- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Edmonton—Wetaskiwin
- Alberta
- Voting Attendance: 65%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $178,671.82
- Government Page
Madam Speaker, just over a year ago we had an election campaign, and in the Liberal platform there was nothing about the extension of medical assistance in dying for people with mental illness. What there was in the Liberal platform was a very clear promise to fund a Canada mental health transfer, $4.5 billion over five years, of which it is very clearly laid out, and I think it is on page 75 in the costing document, that by now almost $1 billion was to have been transferred already. We have not seen a cent of that almost $1 billion that was to have been transferred.
I wonder if the hon. member could speak to that disconnect that has a Liberal government that is not fulfilling its own promise to properly fund mental health but instead has moved forward and now is needing to pause, having moved forward on extending medical assistance in dying to people with mental illness.
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- Oct/3/23 3:04:29 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I rise today to acknowledge the invaluable work of the Canadian Alliance on Mental Illness and Mental Health, CAMIMH, and to recognize the significance of this week, October 1 to 7, as Mental Illness Awareness Week.
For over two decades, CAMIMH has been a steadfast advocate for those living with mental health challenges, working tirelessly to reduce stigma, increase awareness, and advocate for improved and expanded mental health and substance use health services. Its dedication to this critical cause has positively impacted countless lives across Canada.
Earlier today on Parliament Hill, CAMIMH was proud to announce the 2023 champions of mental health. I am happy to commend and welcome the seven individuals and organizations that have demonstrated exceptional commitment to advancing mental health in Canada. Their relentless efforts create lasting change in their communities and improve the lives of many. Together, we can create a more accessible and inclusive society where mental health is a priority.
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- Feb/14/23 12:56:28 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, that was quite something. In response to Conservatives saying that the current government, after eight years, is destroying the country, the hon. member corrected us by saying that it has been destroying the country for only seven years and that we should get our facts straight.
In response to our saying that the record levels of spending by the Liberal government are destroying our economy, his answer was to ask why we will not support the government in spending billions more.
One thing he talked about was truth. I have a very specific question. With all of the record levels of spending the government is doing, somehow it has not found enough money to fulfill the promise it made during the election, on page 75 of its platform, costed out at $4.5 billion, for the Canada mental health transfer. Right now the government was supposed to have spent almost a billion dollars. I want a straight answer from the member because he talked a lot about truth. Where is that money? Where is the almost $1 billion that was promised to have been spent by now for the Canada mental health transfer?
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- Feb/14/23 10:55:07 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, the Trudeau legacy of the 1970s and 1980s was a disastrous inflation crisis, energy crisis and fiscal crisis that was terrible for Canadians at the time over those 15 years when that government ran deficits in 14 out of 15 years. A generation later, it led to $35 billion in cuts to transfers for health care, social services and education under the Chrétien and Martin Liberal governments. It was $35 billion in cuts because of the disastrous Trudeau economic policies of the 1970s and 1980s.
Is the member concerned today that, at a starting point, the $4.5-billion broken promise on a Canada mental health transfer, a promise her own party made in the last election and cannot afford to keep, is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of things that will have to be cut for Canadians because of the disastrous economic policies of her government?
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- Jun/7/22 8:46:05 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, in our previous interaction, the NDP member for Elmwood—Transcona was pretty clear that the NDP was unable to negotiate or, at least, he implied that the NDP was unable to negotiate the Canada mental health transfer into their agreement on the budget.
The Liberal platform clearly promised $250 million in 2021-22 and $625 million in 2022-23 for a Canada mental health transfer. I am wondering if the hon. member can tell us why the Liberals would have rejected that in the 2022 budget.
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- Jun/7/22 8:34:21 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it was interesting to hear the hon. member's response to my last question. First of all, I like the hon. member. I like the way he carries himself in the House. I take issue with his characterization of my raising mental health as an issue as “a tantrum”.
The hon. member talked about the priorities the NDP negotiated into the spending of the government. It was one of the highest-spending budgets we have ever seen in this country, and if the mental health of Canadians cannot factor into the highest-spending budget in Canadian history, when will it factor into the list of NDP priorities?
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- Jun/7/22 8:28:17 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, what we saw there was like a WWE fight. That last exchange was not real because, while the hon. member stands and talks about his disappointment in the government, the reality is that the only reason the government is able to do any of the spending he decries is because his party is supporting the government.
I will ask a very specific question in an area that the government is not spending money on as I am curious to hear his thoughts. The Liberals made a promise during the election campaign to fund Canada mental health transfers for $250 million last year and $625 million this year. That was the promise the Liberals made during the election campaign. Since that election campaign, they cut a deal with the NDP. Now, when it comes to the spending of the government, that money is not there.
I am wondering if the hon. member could tell us what the NDP negotiated into the budget in order to get their support and what was traded away against the promised funding for the Canada mental health transfer.
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- Jun/1/22 10:56:17 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, as we look to make progress on this issue, I am banking on the fact that Canadians who just heard my question and that answer will recognize that the response had nothing to do at all with the question I asked. I am going to ask it again, and I am hoping the parliamentary secretary will put away her notes and just answer the question.
In the Liberal platform that she ran on eight months ago, her party promised $250 million for a Canada mental health transfer in fiscal year 2021-22, which we were already halfway through during the election campaign. Clearly the promise was for an immediate investment in a Canada mental health transfer, with a subsequent investment of $625 million this year and then continuing for the next three years.
My question is simple and I think Canadians expect a response. Where can Canadians look to find the delivery of that promise?
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- Jun/1/22 10:47:53 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to be here tonight to follow up on a question I asked the Prime Minister on May 18.
I think it is important in these late shows to give a little context for people who might be seeing this live, but more likely on social media after we post the clips from this. The late show is our opportunity to have a conversation in which we follow up on something where we feel like we did not get an adequate response from the government during question period. That is usually the case. We get this opportunity to choose which questions we are going to follow up on.
The parliamentary secretary who will answer my question today, and who has four minutes to respond, knows the question I am going to refer to, and has the full power of the minister's office and the Prime Minister's Office to prepare the response. We would expect a fulsome response tonight, hopefully.
The very specific question that was asked of the Prime Minister on May 18 was:
Mr. Speaker, four times in the past two weeks I have asked questions about the Canada mental health transfer: an election commitment quite obviously broken by the Liberal government. The minister never even pretended to attempt an answer.
Page 75 of the Liberal platform clearly promises immediate funding of $250 million and then another $625 million in this year's budget. There has to be an explanation as to why the Liberals broke this significant promise to vulnerable Canadians. Could the Prime Minister simply tell us what that explanation is?
Of course, the Prime Minister did not tell us what the explanation was, so I am going to elaborate a little on this.
On page 5 of the Liberal platform, the document the party used to get elected about seven or eight months ago, the Liberals said that they would:
Commit to permanent, ongoing funding for mental health services under the Canada Mental Health Transfer, with an initial investment of $4.5 billion over five years.
In the costing of the Liberals' platform, the timeline that they were promising was very clear, because on page 75 of the platform, under “New investments” and “Canada Mental Health Transfer” for 2021-22, they committed $250 million, and then for 2022-23 it was $625 million with ongoing funding for the next three years. It was very clear that the commitment was to begin immediately, yet in the budget and in any fiscal planning document that we have seen from the government since then, nowhere to be found is anything related to the Canada mental health transfer.
We had the opportunity to ask officials at committee, and they had no answers for us. On May 5, we asked the minister the question. I asked her, and she called my questions “annoying” and “despicable”, and did not give an answer. I had the chance to ask the parliamentary secretary a week later, on May 12, and she clearly did not understand the question, because she talked about the suicide prevention hotline and did not talk about the Canada mental health transfer at all. By the way, the response to the question that I did not ask about the suicide prevention hotline was not an answer at all, even in relation to that thing. I then had the chance to ask the Prime Minister.
For the parliamentary secretary, what I hope today is for her to simply point us to a financial document of the government: a budget, budget implementation bill or some other document where it is clear that the government is spending the money that it promised during the election campaign for the Canada mental health transfer.
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- May/4/22 2:15:26 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, this week is Mental Health Week, and this year's theme is empathy. Of course, this is an interesting place and time to be making a statement on empathy. How do we, not just politicians but all Canadians, passionately debate critical issues in a way that does not relentlessly chip away at our collective mental health?
For starters, I would argue that we all need to scale down the verbal bombardment on one another from behind digital barricades. We need to listen. Listening needs to be more than skimming through responses to our social media posts, virtually high-fiving those who agree and cleverly smacking down those who challenge us. This is not healthy for our democracy, and it is not healthy for us as human beings.
We all long for meaningful connection. We need to be heard and understood. True understanding does not have to imply agreement. We can strongly disagree and still work hard to understand each other. This builds connection. It helps us identify even limited common ground. It is good for our mental health and it is good for our country. This is a great week to start.
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- Mar/24/22 2:39:00 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, even after the imposition of vaccine mandates, some Canadians chose to remain unvaccinated. Many of them sacrificed jobs and their ability to travel to see loved ones because of their authentic anxiety about COVID vaccines.
The Prime Minister's response was to go on television and proclaim that many of those Canadians were “racists” and “misogynists”.
What does the minister have to say about the mental health impact of a Prime Minister publicly shaming Canadians who experienced genuine anxiety that has undeniably caused them legitimate hardship?
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- Mar/24/22 2:37:42 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the health minister talks a lot about numbers.
I am wondering if he can tell us whether mental health, particularly the mental health of Canadians who still today cannot work or travel to see loved ones because of the mandates, is one of the metrics being considered in regard to lifting the mandates.
If so, what specifically are those mental health metrics?
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- Mar/1/22 2:12:18 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the last few years have been incredibly tough. For most of us, our mental health is not where it should be and many around us are really struggling.
Everyone should remember the name BeThere.org. It is the award-winning Canadian brain child of jack.org and, quite simply, a tool the world needs to know about right now. Its five golden rules are a must for anyone who loves someone who might at some time need help, in other words, all of us.
Number one is “Say what you see”. Something as simple as, “I have not seen you in class the past few days. Is everything okay?” might be enough to start a life-saving conversation with someone. Number two is “Show you care”. Number three is “Hear them out”. Number four is “Know your role”. Number five is “Connect to help”.
Each evidence-based rule is laid out simply and brilliantly at BeThere.org. Please check it out today. Someone we love is counting on us to be there.
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- Dec/1/21 4:37:59 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I do not always appreciate every question the hon. member asks when I am speaking, but I appreciate that one. Maybe it is in the spirit of what happened earlier in this place.
The mental health issue is one on which all parties were pretty much on the same page during the election campaign. The parties put forward plans to take very meaningful action on mental health. As we try to move forward I think we will find that it will be an area where we can co-operate in a world where we do not always co-operate in every way.
A great starting point would be to tackle the suicide hotline. It was a year ago that we passed the unanimous consent motion. We know that the number 988 is the number used in the United States and is a number we can use here. Surely we can come together at this time of crisis, particularly mental health crisis, to address that in an urgent fashion.
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- Dec/1/21 4:26:45 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak for the first time in this Parliament. This is my sixth time being elected to represent my constituents, first in Edmonton—Mill Woods and then in Edmonton—Wetaskiwin. I want to thank those voters first and foremost. As my hon. colleague said, we would not get the opportunity to do all of the other things that we do if we were not accountable to our voters and if those voters did not support us through election. We have been fortunate in the last two elections to have the highest vote total in the country in Edmonton—Wetaskiwin. I am so thankful to the voters and so thankful to the many volunteers who come out to support us.
I will not mention the whole list of volunteers, but I will mention specifically my mother Bonnie and her husband Dale, who have been tireless volunteers on the sign crew each time for all six elections. My mom turned 75 years old yesterday, so happy birthday to my mom. I love her, and she is a role model to me and to our family in her love for people and everything that she does. She gives and gives, and I am so thankful for her.
I am also thinking about my father as I am standing here today. My father passed away in 2003. It would have been his 78th birthday coming up on December 4. I am thinking of my dad as I take on a new responsibility as shadow minister for mental health, addictions and suicide prevention. My dad was an absolute inspiration. He had challenges. We all have challenges in some ways, and my dad was no different. Despite the many challenges that he faced, he was also one of the most amazing human beings I have ever met, not in spite of those challenges, but because of the way he faced up to them and lived with them. He was an absolute role model and again, someone who did not let the difficulties he had get in the way of trying to make a difference and loving people. I am thinking about him. He died three years before I was elected. He never would have envisioned that his son would be a member of Parliament, but I know that he would be very proud of the work that we all do here.
I am going to thank one more person and again single someone out. We could not do what we do without unbelievable staff, and one of my unbelievable staff members is leaving me in the next week. It is his birthday tomorrow, so it is sort of a birthday theme here. David McClelland is my EA. He has been with me for five years and is kind of a cynical type. He is moving back to Australia. He has not seen his family for a few years and I know that even as I am talking, he is probably rolling his eyes and making a sarcastic comment to the office. We will miss Dave. He meant the world to our team over the last five years, stepping up to do anything that we needed done. My thanks to David.
Diving into the Speech from the Throne, I mentioned that in Edmonton—Wetaskiwin we have had the highest vote total in the country for the past couple of years. I want to give that some perspective. This time around in the province of P.E.I., where they elected four Liberal members of Parliament, the total vote count in the entire province for four members was 38,956. In Papineau, where the Prime Minister was elected and where he got just over 50% of the vote, the total vote count was 45,423 votes. In Edmonton—Wetaskiwin, we in the Conservative Party received 48,340 votes. When we do the math we get some perspective. This is important because each of those votes should matter as much as any other individual vote in this country.
I know that we have a first-past-the-post system. I do not want to comment on the complicated electoral map or all of those different things. That is not what I am trying to say. What I am trying to say is that when there is that disparity and an election where the Conservative Party of Canada had more votes, and despite losing we had more votes than any other party in the country, that has to be taken into consideration in a functioning democracy. It has to be taken into consideration in a government that cares about all of its citizens, not just the citizens that feed into its electoral map. We have faced an unbelievable amount of frustration in Alberta, Saskatchewan and other parts of the country over the past six years. That frustration is felt because people are not listened to.
To give members a little perspective, the Liberal Party could not get anyone from my constituency to run in either of the last two elections. In Canada's most populous constituency, with probably 200,000 residents in the constituency, not a single Liberal put their name forward to even run for a nomination.
Now, there are members of Parliament who do not live in their ridings for a variety of reasons, such as electoral boundaries changing and things like that, but the Liberals could not find anybody to even put their name forward for a nomination. As a result, for two elections in a row, someone from outside the riding was acclaimed to run in Edmonton—Wetaskiwin.
What that speaks to is the fact that Liberals almost never come to my riding. They come once in a while, because the airport happens to be in the centre of my constituency. They will come and call people, largely Liberals, from across the province to meet in a not-very-large room, because they do not need too large a room to meet in Alberta. They will come, have a bit of a session and then hop on their plane and go somewhere where there might be more votes. This is highly problematic.
I talk a lot about finding common ground. In Alberta we can find common ground on a lot of different things, but I will speak to one of the hardest areas to find common ground, because I think it is emblematic of what we need to do on energy, and that is the balance between energy and the environment. My colleague for Regina—Qu'Appelle and others have brought this up over the course of time.
It is unbelievable that in this country we have hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil being imported into eastern Canada that is not subject to the same rigorous regulations around upstream and downstream emissions as the oil coming from Alberta, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland. This is unbelievable to people in my constituency. It is one thing to have a debate about energy and another thing to have a conversation about how we reduce emissions in this country. Everybody in the House would welcome that conversation and ideas on how we can reduce emissions even further to ensure a clean climate for our kids and grandkids down the road.
However, even as we debate those things, surely one thing we should be able to agree on is the fact that oil coming from Saudi Arabia and Nigeria should at least be subject to the same regulations as oil coming from Alberta, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland.
I am looking across the way. Can I see some nods, maybe? Is it a reasonable expectation that oil coming from other countries, where human rights standards, labour standards and environmental standards are not even close to what we have in Canada, would be subject to the same standards that Canadian oil is held to? Again, there are not many nods coming from the other side. Maybe in the questions and comments some folks will stand up and agree with me on this.
On the theme of common ground, I will move to a couple of areas where I hope that maybe we can find some common ground over this Parliament. A very beloved colleague of ours on this side of the House, who is friends with many colleagues in other parties, is the member of Parliament for Cariboo—Prince George. He put forward a motion on December 11 of last year, which passed with unanimous consent in the House. All members agreed to the following motion, which read as follows:
That, given that the alarming rate of suicide in Canada constitutes a national health crisis, the House call on the government to take immediate action, in collaboration with our provinces, to establish a national suicide prevention hotline that consolidates all suicide crisis numbers into one easy to remember three-digit (988) hotline that is accessible to all Canadians.
Hopefully, if we can find agreement on that, we can find agreement on having a functioning Parliament. This is promising, and it is nice to be here with the numbers we have had over the last couple of weeks. Hopefully, we do not see Parliament being shut down. Hopefully, we get committees up and running so we can study some really important things, like the economic crisis facing this country and the inflation crisis facing this country. Hopefully, we can get the health committee up and running to study COVID and this new variant that is on the rise and of concern.
I know my time is up. I will end my comments here on the floor to take any questions or hear any comments my colleagues might have.
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