- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Liberal
- Thunder Bay—Rainy River
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 64%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $144,359.62
- Government Page
- Apr/9/24 2:03:04 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, every three minutes in Canada, someone is diagnosed with cancer, a diagnosis that will change their life and the lives of all their family members forever because, if one is diagnosed with cancer, pretty well everything else in life, including much of what we do here, seems pretty insignificant in comparison.
The COVID pandemic showed us what the global scientific community can do when it puts its collective mind toward something. Experts were predicting it was going to take us years to come up with vaccines, and we came up with several within a year. Why can we not do the same thing to try to beat cancer?
In the United States, the Biden administration has pledged to prevent four million deaths by the year 2047. We in Canada can and ought to make a similar commitment. Nothing in life is ever accomplished unless one tries.
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- Jun/15/23 7:15:58 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I want to speak to this issue for a couple of reasons.
One of the reasons I am here, the reason we are all here, is to represent our constituents, and I really think the measure of a hybrid Parliament does further the interests of our constituents. I also think it furthers the interests of democracy as a whole.
The other reason I wanted to talk about this is that it is a measure that came out of COVID. As a parliamentarian who was fairly involved with the whole COVID process, I was interested in this. I have to say that there is not a whole lot of good that came out of COVID, but this is perhaps one of the few good things.
I will start with COVID because that is really the origin of this hybrid Parliament. I am not sure about the rest of us here, but I am from the class of 2019, and we had a rough start to Parliament. Three months into that parliamentary session, we heard of the outbreak of a novel respiratory virus in Wuhan, China.
I followed this, because I am a doctor and I used to work for the World Health Organization. I studied and also taught global health law. In addition, during the SARS pandemic, I was working as a doctor around Toronto. I was actually quarantined because of SARS, so I followed this. Certainly, what was happening in Wuhan, China, did not look good.
Then the dominoes began to fall. First, it was Iran, with news stories of satellite images showing mass graves there. After that, it was Italy, and there were, I believe, over 140 doctors in Italy who died early on in the COVID pandemic. Then we started to get cases here.
I was sitting on the health committee. We had Dr. Tam, members from PHAC and other people coming before us. We asked some questions about COVID, and they responded, “Nothing to see here. We have it under control. It is not going to be a problem.”
I was rather frustrated. It was like watching an old disaster movie. For anyone who has ever watched one, it does not matter the disaster, whether it is the sinking of a boat, a big volcano going off, an earthquake killing lots of people or a big shark, in all of these, there is an unshaven has-been, because these are old movies and nowadays there would be a lot of women, but this person would be sitting at the end of the bar early on in the disaster. They see the disaster coming and say, “Well, I think maybe we ought to be worried here”, but no one gets worried. This is how I felt in the early days of the pandemic.
Then came March 13, 2020, and the wheels fell off the bus that day. On that day, it was announced that Tom Hanks, the actor, had COVID and the Prime Minister's wife had COVID. The NHL and NBA, in an unprecedented fashion, decided to end their seasons. It was horrible for us hockey and basketball fans.
At the same time, Parliament decided to shut down indefinitely. I remember, I believe it was a Thursday night, at the Marriott bar with some of my colleagues, who are undoubtedly here. We were talking about what we were going to do. Were we supposed to go home? Should we have been talking to each other? Were we giving each other COVID?
Going forward three years, on this side of the House, we think we did pretty well with COVID. We got through it. However, for us in Parliament, the democratic process to get through it was done thanks to being able to partake virtually in a virtual Parliament. Without that, we certainly would not have been able to continue the democratic process through COVID.
Moreover, generally speaking, the vaccines in society provided a lot of what we needed to deal with the pandemic. Later on, the various forms of treatments that came out in the health care system played a big part in reducing mortality. However, I would suggest that it was technology, the Internet and the ability to do virtual meetings that allowed us that social distancing, which we needed early on before we had the vaccines to prevent the spread of disease. These virtual meetings were certainly a big part of how we responded to COVID.
Hopefully, COVID is over, but we cannot say that for certain. I do not think this will happen, but perhaps in the fall there will be another wave with a new variant, and for that reason alone I think it is good that we are still able to meet virtually.
Rather than talking further about why I am for virtual Parliament, let me admit that I do think there are advantages of being here in person, and some of my colleagues on the opposite side talked about them. I would not deny there are a lot of good things that come out of that.
For those in the class of 2019, after having been meeting virtually for about a year and a half, to then come back felt like we were starting high school in grade 11. In our time back here it has become apparent to me, and perhaps to a lot of my colleagues from the same year, how much of the real work of Parliament does not occur right here on the floor, but in the back rooms.
The back is a place where I can corner a minister to ask them about an issue that is big in my riding and get an answer. It is also a place where we can form coalitions. In my experience, and in the experience of all parliamentarians here, an individual will have a really hard time moving any particular item. However, when they get consensus, it is far easier to do. That kind of consensus cannot be made on a Zoom call, but it is the kind of consensus we can make in the back rooms.
Having said that and having agreed that, generally speaking, being here in person is better, I think there are real advantages of being able to meet virtually. Those advantages certainly outweigh the disadvantages. I would like to point out that it is quite difficult to be a parliamentarian when one has a family. I have six kids. I have big kids, little kids, young kids and old kids, and being a good parent when spending half of my time not at home, but in Ottawa, is very difficult.
Our poor spouses end up running a single-parent family half the time. It is hard on anyone who has kids, but I would suggest it is particularly hard on women with small children. There are some women here who do have small children, so it is not impossible, but it is very difficult. I would suggest that reality scares off a lot of young women from wanting to partake in the democratic process.
We really want to encourage women to run. The hybrid Parliament makes it easier. For example, these last nine weeks or so, we have had one constituency week. However, with virtual Parliament, if someone has a family and kids, and the kids are sick or they are asking for them, they can spend a week back home with the kids and still partake in parliamentary duties.
Similarly, if someone lives in Labrador or the Northwest Territories, they can do Monday and Friday virtually, meeting their obligations to Parliament while still having time with their family. It allows parliamentarians to balance their obligations to their families with their obligations to their constituencies and to Parliament.
I suggest that is also the case for people, for example, with disabilities, with family members who are ill or who have elderly people in their family to whom they have obligations. It allows them to come to Parliament.
Why is that important? I have said before I think not being able to go virtual would be particularly hard on women. In Parliament, 50% of MPs ought to be women. Parliament, for the sake of democracy, ought to be a Parliament that reasonably reflects the population at large. That means not only having women in Parliament, but also having people who are mothers and fathers with younger or older children, or who have no children at all.
Let me reiterate that not much good came out of COVID, but I think one good thing that came out of COVID was hybrid Parliament. It is good for MPs, Parliament and the democratic process, and I think it is good for Canadians.
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- Mar/24/22 10:52:06 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we all agree that things are getting better with COVID, and everyone is justifiably relaxing the mandates, but the question is at what rate. Some provinces have been more cautious from the beginning; some have been less cautious. If we look at the numbers, we see that the provinces that have been more cautious have done better. Globally as well, if we compare countries, we see that some have been more cautious and some have been less cautious. As a result of that, the United States has three times the death rate per population that Canada has.
Does the member opposite not agree that perhaps in matters of public health, one ought to be cautious?
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