SoVote

Decentralized Democracy

House Hansard - 139

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
December 1, 2022 10:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 139 - Dec/1/22
Hon. Mike Lake (Edmonton—Wetaskiwin, CPC)
Madam Speaker, what a fantastic 45 minutes that was. This is a rare time in the House, because often things are pretty combative in here. I am reminded tonight, as we think about what we are doing here, of words from JFK: Things do not happen. Things are made to happen. I am so thankful for two senators who did not take for granted that the government is moving toward a national autism strategy. It has signalled as much, and these two senators, and the entire Senate by extension, did not take that for granted. It has been a long time, and a lot of us on all sides have worked on this for a long time. We are not going to wait for it to happen. We are going to work to make it happen together. Today was a real example of that. It was a coming together of members from across the House. A few folks mentioned things they might change a bit when the bill gets to committee, whatever the case may be, which is the way it should be. However, let us find a common ground. Let us debate how we can make it stronger. Let us move forward. One other thing I am thinking of relates to this. When I am talking to university students, I often talk about political labels and how helpful they are. We have the Liberals, the Conservatives, the NDP, the Greens and the Bloc in here. However, let us remember the fact that political labels are constructs. As helpful as they might be for the functioning of our democracy, we are human beings before we are political labels. As we were having our conversation tonight, it felt more like we were human beings having a conversation about how we can make our country better. We set aside the political labels for a night because we agree on something. Sometimes that is okay if we largely agree on something. That also extends, I would say, to the labels that science puts on us, as with autism. Autism is a label, if we think about it. There are a lot of labels we use that might be helpful for organizing, understanding or whatever the case may be, but we have to remember that we are human beings first. I talked about help, and so often it is easy to think about legislation like this as legislation designed to help people. I just want to remind everybody in this place, as we have the conversation, that a big part of getting this right is understanding that we are going to benefit from it. As a society, we are stronger when we are using all of our strengths, all of our skills and all of our abilities. A huge part of what we are doing here tonight is creating an environment where we are operating on all cylinders and using all of our strengths and abilities. There are too many people who have the strengths and abilities we really need in this country whom we are not using to their full capacity because they are simply not included to the extent they ought to be. I will close by thanking everybody who took part tonight and those who stuck around to support us. We really look forward to having a fantastic conversation at committee and getting this legislation passed through the House as soon as we can so that we can take the steps we need to take to realize the full potential of our country and include everybody.
595 words
All Topics
  • Hear!
  • Rabble!
  • star_border