Committee
Consult the user guide
For assistance, please contact us
Consult the user guide
For assistance, please contact us
Add search criteria
Results: 61 - 75 of 1164
View Dan Mazier Profile
CPC (MB)
Wow. Thank you for that.
To Mr. Sproul again. I know that the Unified Fisheries Conservation Alliance has written to the minister on multiple occasions to raise concerns relating to the future of Canadian fisheries. Do you feel that the minister is listening to the views of the UFCA and to the fishermen that your organization represents?
Colin Sproul
View Colin Sproul Profile
Colin Sproul
2021-06-16 18:08
I would say absolutely not. That's my view, and it's the view of my members, and as proof, I would point out that the minister appeared before the Senate standing committee last night and said that very thing. She was quite proud of the fact that she'd had zero consultation on the deal with the commercial fishing industry. As I said in my earlier statement, when communities adjacent to resources lack a voice in regulatory regimes around them, they invariably lose, be they indigenous or non-indigenous. I think it's important to point out that what's best for indigenous leaders may not be best for indigenous fishermen. I'm concerned about the outcomes for fishermen on the water.
View Ya'ara Saks Profile
Lib. (ON)
View Ya'ara Saks Profile
2021-06-16 17:29
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I think I'm going to pick up where my colleague, Mr. Albas, left off.
Dr. Jones, you've had such a rich life, exploring and advocating. Your historical experience in this is vast. The knowledge we're gaining from you is tremendous with regard to your personal perspective on this.
Taking up where my colleague left off, I'd ask you this: How do we ensure that meaningful engagement occurs with marginalized communities in the development of environmental policy? In your wealth of experience, what are best practices you would recommend that we consider here in this discussion?
Lynn Jones
View Lynn Jones Profile
Lynn Jones
2021-06-16 17:30
Always, for me, it's to consult—because somebody has mentioned this in a different aspect—the communities concerned. They've been dealing with the land and that environment all their lives, and they might not do things the way you normally do things. They have different ways of getting together, different ways of talking and different ways of judging. It's a matter of putting people at a table and having them come up with strategies and ways they want to deal with their communities. Government has this terrible, terrible way—and I worked for government at one point—of thinking that it has all the answers in that it's the government's way or the highway. However, in actual fact, the most success we have had is when we put these communities together and they work through and come up with the best strategies. We could do that with this environmental racism bill.
In fact, as an aside, we're doing it with our Black Lives Matter fund, where the communities themselves are saying what they require and what their needs are. It's the most successful way.
View Ya'ara Saks Profile
Lib. (ON)
View Ya'ara Saks Profile
2021-06-16 17:32
I know.
I'd like to carry that a little further. I have extensive work in shared society building on another side of the world, in Israel and Palestine. One thing I've learned in this process when you consult with communities is that you learn a lot, but you also learn where the gaps are. We were talking earlier about the data, and I'll open this up to other witnesses who are here, as well. What information or knowledge gaps do we have right now when it comes to environmental justice and environmental racism as we move forward with this?
I may want to ask, Dr. Jones, if some of our other witnesses want to weigh in with you, of course.... Perhaps someone else will pick up.
Lynn Jones
View Lynn Jones Profile
Lynn Jones
2021-06-16 17:32
I could say so much. When we started on environmental racism through the ENRICH project, I still remember.... This is the truth. When I was bringing up the flooding issues in our community and was told that flooding was not an environmental racism issue, that's where we started. That was a gap. Even in the definition, there's this big, packed, long definition of environmental racism. My community wouldn't get their heads around those fancy definitions, but they know what happens when the flood waters come through their homes. They lose homes. They have prepared for generations, so they know all about that. There are so many gaps that, as we work through this—and I work on these concerns—the community's getting involved more, and the community is able to address its own concerns.
I'm concerned about some of the things around Quebec and issues that have been brought forward, but I'll just leave it. I won't go there.
View Dan Albas Profile
CPC (BC)
I'll just continue on, and perhaps Dr. Jones has already responded to it, so I'll just put it in a slightly different way. I would just say that, if you were in charge of doing these consultations.... It is a big country. There is a lot of history, and there are a lot of different communities, municipal governments, indigenous communities and the Black community she mentioned in Truro, for example. Where do you start?
Ms. Gue, if you were in charge, where would you start? To me, if I were working for Environment and Climate Change Canada, that would be the hard one.
Lisa Gue
View Lisa Gue Profile
Lisa Gue
2021-06-16 17:35
Just to come back to this point—and I know we've emphasized it a lot—the data collection requirement in this bill is going to be very important to help inform prioritization, to the extent that that needs to happen. I agree with Dr. Jones' earlier comments as well, that the purpose of a strategy is to be broad and broadly applicable. I think this bill very well sets out a broad scope and then also provides the tools with the requirement, again, for data collection and assessment to help to define priorities.
View Eric Melillo Profile
CPC (ON)
View Eric Melillo Profile
2021-06-15 12:47
No problem. Thank you.
I'm just wondering if you're able to touch a bit on what the government could do better to help ensure that we are more preventative, more proactive, in ensuring that people do not find themselves in the vulnerable situations that have led to human trafficking, to sex trafficking. What can we do in terms of programming and supports? Where can we fix those gaps to intervene [Technical difficulty—Editor]
Bryanna R. Brown
View Bryanna R. Brown Profile
Bryanna R. Brown
2021-06-15 12:48
I think it's really important to have indigenous-led direction when creating healing programs for survivors of human trafficking or having anti-human trafficking programs.
I am also on the Indigenous Climate Action National Steering Committee, and I have noticed climate change, the extraction and exploitation of land and natural resources. I have been thinking of how that relates to the exploitation of indigenous peoples, especially indigenous women, and environmental injustice and environmental racism and how that causes displacement of indigenous peoples from their communities, and how that causes further culture shock when having to be removed from their indigenous communities to a more non-indigenous community, and being in that culture shock and not having access to traditional food, their traditional territory.
I think having access to land is extremely important. I notice that it seems to be more effective when we have more culturally relevant resources available to clients that are provided by indigenous peoples and Black people, and people of colour as well.
I have created programs and workshops and presentations to bring awareness to the issue of human trafficking, and provided consultation to hospitals and anti-human trafficking organizations to provide input on the survivor leadership and healing programs. I have noticed that there's a large demand for these presentations and bringing more awareness to these issues.
Thank you.
View Helena Jaczek Profile
Lib. (ON)
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I want to pick up a little bit on where Mr. Duvall was going. There's no question that, during the hearings that we've had at this committee, the overwhelming majority of witnesses were very firmly in support of this bill. Quite honestly, I'm a recipient of OMERS, a defined benefit plan, a very fortunate recipient of that pension plan, and I have received a number of pieces of correspondence from OMERS in support of this bill.
You, Mr. Schaan, are clearly not in favour. You've detailed your concerns, but to what extent have you consulted? Can you give us some examples of support for your position? I don't want to in any way question your credibility, because you're obviously extremely knowledgeable, but it would be really good to have some specific examples of organizations, banks, lenders, quite honestly anybody who is opposed for the reasons that you have given us.
Mark Schaan
View Mark Schaan Profile
Mark Schaan
2021-06-15 12:23
It should be clear that this is an analytical view and not a personal one. I come to this from the perspective of simply the analysis that we have been able to undertake as the government department responsible for this statute. I'm trying to bring to bear what we have heard, seen, analyzed and understood through the research and other that we've undertaken.
It is worth noting that, leading up to the changes we made to the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act and the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act, alongside significant changes, as well, to the Canada Business Corporations Act, as part of the retirement security project in 2019, we held significant cross-country consultations that actually were wide-ranging in terms of the number of options and considerations that we raised vis-à-vis the possibilities for enhancing retirement income security. Those retirement income security consultations did look at a number of potential options for implementation, including that of a superpriority for unfunded pension liabilities.
We heard from insolvency professionals, from the Canadian Bankers Association and from the Association of Canadian Pension Management. We had submissions from FETCO, various federal employers, pension experts, [Technical difficulty—Editor] pension benefit experts, credit unions and others.
The subsequent piece of legislation that emerged from that was clear in terms of the consultations, so I think it is worth going back to the many entreaties that were made as part of that. Obviously, many of them were similar to what you heard in the witness testimony, suggesting that there is positive support for a superpriority for unfunded pension liability, sometimes with some caveats around the notion that, obviously, recognizing that—
View Scott Duvall Profile
NDP (ON)
I have a point of order, Madam Chair.
I'm just wondering if we could have some precise questions and answers and not be going on. We have to finish this, but we're just going on and on, and time is running out. I think it's just proper that we do this clause by clause.
Of course, there are important questions, but we don't have to be going on with the long answers.
Thank you.
View Helena Jaczek Profile
Lib. (ON)
Would I be correct, then, in saying that you're going to look carefully at those consultations and at, potentially, other ideas to support workers in this potential situation of losing their pensions, their defined benefit? Where are you in that process?
Mark Schaan
View Mark Schaan Profile
Mark Schaan
2021-06-15 12:27
[Technical difficulty—Editor] changes to the law in 2019 as a function of significant consultation. It did make changes to the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act, the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act and the Canada Business Corporations Act, amongst others. Those projects of law are actually in their infancy. They've only been implemented for a short period of time. They included a duty of good faith in insolvency proceedings. They required for boards of directors and officers to contemplate and have the capacity to consider additional issues of well-being and the financial value vitality of their organizations, including that of their pension plans. It specifically indicated that companies will have an obligation to comply or explain, with a requirement to bring before their shareholders, the measures by which they are contemplating and considering the well-being of their workers and pensioners in their ongoing operations.
There have been a number of shifts in the law, but we do, obviously, continue to look back to those consultations and continue to hear and meet with intervenors and stakeholders to make sure we are canvassing for any and all good ideas that would improve the overall state of retirement income security and the well-being of pensioners and workers.
Results: 61 - 75 of 1164 | Page: 5 of 78

|<
<
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
>
>|
Export As: XML CSV RSS

For more data options, please see Open Data