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Libby's Speeches in Parliament

Libby's Bills to stop discrimination based on social condition
June 17, 2010

Libby introduced two bills in the House of Commons to change the Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code to prohibit discrimination against a person based on their social condition.

Canadian Human Rights Act
Ms. Libby Davies (Vancouver East, NDP)
moved for leave to introduce Bill C-559, An Act to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act (social condition).

Mr. Speaker

This bill would amend the Canadian Human Rights Act to prohibit discrimination on the grounds of social condition. In doing so it would protect from discrimination people who are experiencing social or economic disadvantage, such as adequate housing, homelessness, source of income, occupation, level of education, poverty, or any similar circumstance. As the Centre for Equality Rights in Accommodation and many other organizations have pointed out, a person's standing in society is often determined by his or her occupation, income, education level or family background.

Libby's Bill to Amend the Canada Pension Plan
June 14, 2010

Libby tabled a Private Member’s Bill in the House of Commons today. The bill would amend the Canada Pension Plan to allow people to designate a survivor in the case where survivor benefits are paid out. She made the following presentation in Parliament.

HANSARD
JUNE 14, 2010
House of Commons

Ms. Libby Davies (Vancouver East, NDP) :

Moved for leave to introduce Bill C-538, An Act to Amend the Canada Pension Plan (designation of survivor).

She said: Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise in the House today to present this bill. It would amend the Canada pension plan to allow a contributor to designate as the beneficiary of their survivor pension someone who is not their spouse or common-law partner. I would like to thank the member for Hamilton East—Stoney Creek for seconding the bill.

Libby Speaking out for Trans Rights
June 8, 2010

The NDP celebrated a historic vote yesterday. MP Bill Siksay's Private Member's Bill to amend the Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code to include gender identity and gender expression as prohibited grounds of discrimination, passed through second reading in the House of Commons.

Libby spoke to the importance of the bill in Parliament.

HANSARD
HOUSE OF COMMONS
June 8, 2010

Ms. Libby Davies (Vancouver East, NDP):
Mr. Speaker, I am very proud to rise in the House today to speak in support of Bill C-389. I would like to thank the member for Burnaby—Douglas who has been an outstanding critic for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and transsexual issues for our party and in fact for all Canadians.

Libby speaking up for a fair immigration and refugee system
April 29, 2010

House of Commons
HANSARD Debates

Bill C-11, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and the Federal Courts Act

Ms. Libby Davies (Vancouver East, NDP):
Madam Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to rise in the House today to speak to Bill C-11.

I will focus my comments on the system overall. For many Canadians, and certainly internationally, Canada has a reputation as being a place that is welcoming and open not only to immigrants but to refugees. The NDP believes the cornerstone of any refugee determination system is that the process has to be fast and fair.

In some ways the proof of the system is in the individual cases. While we cannot go into individual cases here, as MPs, we are very familiar with the process as it relates to individuals cases in our constituency offices. I know, over my 13 years in this place, sometimes there is a sense of heartbreak of what people go through in terms of the refugee system, the appeal process, the wait times and the amount of stress and anxiety.

It is really important that we devise a system that is fair to people, a system that is not open to abuse but is fair and fast. This is a primary consideration. As one my colleagues said earlier, we want to ensure that each case is dealt with on its merits. It is very easy to make generalizations.

Opposition Day Motion – Representation of Quebec in the House of Commons
April 20, 2010

HANSARD
House of Commons
April 20, 2010

Opposition Day Motion – Representation of Quebec in the House of Commons

Ms. Libby Davies (Vancouver East, NDP):
Mr. Speaker, I know that my colleague from Hamilton Centre was just getting warmed up, and he could have gone another 10 minutes or another full spot. I really appreciate the comments he has made.

As our spokesperson in the NDP caucus and the critic for democratic electoral reform, I know the member has put a lot of thought and care into not only this motion and what it really means and what the consequences are but he has put a lot of thought and care into the file overall.

Within our caucus we have really terrific debates about this and many issues, but on this issue we do see it as a very fundamental principle. We are here in this House as individual members of Parliament. We are here because people voted for us. We are here because we got the most amount of votes of all the candidates in each of our ridings.

Libby speaking out against the Conservative's budget
April 15, 2010

HANSARD DEBATES
HOUSE OF COMMONS
Arpil 15, 2010

Bill C-9, the budget implementation bill

Ms. Libby Davies (Vancouver East, NDP):
Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise in the House to speak to Bill C-9, the budget implementation bill. I want to begin my remarks by commenting on the enormity of this bill. It is 872 pages long and has 24 different parts.

When one goes through the bill, whether one goes through the summary or starts looking at the bill in its totality, one can see immediately that the Conservative government has decided to use this bill as a cover for all kinds of very negative and bad public policy initiatives. We are certainly aware of that and this is one of the reasons it is very important that debate take place on Bill C-9.

I would add to the comments made by my colleagues that it is very ironic that Conservative members are choosing not to debate this bill, because it is simply enormous when one considers what is covered in it. We did hear the budget speech and we had the budget itself, but this budget implementation bill goes far beyond what was contained in the budget. It is using itself as a cover for all kinds of draconian measures. I will mention a couple.

Emergency Debate to save the Aboriginal Healing Foundation
March 30, 2010

The NDP called an emergency debate to reinstate funding for the Aboriginal Healing Foundation(AHF) before it runs out on March 31. The AHF delivers 135 projects across Canada to support tens of thousands of residential school survivors. Without alerting the AHF, the Conservative government did not include funding for the Foundation in the 2010 federal budget tabled on March 4th.

EMERGENCY DEBATE
Aboriginal Healing Foundation
HANSARD
MARCH 30, 2010

Ms. Libby Davies (Vancouver East, NDP):

I am very glad to be rising in the House tonight, even at this late hour, to participate in this emergency debate. The first thing I would like to do is to thank the member for Churchill who applied for this emergency debate, which was granted by the Speaker, and to thank her for bringing this forward so that we could actually participate in this really critical discussion tonight about what is going to happen to the Aboriginal Healing Foundation.

When the member for Churchill led off the debate at the beginning of the evening, I remember her speaking about the fact that she was not in the House when the historic apology took place on June 11, 2008. I am sure she, like others across the country, was probably in her community with many people who were witnessing that historic occasion.

Fair Trade not Free Trade - Libby on the proposed Canada-Columbia Free Trade Agreement
March 30, 2010

HANSARD
HOUSE OF COMMONS
March 30, 2010

Canada Columbia Free Trade Agreement

Ms. Libby Davies (Vancouver East, NDP):
Mr. Speaker, I am very proud to rise in the House today, and I hope there will be many more members who rise after me to debate this bill and to defeat this bill, because that is what we are aiming to do.

It was very interesting to hear the Minister of Labour just a few moments ago. I guess the Conservatives are feeling a bit vulnerable with respect to this bill now, feeling they have to send in more ministers to defend their very bad position on this Bill C-2, the Canada-Colombia free trade agreement.

Libby speaking out on maternal and child health
March 23, 2010

HANSARD DEBATES
House of Commons
March 23, 2010

Motion on Maternal and Child Health

Libby Davies (Vancouver East NDP):
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak to this motion. It is a very important debate. It is important that members of the House be able to express their strong opinions about this issue. The government's G8 maternal and child health initiative for the world's poorest regions must include the full range of family planning, sexual and reproductive health options, including contraception, consistent with previous governments that have stated that position, as well as all other G8 members last year in Italy. I certainly welcome this debate.

First and foremost, we have to insist that any initiative Canada takes forward must be based on scientific evidence as outlined in the motion before us today. That scientific evidence shows us that education and family planning can prevent as many as one in every three maternal deaths. That is a very significant statistic.

Libby responds to the Speech from the Throne - housing left out in the cold again
March 22, 2010

Members of Parliament are allotted specific dates to respond to the Speech from the Throne. Libby had the opportunity to respond on March 18th.

HANSARD
House of Commons
March 18, 2010

RESPONSE TO THE SPEECH FROM THE THRONE

Libby Davies (Vancouver East, NDP):

Mr. Speaker, For the second time in a year, the Conservatives shut down the work of Parliament. We know they did it to avoid the very important issues of Afghanistan and what happened to detainees.

I was very proud to attend the anti-prorogation rally that took place in Vancouver on January 23. It was wonderful to see the young people who came out to the rally. Some people had not been to a political protest before, but they came because they absolutely did not buy the very flimsy and transparent reasons the Prime Minister gave for proroguing the House.

Yesterday we debated the NDP motion to place limits on prorogation and prevent the abuses we have seen take place under the Conservative government. The NDP motion basically stated that if the House was to be prorogued for more than seven days, there had to be a resolution and vote in Parliament on the reasons for prorogation. I am very pleased the motion passed.