Senator Housakos: Thank you. I’ll try to cobble my three questions together as we have discussed them. The jury is still out for me on this particular bill. I appreciate the objective that the government has. I think we all understand how important free and democratic journalism is to our democracy.

My three questions are the following: First, what would you say to the critics who say journalists have a choice to post their products online and on the web or not to post them?

Second, we already have copyright laws in this country, of course, that protect content creators if somebody steals their material.

The third question is an analogy that Senator Harder didn’t like, but maybe I’ll get a better answer from you. I feel this bill is the equivalent of somebody jumping in an Uber, going to a particular restaurant for a meal, and then the restaurant saying, “I want a percentage of the fare of the Uber, as well, that brought you here, because if I wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be in business.”

Can I have your thoughts on all three of those perspectives, which, of course, are views from critics on the bill?

[Translation]

The Hon. the Speaker pro tempore: Senator, are you asking for five more minutes?

Senator Miville-Dechêne: Australia certainly isn’t a perfect model, but we noticed that journalists were hired there after the secret agreements that Google and Facebook unfortunately reached with media outlets. We also noticed that, according to some sources, larger media organizations have more money than small ones but that small community media organizations received some money.

As for the Uber that gets you to the restaurant, I tend to agree with Senator Harder because I’m not convinced that’s a good analogy for what’s really happening. There is an exchange, but we don’t really know if the value of journalism to these platforms is equal or unequal to the value journalists derive from being broadcast on these platforms.

[English]

Hon. Marc Gold (Government Representative in the Senate): Incomprehensible. Inconceivable. Heartbreaking. Horrifying. Yesterday, in Laval, a morning like any other turned into a nightmare.

A Laval city bus crashed into the Garderie éducative Ste-Rose, smashing through a room of preschool children.

Two children died and six others were injured.

Today, our hearts ache for the grieving community of Sainte-Rose in Laval and, in particular, for the relatives of the two victims. My thoughts are with the children, the families, the educators. All of Canada is mourning with you.

[English]

In the immediate aftermath of this incomprehensible catastrophe, we are left with more questions than answers. But today we send our thoughts and prayers to the families of the victims, even as we cannot pretend to imagine what they are going through. We send our positive energy, our best wishes to the injured children who remain in hospital and to their families. We think of the other children at the Garderie éducative Ste‑Rose, their caretakers and, of course, their parents, who will also require support so that they may move forward.

I would like to also express my gratitude to the first responders, to the health professionals and to the police for their work in managing the unthinkable. I want to also acknowledge the bravery of onlookers on the scene who are reported to have put their own welfare at risk to subdue the driver.

[Translation]

Tonight, at 6:30 p.m., a candlelight vigil will be held in the square in front of Sainte-Rose-de-Lima church for those who wish to pay their respects.

To the parents and families of the two lost angels, on behalf of the Government of Canada and the Senate, I offer my deepest condolences.

Hon. Leo Housakos: Honourable senators, today a community and our entire country are reeling from the terrible tragedy that occurred in my hometown of Laval, just outside Montreal.

Yesterday morning, many parents got a call that no parent would want to receive. They learned that a city bus had crashed into a daycare in Sainte-Rose, where they had dropped their children off just moments before. This senseless act took the lives of two children and injured six others.

As a father, there are no words to describe the panic a person feels when they are worried for their child, or to describe the unimaginable pain of the parents who experienced the most tragic of losses. No parent should have to mourn their child, and my heart breaks for the two families who are currently going through that nightmare. I want to offer them my deepest condolences.

I know Sainte-Rose is a tight-knit community, and it is no doubt in shock in the wake of this tragedy. Yesterday, people came together to help with the rescue efforts and support each other in this time of tragedy.

I want to personally express my sincere gratitude to the first responders for quickly apprehending the suspect and bringing him to justice, to the nursing staff for their hard work in caring for the injured children, and to all those who came together to help the children.

My heart goes out to every child, parent and staff member at the Garderie éducative Ste-Rose. They have experienced inconceivable pain and trauma. Today, we grieve with them, and we wish the injured children a full and speedy recovery. Nothing can ease the pain and suffering these families are going through, but I hope it will bring them comfort to know that Canadians across the country are thinking of them.

[English]

Honourable senators, Laval is my hometown. My children went to a daycare similar to the one in Sainte-Rose. My heart breaks for the children, their families, their friends, and I know that, in this moment of nightmare and tragedy that these people are facing, all of our thoughts and prayers are with them.

Hon. Dennis Glen Patterson: Honourable senators, Ottawa is buzzing this week with the Northern Lights Business & Cultural Showcase, just across the street from our Senate Chamber at the Ottawa Convention Centre. Northern Lights celebrates the best that Canada’s Arctic and Northern communities have to offer. It boasts events featuring industry, tourism and arts and culture in aid of showcasing the creativity and huge development potential of this vast region in our great country.

Sponsored by the Labrador North Chamber of Commerce and the Baffin Regional Chamber of Commerce in a partnership first formed in 2003, the first conference was so successful that it’s now held every two years. This year, it’s attracted well over 1,600 registered delegates, who are busily attending workshops, events and cultural celebrations.

Yesterday, I attended a standing-room-only workshop on Nunavut 3000, an ambitious plan of the Government of Nunavut and Nunavut Tunngavik to build 3,000 much-needed housing units by 2030. The premiers of Nunavut and Newfoundland and Labrador signed a memorandum of understanding at the trade show this week. This morning, the CEO of Baffinland Iron Mines Corporation announced a new shipping route based on Baffinland providing its high-quality, low-emission iron ore to make green steel, for which there’s now a strong demand in Europe.

One highlight of every Northern Lights Business and Cultural Showcase is the Arctic Inspiration Prize — the largest annual prize in Canada with its $50 million endowment. It inspires, enables and celebrates the achievements of the people of the North, recognizing diverse teams with innovative projects in a wide variety of fields.

Last night was the eleventh such award ceremony and showcase. Just under $3 million in prizes were awarded. I wish to congratulate the winners of the one-million dollar prize awarded last night, the Pilimmaksaijuliriniq Project, which will build mental health competencies and Inuit wellness traditional teachings for delivery of community-based projects all across Inuit Nunangat, from the Northwest Territories, or N.W.T., Nunavut and Nunavik to Nunatsiavut.

Other prizewinners from Yukon, N.W.T. and Nunavik won $500,000 and $100,000 prizes.

I’m pleased that our guests today, the Nunavut economic development officers, used this networking opportunity to engage with their counterparts in Nunavik. I’m glad to welcome them here. Thank you.

Hon. Tony Loffreda: Minister O’Regan, in your mandate letter, the Prime Minister asked that you work with your cabinet colleagues to accelerate the review and improve the Employment Equity Act in a timely manner. Last spring, I asked government officials appearing before our National Finance Committee for an update on the work of the task force undertaking this review. We were told then that consultations were under way with the public service, the federally regulated private sector and separate employers.

Officials confirmed they would be gathering all this information in the coming weeks, that the chief human resources officer would report back to the task force on May 26 and that a report is due next fall. Minister, when can we expect to see the report and the results of this review of Canada’s employment equity framework?

Hon. Seamus O’Regan, P.C., M.P., Minister of Labour: There is another phrase, too: “just transition.” The just transition came from the labour movement itself. It is just so disruptive, it addles so many people and it creates so much anxiety that it is redundant; it actually sets us back when we use it.

Another phrase that we came across, and have been using in reports, is “decent work.” There are two ways of saying the word “decent,” and words matter. We’re all in public life; we’re all in politics. Decent work in a more European and French sense, I think, is a very positive thing; it is decent. But in Newfoundland, if you ask people what the weather is like — and it’s grey and mauzy — the answer would be “decent.”

So when we started to use the phrase “decent work,” it was being taken as “okay.”

I will tell you how I believe we can’t go wrong: The people who built up this industry with all of their know-how, derring-do, acumen and guts are the workers, so we go back to the workers in terms of what training they think needs to happen. Often, it does not mean having to leave the industry at all.

None of us in this room — hardly anyone in Ottawa — know where to tighten the screws on a pipeline to make sure the methane doesn’t leak. I’m talking about that kind of work.

When I was the Minister of Natural Resources and COVID hit, my first concern was the workers — specifically, losing workers from the industry, not transitioning them to another industry. We have too much work ahead in the industry — in the oil and gas industry. So we came up with the orphaned and abandoned wells program and, in Newfoundland, the low-carbon $400-million fund.

Keep them there.

Hon. Seamus O’Regan, P.C., M.P., Minister of Labour: Senator, with all due respect, I will have to get back to you with answers to those five questions, I think, that you asked. We will get back to you very shortly on them.

Hon. Seamus O’Regan, P.C., M.P., Minister of Labour: I am very proud to answer that question as the former executive director of the Goose Bay Airport Corporation, and as a former baggage handler at YYR, Goose Bay Airport. That is how I worked my way through college. I think of ground crews every time — and this has probably happened to many senators present today — I land at an airport on time, but do not make it to the gate for 40 minutes. That’s because we do not have enough ground crews. They work hard.

Because I was out in the middle of the ramp in Goose Bay, I did not get affected by the black flies, so I took a respite out there. I learned never to complain about the heat in Labrador in the summer, because everyone with whom I was working had to work there in the winter.

Aircrew work outdoors — there is not enough you can wear. It is tough work. We lost a lot of them to Amazon warehouses and other places that paid equal, if not greater, money and benefits. I do not believe the market has caught up with what are extraordinarily essential workers.

It is a problem. It is not a problem, I will admit, that I have been tackling as a minister, but it is one that I will take back to the Minister of Transport. We do need to do a lot more there — on every front you mentioned.

[Translation]

Hon. Amina Gerba: Honourable senators, Roxham Road is sadly known as an easy way for asylum seekers to get into Canada, and many people are calling for it to be closed. That is how Roxham Road is presented to us every day in the media, and the topic stirs up partisan debate in our governments on immigration management.

As part of my ongoing series for Black History Month, today I have decided to talk to you about Roxham Road from a different angle, through the eyes of a person who embodies the selflessness, altruism and bravery of a true citizen.

It is with great pleasure that I pay tribute here to a person whose actions are improving lives: Kicha Estimée.

Kicha is a product of immigration herself and has spent years helping immigrants deal with the many challenges of life abroad. As a social worker at the Laval Immigration Holding Centre, Kicha was appalled by the conditions in which residents were living. To her, the centre seemed like a prison.

She also noticed there were few support services available, even though most of these immigrants need someone to take them by the hand and teach them how to live in their new country.

This gave Kicha the idea to create a welcome centre that would help guide immigrants through the process and provide shelter to those who are going through a tough time. This centre, known as the Centre d’hébergement Latraverse, was created in 2020 in Montreal North and has become the first stop for new immigrants, many of whom come in through Roxham Road.

In the few years it has been open, this centre has already welcomed and helped thousands of people by providing food, clothing, compassion and short-, medium- or long-term accommodation.

Colleagues, while our governments sit around and debate, ordinary folks like Kicha Estimée are taking action. While our governments speculate on how to integrate immigrants, kind souls are investing their own money for the well-being of humanity. We must support and encourage these kinds of initiatives, because they illustrate how compassionate Canadians are.

Please join me in wishing Kicha the very best for the continued success for her bold initiative.

Thank you.

[English]

Hon. Seamus O’Regan, P.C., M.P., Minister of Labour: Senator, we are far away from that.

In regard to the issue of replacement workers, I come back to the remarkable record that my team has at the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, or FMCS, which is our mediation and conciliation team. The longer you can keep people focused on the table, and not on other things, the better. What we have learned are the lasting — and extremely scarring and emotional — effects of using scabs or replacement workers. It can poison a work environment for years, if not decades. When all of that is happening, the emotional turmoil of that and the physical time it takes in order to coordinate it distracts people from a solution at the table. That is where I’m coming from on this.

I want security and stability in our supply chains. I do not want further disruption. It will be crucial that we get this legislation correct and the regs that stem from it. At some point, senators here will have a hand in that, but I want you to know — and I will impress this upon you — that the stability of that table means the stability of our supply chains. The more that I can have unions, industry and business focused on finding an agreement that is long-lasting, the better. I do not think that finding third-party sources is going to do any of that.

Hon. Pat Duncan: Honourable senators, February 14, 2023, marks the fiftieth anniversary of a special day, an historic moment on Parliament Hill that will be celebrated by Yukon First Nations and all Yukoners.

Colleagues, please picture a snowy, Ottawa day — February 14, 1973 — on the steps of Parliament Hill. Elijah Smith and a delegation of Yukon First Nations, some of whom are still with us, presented then-prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau with a typewritten document, a booklet entitled, Together Today for our Children Tomorrow.

Reserves for First Nations were not created in Yukon. Rather, lands were set aside. Yukon First Nations land claims had been put forward as early as 1901 when Chief Jim Boss of the present‑day Ta’an Kwäch’än wrote letters to the Superintendent General of Indian Affairs in Ottawa and to the Commissioner of Yukon.

An iconic photo of the presentation and acceptance of the document by the former Prime Minister Trudeau showed the acceptance by Canada of the First Peoples of the Yukon, an appreciation for their relationship and rights to the land, the use and preservation of resources and the importance of the preservation of culture and language for their children, tomorrow. It marked the beginning of the land claims negotiations.

In the words of the Council of Yukon First Nations, as this is their story to tell:

The claim was founded on the principle that aboriginal rights still existed in the Yukon Territory and that the Government of Canada had a longstanding obligation to negotiate a treaty with the aboriginal peoples of the Yukon.

In 1990, 17 years after the presentation of Together Today for our Children Tomorrow, an Umbrella Final Agreement was reached. The UFA is a framework under which individual First Nations land claims agreements are negotiated.

As we prepare to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the historic recognition by Canada, 11 of the 14 Yukon First Nations have such agreements.

Honourable senators, it is one thing to complete the land claims agreement; the real work is giving life and meaning to the words. Visual demonstrations of the agreements are evident on road signs in Whitehorse, in suburbs where we use “stop” and “Ńłān“ in Southern Tutchone to halt traffic. Respectfully, if you self-identify as being First Nations, Métis or Inuit when you arrive at Whitehorse General Hospital, the First Nations liaison worker will come to your room or the emergency department to offer you support during your stay. Traditional foods will be offered to help you recover.

Yukon has walked a path towards a new understanding with First Nations for the past 50 years as we have reached these agreements. The challenging work is not finished. As Canada finds our path to reconciliation, I would proudly say to you, as others have said, “We are a Yukon that leads.”

Senators can visit the Council of Yukon First Nations website to share in our celebration next week and to download Together Today for our Children Tomorrow.

Shä̀w níthän,mahsi’cho, gùnáłchîsh, thank you, dear colleagues.

(Pursuant to the order adopted by the Senate on December 7, 2021, to receive a Minister of the Crown, the Honourable Seamus O’Regan, P.C., M.P., Minister of Labour, appeared before honourable senators during Question Period.)

Hon. Donald Neil Plett (Leader of the Opposition): Welcome, minister.

Last fall, on the day the Trudeau government announced it will impose the carbon tax on three Atlantic provinces, minister, you said, “I’m sick and tired of people talking about the cold winter . . . .” You said it was stoking anxiety, as if people won’t experience the cold if nobody talks about it.

I cannot imagine a more tone-deaf response to legitimate concerns raised by Atlantic Canadians about how they will afford to heat their homes. Your government is piling more tax on Canadians at a time when they can least afford it, when they are already paying more for groceries, housing and transportation.

Minister, the Parliamentary Budget Officer has said most households under the Trudeau carbon tax will see a net loss. Do you acknowledge that, minister, or is that something you don’t want to talk about either?

Hon. Seamus O’Regan, P.C., M.P., Minister of Labour: Oh, senator, it is good to be back. I appreciate the question. The quote is not accurate.

What I was referring to was just stoking fear and anxiety in things like a government would cause a cold winter. That was my exact quote. Quite frankly, I used a phrase that is often used in Newfoundland: “My nerves are rubbed raw.” People’s nerves are rubbed raw. I do personally resent it when we get carried away with partisan phrasing that causes and invokes unnecessary anxiety.

The fact of the matter is that with the federal buyback on the price on pollution, 8 out of 10 families will get more money from it. To be honest with you, I have spent an inordinate amount of time putting my head around it, writing script for it and speaking to my iPhone to get the message out. But the bottom line is that we do want to make sure we put a price on pollution, and we do want to make sure that families are not the ones to take the hit for it. In other words, they will get cash back. In Newfoundland and Labrador, they are about to get roughly a little over $1,100 back per year, four times a year. It will be listed in their bank accounts, and they’ll get it directly.

Hon. Seamus O’Regan, P.C., M.P., Minister of Labour: Senator, I thank you for the question. Sometimes my title belies more jurisdiction than I actually have. By way of accuracy, as a minister per se, this would not fall under my jurisdiction. However, as a minister of the Crown, I take account for the decisions that are made at the table. Would I have some say in this? I absolutely will take responsibility for that.

The government does recognize the importance of the temporary foreign workers. They are extremely important to food producers and processors. A number of departments have been working to simplify the processes to make sure we facilitate the safe entry of many of the workers who are there. We are getting our heads around working with the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Immigration and with my colleague Minister Qualtrough at Employment Services on how we deal with this.

We do not want people to be vulnerable and not protected in this country when they perform such important work.

Hon. Andrew Cardozo: Thank you, minister, for making the time to be here with us. I have a couple of quick questions about major issues in your department.

The first is anti-scab legislation. Could you tell us where that is at? Will your legislation be the same or different from the private member’s bill that Alexandre Boulerice has introduced — Bill C-302. Also, with regard to employment equity — further to my colleague’s question — when do you anticipate introducing that legislation, and will the target groups be different than the four that have been named in the past?

Hon. Percy E. Downe: Thank you, minister and welcome to the Senate. Good to see you again. I would like to follow up on that last question. The consultations ended in December. I am wondering if you could elaborate on what the conclusion of or the consensus on that consultation on replacement workers was.

It is a delicate balance, I will acknowledge to this chamber. We have done superlative work. Not me; I will give all credit to officials. Some of the most impressive public servants that I have worked with have been in the Labour Department, particularly in our Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service.

I was scared to death last year, as a new labour minister, with CP Rail, CN Rail, VIA Rail, Loomis, Purolator and WestJet all up within federal jurisdiction about work stoppages and any of those affecting our supply chains. So ensuring that we do this and we do not adversely affect supply chains in this country is incredibly important.