- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Edmonton—Wetaskiwin
- Alberta
- Voting Attendance: 66%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $178,671.82
- Government Page
- Feb/20/22 10:37:12 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, let me be 100% clear. This party, every member on this side of the House, is 100% against the issues he is talking about. We are against violent white supremacy, white supremacy of any kind, racial bigotry of any kind, and other bigotry of any kind.
What I actually said was I will not be afraid to have conversations with people I do not know as I am walking from my apartment to the House of Commons because I am afraid of a label that the opposition, particularly NDP members in the House, want to attach to me for partisan, political reasons.
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- Feb/20/22 10:35:35 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, to be clear, Conservatives have been unequivocal in denouncing the clearly negative aspects of what happened outside this place, while at the same time clearly supporting individuals from across the country who have legitimate concerns about the approach the government is taking.
In regard to the plan the hon. member mentioned, I would point out that her party supported the plan. We appreciate that because last Monday we did have a chance to move forward. It was a simple ask of the government to put forward a plan on February 28, two weeks after that date and one week from tomorrow, that would have laid out where we plan to go with COVID. It is something that governments around the world are doing. It is something that would have definitely had an impact on many of the people who were protesting here in Ottawa and across the country.
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- Feb/20/22 10:33:44 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I want to commend the hon. member because it might be the first time I have heard a Liberal member mention Alberta in the House.
She has to recognize, first of all, that among my constituents, almost universally, the feedback we have gotten back has been opposed to the Emergencies Act. My staff tell me probably 95% of the feedback we have gotten has been people asking me to oppose the Emergencies Act. I would welcome any Liberal member of Parliament who wants to come out to Canada's most populous riding, Edmonton—Wetaskiwin. I would gladly give them a tour so they can actually talk to some of the people they too often completely ignore.
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- Feb/20/22 10:22:18 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, a year ago this week, I made a one-minute statement in the virtual House of Commons from my basement in Edmonton. I have reflected on that statement a lot over the past few weeks. Yesterday, as I listened to the debate and monitored my very active and animated social media feeds, I decided to work that statement into my speech this morning, if for no other reason than to anchor my own thoughts and emotions.
Here is what I said a year ago:
The past several years have been challenging for global democracy. We have seen a rise in polarization and increasingly vitriolic language expressed by hyperpartisans from all sides. Too often this leads to violence. Social media have exacerbated the problem. Sides are chosen and anchored in Twitter bios. Talking points are delivered in echo chambers, amplified by cryptic algorithms.
Six decades ago, President Dwight Eisenhower seemingly anticipated our current need for wisdom, saying, “The middle of the road is all of the usable surface. The extremes, right and left, are in the gutters.”
Before our political labels, we are all just human beings. The middle of the road is simply our common ground. Make no mistake: Passionate political debate is foundational to a healthy democracy, but it is most effective when we engage in conversations not only seeking to persuade but open to being persuaded. This will require a significant shift in our current thinking, but in the end, we will all be better off for it.
I will let others wade into the speeches and comments from this debate to discern who is adding to the polarization and vitriol and who is working to de-escalate them, apart from singling out one colleague.
The speech by the new member for Simcoe North was the highlight of my day yesterday. His was a firm assessment. He was fair with his words and respectful in his tone. He is a worthy successor to the wonderful man who preceded him, Bruce Stanton.
The other day I had several conversations with members of my amazing team. They are being absolutely deluged with calls and emails from constituents concerned about the Prime Minister's use of the Emergencies Act, and they wanted me to post something on social media that they could point people to, that clearly stated my position.
In about a minute, as I walked from this chamber down to the street, I simply wrote, “I have received more calls and emails in opposition to [the Prime Minister]'s Emergencies Act than perhaps any issue I’ve seen in 16 years. I agree with my constituents on this. It’s massive Liberal overreach, a dangerous precedent, and I will be speaking and voting against it.”
After that post, many rightfully asked what I would have done, which is a reasonable and fair question. Before I get into that, though, I want to make some observations.
During the debate yesterday, it was very clear that each of the two parties supporting the use of the Emergencies Act is taking a very different communications strategy. The Liberals have used the argument that the measures have been effective at clearing out Ottawa's downtown core, as though that is the sole determinant as to the rightness of the decision to employ the Emergencies Act.
Of course, there was never any question as to whether the measures would be effective. If they were not, we would have much bigger issues than we are dealing with here today. The question we need to ask is whether the invocation of the Emergencies Act is justified. The Prime Minister himself has said that it should not be the first, second or third response, but so far no Liberal has been able to say what the first, second or third response was before using an act that has not been used in its 34 years of existence.
NDP members in this debate have had an even more difficult time, having completely abandoned long-held NDP positions and principles. They have adopted a sort of scorched-earth approach to the debate, repeatedly highlighting a number of individual actions and situations that every member of the House agrees are completely unacceptable and then attempting to attach those unacceptable actions to the hundreds of thousands of Canadians who are demanding that their legitimate concerns be heard by their government.
If one wants to understand the traditional NDP position, one would be best to visit the Canadian Civil Liberties Association website, because one will not hear any NDP members actually talking about it here.
Returning to my response to those who asked me what I would have done in this situation, they first need to recognize that just in the case of any protest movement since the beginning of time, there are those who will use the movement to pile on their own issues and agenda. I am going to deal with the core issue, which is federal vaccine mandates.
For starters, I would have followed the May 2021 principle laid out by the Prime Minister himself, who said in an interview, “We're not a country that makes vaccination mandatory.” He and I are both provaccine, and at the time were both antimandate. We would not be where we are today if he had not changed that during the election campaign. It made for a fantastic political wedge. I have never seen a more angry, divided electorate in my six campaigns. The Liberal campaign was invigorated by the issue, but it was a terribly divisive policy.
Our Conservative campaign position was a good one: no federal mandate and stronger testing. We expressed a belief in vaccine science and offered an alternative for those who were not there yet, but in the volatile last three campaign weeks, that rational message just did not cut through.
Here is the critical part. In order to comprehend where we are today, people might have to really work to put themselves in the position of someone who may have a view significantly different from theirs. This is increasingly rare in a world obsessed with othering.
I am solidly pro-vaccine. I have my three Pfizer shots. I believe in the evidence I have been presented, while also believing that we need to remain vigilant for emerging information. People I know and love have come to a completely different conclusion regarding the efficacy of vaccines. While I strongly disagree with them on vaccine efficacy, I support their right not to take the vaccine. We cannot be a country that forces people to inject themselves with things they believe will hurt them, whether we agree or not. Last May, the Prime Minister seemed to also hold that view.
People will say that we are not forcing anybody; they have a choice. This thinking is easy to get past with just a little personal reflection. Of course we all have things that we believe, rightly or wrongly, will hurt us. Most of us have never been told we will lose our careers over them.
Everybody is hurting right now because of COVID. The last two years have been tough, but there is a portion of the population who, because they will not take a vaccine that they genuinely believe will hurt them, have been forced out of their jobs and, in some cases, their homes. Whatever the percentage, the number of unvaccinated Canadians is not insignificant. Their intense, genuine frustration is completely understandable for anyone who takes the time to listen to their stories. We can have empathy without agreeing with their views on vaccines.
The Prime Minister could have tasked medical experts to persuade or most safely accommodate people with “deep convictions”, using the Prime Minister's own May 2021 words, whom the government was unable to convince to take vaccines. If we were actually all in this together, then this is what he would have done. Instead of a strategy focused on real togetherness, though, the Prime Minister not only chose to exclude people who hold a different belief on vaccines than he does, which I share for that matter, but has consistently and deliberately demonized them for holding that belief.
Leaving aside the Prime Minister's most inflammatory attacks, including remarks saying that many of them are misogynist and racist, let us zero in on the near-constant reference to unvaccinated Canadians as selfish. As a mass characterization, this is simply untrue. Some of the most generous people I know have chosen to be unvaccinated. Sure, most believe vaccines will hurt them on an individual level. That does not make them selfish. They also believe nobody should take them because they believe vaccines will hurt us and they care about us.
The bottom line is this. On Monday, Parliament voted on a non-partisan Conservative motion designed to de-escalate the situation. Conservatives also reiterated clearly that the illegal blockades need to end. That plan was rejected by Liberal and NDP members. Instead, the emergencies plan was announced.
While Liberal MPs are correct in pointing out that police have been effective in clearing the streets, surely we can agree that absolutely nothing has been done to address the legitimate concerns of the vast majority of people who supported this protest from across the country. If anything, those Canadians feel less heard and more abandoned by their government than they did four weeks ago. We are more divided today, as a country, than at any time in our history.
To close, I would like to say this in response to the mass branding project undertaken over the past few weeks by not all but too many members of the Liberal Party and the New Democratic Party and, to be clear, a strategy too often used by members from all parties at times. Now, and in the future, no matter what might be the issue of the day, no matter what is being protested on and around Parliament Hill, I will never be afraid to talk to people I have never met, fearful that someone in the background whom I do not know might hold up a sign that anyone who knows me knows I would find abhorrent. I will never be afraid to have a meaningful conversation with a fellow human being because of some label that someone in this House or their partisan friends will attach to me for solely partisan political reasons.
If that is something we can all agree on as we find some time to breathe and reflect this week, perhaps that will be a starting point for real, powerful change in this country.
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- Feb/19/22 8:32:05 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, there are kind members of Parliament on all sides of the House. The House is full of kind individuals, and there is none more kind than the member who has just spoken here, so I think it is absolutely regrettable that the Liberal and NDP strategy today has been to label every Conservative member of Parliament with the acts of a few individuals that we all unequivocally agree are unacceptable.
I will draw a parallel. Would it be fair to tag every single Liberal or Green or NDP member who cares about the environment with the actions that happened in Houston a couple of days ago, where 20 individuals wore masks, wielded axes and burned a vehicle with people in it? Would it be fair to tag everybody who cares about the environment in the House with the actions of those 20 individuals?
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- Feb/19/22 4:53:25 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, today and throughout the day, at different times we have seen the self-congratulatory attitude of the Liberals as they talk about the measures being effective. This might be partly because effectiveness is a new concept to them and they are not used to that in their caucus. I would argue that effectiveness is not the measure by which we should be looking at the situation today, but rather whether the actions are justified.
With the precedent we are setting today, in what other situations might she be concerned this act may be used?
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- Feb/19/22 2:18:17 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my hon. friend talked about this going off the rails right from the very beginning. If one talks to many of the folks who have been expressing their concern about vaccine mandates, this went off the rails for them when the Prime Minister said that many of them were misogynists and racists.
There has never been a retraction of that and there has never been an apology. I am going to give my hon. friend the opportunity to maybe extend an olive branch to them and weigh in on whether she believes many of them are misogynist and racist.
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- Feb/19/22 12:08:02 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am pro-vaccination, but I have friends and constituents who are not. They have made a different decision. We have had conversations about it and I cannot convince them. Many of them have reached out. Some of them who were working for the public service are not anymore as they lost their jobs. I talked to more than one person who had to give up their house because of it. They are coming to us asking what to do. On top of that devastation, they have a Prime Minister who referenced them as being misogynists and racist, as was mentioned.
I am sure the member has heard from people in that same devastating situation. What impact would it have if the Prime Minister would simply come back to say that he spoke too strongly, he got it wrong and he has heard people's concerns? What impact would that make to the de-escalation of what we have seen over the past—
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- Feb/19/22 11:31:34 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, the Liberals seem almost giddy today when talking about the effectiveness of what is going on out there. There was never any question that it was going to be effective. The question is whether it is justified. That is the question.
I listened to the hon. member's speech and I appreciated his tone and what he had to say. If we are using the Emergencies Act today for this, in what other situations would this precedent allow the Emergencies Act to be justified if it is justified for this?
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