a gay man, is Egan v. Canada in 1995, where two gay men who had been in an intimate relationship for 30 years were denied old age security benefits because they did not fit the definition of a spouse. There was a case, this time by the Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto, taken to court to say that this was unfair because they had been a couple and Egan had paid into these benefits, including to old age security, Canada pension and things like that. This established equal spousal rights in the time before equal marriage.
In one last case, Daniels v. Canada in 2016, it was established that the status of Métis and non-status Indians under the Indian Act were protected. This was brought by the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples, who, again, did not have great resources to spend literally hundreds of thousands of dollars on lawyers.
What is really clear is that there is broad support in the legal community for this program, including and especially in the advocacy of the Canadian Bar Association. There are certain precedents, as I mentioned, about the mandate not being broad enough. Cindy Blackstock and certain disability advocates have demonstrated why we need to expand that mandate so that cases of people with disabilities and of aboriginal women could more easily get into court.
I am going to take a minute to talk about recent events, which I think point to upcoming challenges to the rights of the 2SLGBTQI+ community and particularly to those of transgender and gender-diverse Canadians, who are among the most marginalized Canadians and those with the fewest resources.
Hate crimes against what I like to call the queer community, in reclaiming language, are up. They are up shockingly high. The official figures of those reported to the police show a 64% increase in one year in hate crimes directed against the community. Hate crime data from the police does not actually separate out crimes against trans folks, but a sampling that has been done by academics found that, first of all, hate crimes against the queer community, and particularly the trans community, are more likely to be violent. In the case of gender-diverse people, 80% of hate crimes involve violence. This is where government policies, particularly of certain provincial governments, are fuelling the hate, which has direct results of violence in the community.
I want to talk about the anti-trans school policies in Saskatchewan and New Brunswick for just a minute, because I think the trans and gender-diverse communities are going to want to make sure there is a court challenge to these policies. Without a program like the court challenges program, this would not happen. In August, Saskatchewan announced policy changes requiring parental consent for trans students under the age of 16 to be called by their chosen name and pronoun at school. We do not ask parents whether “William” can be “Billy”, but somehow when it comes to trans kids and their identity, we are creating in Saskatchewan a special bar to using names and pronouns that reinforce the student's identity. The policy was quickly challenged by the University of Regina's pride centre. After a hearing, an injunction was granted that paused the implementation of the policy. The same day, Premier Scott Moe announced he would invoke the notwithstanding clause, and he called an emergency session of the Saskatchewan legislature to enact Bill 137, which amends the education act and includes the notwithstanding clause.
A government used what was really the nuclear option in law to take away rights from kids. It falls into the category of what I would call the spillover of American rhetoric into Canadian politics. It talks about parental rights instead of what we have in Canadian law of parental responsibilities and children's rights. Parents have a responsibility to nurture their kids and to affirm their kids. We know that school peers who use their chosen name and pronouns experienced 71% fewer signs of severe depression, a 34% decrease in reported thoughts of suicide and a 65% decrease in suicide attempts. Therefore, this is a policy that causes great harm. The government could do more to provide leadership in fighting this rising tide of hate, in particular by implementing the 29 recommendations in the white paper on trans rights tabled last June. In fact, e-petition 4666 went up today, asking it to do just that.
In conclusion, New Democrats support Bill C-316, even though we would like to see more from the government to support the court challenges program. It is still important to entrench the program in law in order to make it harder for any future government to eliminate the program. As I said, the court challenges program could use an expanded mandate to be able to fund cases beyond minority language rights and section 15. The program could use increased funding to ensure that it can fulfill its purpose in levelling the playing field on rights in the courts, so that not just those who are already rich and privileged can defend their rights and seek fairness in the courts. Even in the absence of these further improvements, we hope to see expeditious passage of the bill through all its remaining stages.
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- Oct/31/23 12:28:15 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank the Bloc for raising this important question in the House today.
I wonder if the member sees the same phenomenon I see in my riding. Through the pandemic, we know that in long-term care and home care, lots of jobs are filled by newcomers to Canada. They make an important contribution to our health care system, yet they are the ones having a very hard time finding affordable housing so they can fill those jobs.
I wonder if the situation in the member's riding is the same as in mine. These people, who are newcomers, are not causing the housing problem; they are victimized by the housing problem, and we need them to provide those services in the health care field.
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Madam Speaker, I listened with interest to the member's speech. What I did not hear was any discussion of co-operative housing. I know that the member has co-ops in his riding, and they have made a great contribution to providing affordable housing for families. Does the member support a reinvestment in and reinvigoration of the co-operative housing movement in this country?
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- Sep/20/23 2:51:27 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, as Canadians, we should be making sure that all our kids feel safe, loved and supported. However, right now, anti-trans demonstrations across Canada are making this impossible, especially for trans kids.
In June, the Conservatives blocked an NDP motion calling on all Canadian leaders to condemn this rising tide of hate and violence. Will the Liberals join New Democrats in condemning this anti-2SLGBTQI+ hate by supporting our motion when it comes back to the House? Will they join us in demonstrating that Canada is truly a country where there is no space for hate?
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Mr. Speaker, as I said earlier, I do look forward to working with the hon. member as the new parliamentary secretary for justice.
I want to be a little less partisan. The question is not what the public will think about any one party here if we do not get this done. It is what the public will think about us as parliamentarians as a whole. I think we have a responsibility, when we see a large degree of consensus and these large public concerns, to act as expeditiously as possible.
As I said, the justice committee already held hearings and those hearings informed the bill before us today. There is no reason, in my mind, that we could not proceed expeditiously. If members have other things they want to see, let them bring forward private members' bills. Let the government bring forward additional bills.
However, we have a bill today that has broad support from premiers, law enforcement and the public, and seems to have support from all the parties. Let us get the job done.
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- Jun/15/23 12:54:32 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I feel like I have wandered out of the wilderness into a strange country here today. When we are talking about victims, the justice committee heard from victims and victims advocacy organizations very strongly and came with a unanimous report with 13 recommendations. As I said earlier, there are procedures in the House to hold ministers accountable, and a concurrence report is not normally one of those.
My question for the member is this: What action is she going to take to make sure that the tactic the Conservatives have adopted today does not harm the ability to make progress on the 13 recommendations coming from victims that are contained in this report?
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