today on changes we have known i'm a lady smiths new member of parliament sheila malcolm son interviewed and recorded by ben gasol pact and that will be followed by a look at survival produced and recorded by vi you media studies students today as our guest we have the honorable sheila malcolmson n d p member of parliament representing and i'm a lady smith welcome to our show sheila thanks  this is your first term represented and i'm a lady smith and the election was last october so you're a relatively new powers the last five months been for you and what has the transition been like into a member of parliament it's been really exciting more than anything are was a beautiful place to be the built architecture the seriousness of the position is really exemplified by sitting amongst one of three hundred thirty people in the house of commons all this amazing curving in stone and stained glass windows and the school sort of ceremony of the place is so rooted in kind of the old world it kind of comes home to me every day sort of the importance of the rule and the honor that the voters and the writing of given need to send me to sit in that spot for and i'm a ladies man i guess another thing is there's two hundred fifteen of us that are brand new so there's no kind of feeling of clique unison oh everybody's in the same boat you know i'm or going to a particular meeting room we're all asking for directions we're all kind of helping each other out regardless of what party we are elected in and there's certainly a new tone you know what harper's government gone there's very much a lot of optimism about having a canada represented by a government that we recognise again so lots of goodwill there and then at the same time some of the things we hear in the house especially from the conservatives are just jarred droppingly backward so you know there's still lots of moments you know in the hallways it's all friendly and then eleven quite the dramatic change over yeah we've got you know chairs of committees that have never been members of parliament before we've got ministers have never been elected to office before i mean for me i'm grateful i had twelve years of local government elected experience behind me so i had a bit of a sense of the committee process but still a steep learning curve for everybody we're all in the same boat what for you has been the biggest transition to your routine taken some time to get used to you know it's all new it anyway it feels a lot still being on the campaign every day you make a plan you've got things in your diary and then something comes up it's like ok actually surely you're called to the leader's office you're asking a question in question period about regulating marijuana like ok well that's happening in an hour and i didn't you know things happen fast so there's amazing opportunities n t p has been fantastic at putting all the new members of parliament up front we're getting tons of speaking time you know some weeks i'll speak for six times in the house and i look across the aisle at the liberals and some of them are two months in they haven't spoken yet in parliament there's so many of them so you know i'm really grateful to be given that voice in those opportunities but certainly makes it you know there's no way to kind of anticipate some of these you know the next opportunity the next thing that pops up you just have to be able to respond and rely on the team and rely on each other and we're kind of like we're in the whitewater kayaking trip or something there's just amazing kind of turbulence and kind of a lot of it is a bit of a wild ride still really exciting and it's really a great honor so what was it like the first time that you stood up and just you know it actually felt really natural it was the day to commemorate the montreal massacre the little pull  technique where women twenty six years ago were killed because they were women and to be able to stand up and speak on behalf of domestic violence shelters in our riding and across the country and to know that this was a nationally important issue that had a real root a real sense of pulling in the same direction and that was a special experience for me absolutely so you know your role in the you are the critic for the status of women and while attending the united nations commission on the status of women in new york last week we quote from you saying restoring count is reputation on the world stage starts with taking action and getting results on general quality here at home so what are some concrete steps that the federal government  moving more general quality here at home and how are you in the n d p promoting these steps it's a real theme you know in a whole bunch of areas climate change first nations relationships gender equality where you know the government is talking a good line you know and  great relief after ten years of kind of a pretty dark decade for us but unless those good intentions are followed up with actions that are lasting legislative actions then it's kind of all for not so on one step that we were able to take was the n d p had a day where we kind of controlled the house we had the opportunity to put a motion on the floor that would be debated all day long and cares team chose pay equity that's a long standing issue it's in trying to in canada's human rights charter that women and men should be paid an equal amount of pay for a work of equal value hasn't women still get only seventy seven cents on the dollar a stats that back this up many studies that show we're still stuck because canada's never legislated this so this was something that was not in the liberal election platform although it was the liberal government back in two thousand and four that had a taskforce and made recommendations around narrowing that wage gap between men and women so our motion was implement the two thousand and four task force recommendations committee report back by june act on this and the liberal supported our motion which was very powerful doesn't always happen you know opposition motions often for the most part did not pass and i was the lead on not in me to be the one to stand up and speak to it and be the media spokes person and that was a great honor and it was great to have a win so early and in a way that will really make a difference and in this riding with extremely high poverty rates and we certainly see a lot of women in their senior years in particular who have worked hard all their lives but they haven't been able to put away the savings because there has been this gender bias in the way that men and women are paid other countries to close the gap canada's lagging behind that's an example of legislation that regardless of what governments in power and future in future years that legislation will remain on the books and we won't be in the situation right now where workers and unions have to go to court to fight for their rights so i'm curious how did would you legislate cross the sexes well right now there's all kinds of other pieces that are embedded in legislation don't have a safe workplace for example if they don't look after their workers number of hours that they work you know it's just one more piece that would say there has to be a filter and there are evaluation processes that allow you to identi ok a truck driver is equivalent on this level to a daycare worker i mean there are different professions where there are you know it's hard to make comparisons but another nine treece and provinces within canada ontario and  for example have got packwood legislation that's been in place for decades so there's lots of working models out there about what works well but federally we don't have any framework so this would mean for federally regulated industries telecommunications banking corporations it would be a legislated requirement rather than something that for example canada post fought its employees for thirty years women working for canada post had to hire lawyers and go to court for thirty years to get equal pay for work they one canada post appealed back and forth and in my mind only the lawyers benefit from that a lot of these women died before the final settlement checks came to them so that sad chapter in canada's history and if it was a legislat requirement then the government lawyers would be going to bat for workers rather than to leave it to individual women in unions to fight in the courts any other areas in terms of increasing equity is the focus maybe not immediately survivors of gender based violence are well supported that kind of falls into two different areas ones the murdered missing indigenous women and girls inquiry that we're really thankful that the government has launched we are pushing hard to make sure that it sufficiently resourced so that victims of this violence can you know have their family come with them to the inquiry maybe they might need a lawyer they might need extra hotel nights they just need to travel support and the front line support so they can advocates with them to take them through what's going to be a very difficult process to tell some really terrible stories either survivors or families of victims so there is one area related is made sure that the frontline organizations that are looking after domestic violence shelters protecting women when they do face violence from partners or family members they've been cut back and so challenge the last decade to do that frontline work pushing to make sure that they've got really strong funding and support so they can do their work so that's kind of one category and then another is to look at some of the bigger picture policy pieces that we can do to make sure that women are supported and can engage in small business in elected office simply just participating in community life so big themes there involve affordable child care we need more child care spaces for women that want to be able to go to work and then come back experience tells us that when we do make childcare available and affordable that many home care support and we wouldn't end up with women who predominantly end up looking after some of the end of life care issues for aging parents you know we're hearing from a lot of women that they're squeezed that both and their family responsibilities still fall on evenly  compared to men you know on are absolutely the men that do this work in their families you know we don't want to sweeping generalizations but it is one of the things that keeps women from running for office one of the things that keeps women out of the workforce and we need their ingenuity and their liberals and in the right direction you know we really see it in this riding and we've got a very strong early childcare education community and good advocacy coming through the city of new and imo and some of the ngos that have been so strong on this and all such a health care in a significant segment of our community whether it's on the workforce front because we've got a lot of health care services here and imo or whether it's aging people that are relying on the health care system so it feels to me like this riding scott a special view into both the problems when we don't have these good social safety net supports but also the benefits and the solutions when we do make those investments in our social safety net another large issue is out of the ratification of the trans pacific partnership t p p could you tell us a little bit of both this trade deal and the n d p position and what you're doing to advocate for an anomaly to smith on this issue it's one of these things that i think during the election campaign i think people had a certain impression about what the liberal government would do and that that's been one of the disappointments that we've seen in the first hundred days they have signed the treaty counter intuitive to sign something that you then say you're going to consult on so that something hard for them to explain also a real concern that their so called consultation is really focused on industry proponents and we've been hearing stories especially in ontario about labor organizations getting a phone call saying you know in two hours can we come and meet with you and well that's not really a way to prepare for a meeting and it feels kind of disrespectful we're also concerned that in the budget some of the promised compensation to dairy farmers and other affected industries that would be undermined by the d p p were not included in the budget so we're not sure even that the commitments that are pro government made are going to be honored by the liberals and at the same time that's all pretty murky there hasn't been any assessment done impact winners and losers the third party assessments showed tremendous job loss in canada as a result of the treaty and of course investor trade dispute mechanisms that are still in there despite the concessions around european trade deal so huge concerns we're standing up most days or every other day in question period in our trade critic tracy ramsey auto worker you know she gets at a ground level how harmful this would be to jobs and economy so we're almost every day in the house asking questions about the impact of t p and calling the government out for looking like it's to one side and not being transparent it's been a bit hard for us to get that picked up in the media and i'm trying to get at why you know if the general public just doesn't really understand free trade sounds like a good thing i mean it's free and it's trade you know who wouldn't want that you know so i must say we're struggling a little bit to find a way to make the impacts really hit home we've got the trade committee on parliament h again which tracey ramsay member of parliament for the n d p sits on there are calling together witness lists are around especially impacts on forestry so we've encouraged to have the folks at her mac for example come and talk about their concerns  p kind of find ways to bring it home so whether one purdy that standing up and speaking out against the deal in parliament but without any certainty about even what the public consultation process is going to look like or what the debate in the house w be got some real nervousness that the liberals a party made up their minds and they are really in to give canadians the information that they need to be able to evaluate their own personal impacts and what that national impact would be things seem to be unfolding and there's not a lot of awareness i agree with you that the public in general is not very tuned in to this issue and what i'm curious is i know the public consultation piece for the government is i think at the end of this month is my understanding so that it's just still a little bit more of a window to really get some broad base input into the and also i don't understand the process if you understand the process of one of the next steps in terms of this bill being trade agreement ratified that's another transparency problem for all of us because the government federally hasn't laid out what their roadmap is their consultation you know be quotation marks around it is email address for most people for ordinary people not a way for them to get information about the impacts on them or it's not engaging way to have a conversation so we've been assured that there will be a debate and a vote in the house but with the liberals controlling parliament then that is not something we want to rely on alone so as soon as i get a sense from the trade minister christian freeland what the timeline is going to be for them and when we will have that opportunity for debate then i'll definitely broadcast that far and wide because that'll be a point i think for individual letter writers to try to get a hold of every m p in the house and it won't be just you know sending an e mail into a government consultation process but really articulating loud and clear impacts on the ground and trying to you know i don't blame the general public for not being engaged on this issue it's hard for n g o s to get the word out there so much information out there even just the acronym t p p even just that kind of people are like are what is that to me so i think if we're able more and more to make that translation around jobs on the ground jobs lost manufacturing value added forestry wineries dairy cheese making the things that we can actually kind of see and touch right in our own community what will be the impacts on those hint bad for all of them you know about what we've seen but i'd love to get people's advice on the way to really bring it down to absolute basic details because as long as we ask people to fight free trade my experience so far is that that is going to resonate with a really small slice of the population but the average person on the street will be like i don't see how there could be anything wrong with that so we need to find ways to translate it to the local wanting to really drill into the details and you know and analyze it from a local perspective once the debate starts having the host so that's a critical time for people who are engaged to write letters to local m p s and talk to your family and friends and try to always find a way to bring it down to what is it going to mean to this generation our next generation even like dairy farmers if they take this huge bio what does that mean to their children there's no industry to go to for the next generation so to try to keep that long term view but keep it real so what  priorities are on your agenda for the next year in parliament you know a piece that i've really been my whole time in local government and through the election campaign got a lot of good feedback on my commitment to try to solve the abandoned vessel problem big one in lady reaching the end of their life time less oil spill response capacity more aquaculture like more sort of small businesses that are relying on clean pristine water recognizing that even the smallest boat washing out you know could contaminate a whole shell fish bed you know all these things kind of swirling around together i mean we've really shone a light on the fact that canada's got a really bad response system and people get the runaround when they look for federal leadership so jean crowder tried to solve this other conservatives voted her b down i'm bringing that forward but also really reaching across the aisle to try to get liberal m p s on the east coast who have this problem too to see if we can find a way to work together and encourage the government to bring a solution in so that's a big one that would have a big local impact also in the near term another coastal issue is the liberals are going ahead with the conservative plan to close down the coast guard station and call marks and we're really reliant anybody who's using the water here is reliant on that marine safety net it's crazy that the liberals are saying they're going to reopen the kits allow coast guard base which is good but that they're going to still go ahead with the closure and it's going to be closed in may so that's a near term push for us with vessel traffic increasing with anchorage is proposed for more u s coal being shipped off to china with more and more of container shipments as we do this kind of crazy bringing all of our goods in from china all these things add to the risk in our marine waters and we need  really strong coast guard so we're the party that standing up and my colleagues is six n d p m p s on thank you for island we're all standing up really strong against closing the coast guard base so those are two very right in front of you both environmental and economic priorities and then climate change is another big one as well you know we don't have a government anymore and that's denying that climate change exists but so far most of the targets that the liberals have are still conservative paper targets around in the reductions and so we're the party that three times this product climate change legislation to the house we've never been able to get past the conservatives but i think we've got some real opportunities this term ahead but we'll be pushing hard for legislated solutions that get emissions down as fast as possible and with the huge downturn in the fossil fuel industry right now to me it's just a major opportunity to make sure we're putting infrastructure investments into the next wave of jobs and renewable energy economy we're falling behind compared to other countries in the world and it's a great opportunity for canada especially with our hydroelectric resources we've got this amazing storage capacity you know that's just a natural for wind or solar power we're really well placed and it's a sad story for canada that we haven't lived up to that yet and i guess i mean there's there at least the money for infrastructure to be spent in canada with the liberal government was promising is there any opportunities and i'm aware that money could be to develop some infrastructure that is moving in the direction of more climate friendly economy there definitely is a little bit unclear still around what the government's role strategy is going to be for how to spend that infrastructure money and i must say you know some of the first needs are going to be affordable housing investments clean water and sewer we know that government priorities fit especially into those areas and that lines up with what the liberals are saying as well so we can definitely be constructive partners on that and then what the green infrastructure separation is you know we're still going to be looking for the fine print but will this keep encouraging and pushing for kind of solutions that have that when when when solution you know local jobs greenhouse gas emission reductions and innovation and sort of long term high tech development which we can really do in this region we've already got great examples of how to support that and clear the path for have you on the show from all of us thank you so much for taking the time and speaking with us today thanks for your work then take care you've just heard then i'm a lady smith member of parliament sheila malcolm son talking with from the changes team now here is the piece created by vi you media studies students thanks to their professor robin davies for making this possible those people who aren't familiar with your game what is the long dark long dark is a first person and post disaster survival exploration experience set in the canadian wilderness so the background for the world the story of the founding of the studio and the game itself are all kind of tied together in a decision that my wife and i made a boat it's almost five years ago now to leave the city at night and for me to leave kind of like large scale game development and new adventure or move into northern vancouver island so we live in thailand which is a small town for those of you who are in the colossally and yet it was really a question of you know we have two small kids and we were just wanted to raise them in a different context i want to get out of the city and get to a smaller community and something that's all you know just closer to nature and all kind of south and really the game concept itself came out of that same line of thinking which was and even the studio concept so the idea of getting away from the mainstream and want to do things that were a little bit more experimental from the front tier i guess so the game itself the setting is inspired by the aesthetics of being on an island and if you look at the game i think you'll find you know the forests in the landscapes and things feel quite familiar we've definitely you know we the first season of the game the winter so a lot of the survival aspects of the game are built around cold cold weather and you need to stay warm and fed and all those kinds of things which are necessarily part of the things your own winter experience definitely just the feeling of isolation of feeling they connect somehow if the idea that you know mother nature is this neutral force that doesn't really care whether they live or die and this is something out of almost life affirming in the struggle to survive in that context and we their animals of course wolves and bears and such but would you consider the long dark a stressful game it can be you know it's it's certainly moments of great stress and also moments of great contemplation and meditation in a lot of ways and i think one of the things that is special about the long arc is the experience can be it can be a lot of different things to a lot of different people and you kind of bring your own experience to it as well we we have a lot of different players that are looking for different things and we try to support news again and it's fundamental is driven by a lot of fairly complex simulation elements we can tune it depending on the kind of experience that people are looking for so we have what we call experience game and what we've done is we tune down a lot of the survival elements the pressure to eat and sleep and stay warm and all those things in favor of letting players have a little bit more about relaxing kind of emotional experience of wander into the woods and looking at the sunrise and listening to the wind blowing and and they don't get harassed by wildlife and that appeals to a certain type of player or someone who is just in the beef or different experience and it goes all the way through you know we have a voice which is kind of a blend an equal blend of survival and exploration elements which is probably i would say the intention and the core intention of the game and then we have a sort of more extreme survival mode and that is where we push the really hard core simulation aspects and that's where you have the constituency of our player base that are really looking for that really challenging experience they choose that so you can bring your own expectations to the experience and you can kind of get you know whether you're looking for something that's quiet or you can choose out if you're looking for something that's more stressful you can choose that and even within that sort of paradigm certain ways for an instant i would hang out with my friends being part of them and being open mind being open to new experience which is  an acceptable way for this culture so this is one of the things the other thing is doing the sports for me is really important for innocence if i got bored i would do the swimming or scuba diving asked a lot of stress but in a certain ways i'd compare my stress to other person has more stress than i do so i would say ok i you know i don't i don't have to be stressed out has made my communication much easier for example as an international student who lives far away from home i really appreciate technology in terms of how easy it is to communicate and keep in touch with my friends and relatives back home at any time at any moment since homesickness and stress are common expected experience for it to national and student it's it's the social media technology has made it easier for me to overcome these issues but i also appreciate how technology has evolved over time to bring us even in a bitter experience and a kid take all communication in a walk across the country is almost you know very difficult but nowadays it's it's much easier let's say for example this out of time thank you for being with us thank you for having me whole life i'm twenty three years old i've been playing since i was about four or five what's the most memorable bit of feel my most memorable moment would be in two thousand and ten where my high school team won the british columbia premier baseball league championships there were teams if you will play for in high school i played for the victoria mariners in college i played i played for vancouver island peaceful institute i was close to home i'm from victoria so it was nice you know not being too far away from home and also having an opportunity to play competitive baseball at a high level so i had some offers out of high school to go the doors of opportunity baseball wife yet had a couple opportunities to pursue baseball after college semi semi pro in australia and i've looked into playing in you of what i went through as a kid and then as i work my way into into college too i think it's i think it's awesome the service that we provide for these kids they get to experience a lot of things that not many other kids their age you know get to experience so with that i think what we provide for them is is something really special being a coach figure younger kids look up to of the lives would you agree that baseball not only teaches fundamental ball skills but also teaches life lessons on and off the field yeah definitely i think there's there's a lot of things you can learn from from the game you know discipline this is a big one work ethic team or sportsmanship i think all of those fall into you know something that goes beyond the game of baseball it's really good for relieve stress i know it's a big stress relief and for me whenever i'm at the field it's nothing else in the world really matters besides being on the field and you know having a good time doing doing what you love so in a sense few yeah definitely you know has made me feel good which is you know while i do it i wouldn't be playing baseball or i wouldn't have played baseball if you know i did not enjoy it so why should stay involved with the youth players and i think we should stay involved with the youth players and imo just to you know grohl the baseball community a little bit i think over the past few years you know it has grown quite a bit these kids get to experience a young age is something that not many kids have to have the benefit of experiencing so with that i think the service that we provide they know really real positive higher level of baseball you see them change not only on the ball field but also outside outside of their comfort zone which is sense with the baseball for sure been here for a for six years now from the first year that i was here we've been running in camps in the in the lot of the same kids that were there now are about to graduate high school so it's cool to see the changes that they've gone through you on the gulf islands can be an exciting thing but sometimes you need or want to come tonight i'm in for pleasure or business if you need a place to stay and book your accommodations at a conveniently located pasted turtle guest house bastion street downtown  you purchased a twenty five dollars membership at the painted turtle guesthouse you can stay for forty nine dollars per night year round a fifty percent discount and an outstanding offer to those who live on the gulf islands enjoy your stay at the family 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