- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Edmonton—Wetaskiwin
- Alberta
- Voting Attendance: 65%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $178,671.82
- Government Page
- May/8/23 11:40:06 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will start by pointing out that given the normal practice of the House, the normal routine, it would have been time for a Liberal question, but a Conservative got up and asked a question instead. Again, I would implore the Liberals to actually take part in this debate, take a productive role in the debate and try to understand what people—
An hon. member: Don't tell me what to do.
Hon. Mike Lake: Mr. Speaker, I am being heckled again. I cannot tell them what to do. I am imploring them. I am not telling them what to do; I do not have that power. However, I think the debate would be better if members from all parties were participating wholly and fully in it.
To the point of the question, I think there is a real question on Canadians' minds as to why we are even having this conversation right now and why this stuff is not hard-wired into our democracy at this point in time. Again, it is all the more reason that we need a full public inquiry.
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- May/8/23 4:24:59 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will point out that the other parliamentary secretary to the government House leader, the member for Kingston and the Islands, at the time, said the member for Wellington—Halton Hills was “supposedly affected”. He used those words.
That member of Parliament did uncategorically apologize for his comments, but I want to ask the member from the Bloc this: To what extent does a combative, bullying approach from the government on an issue as important as this one impact our ability to have real democratic conversations in the House?
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- May/4/23 12:42:56 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I do not normally get this fired up in here. There is a lot of people who get very fired up in here, but usually I try to avoid my hockey side, in a sense.
However, to the hon. member's point, I came in today expecting to discuss a motion that I thought would be unanimously supported. If we take a look at what is in the motion, including the measures on the registry and on closing communist China-run police stations in our country, I thought we would have common agreement here. I did not expect to come in and be heckled and mocked by Liberal members of Parliament, especially members of the Liberal leadership team.
I am hoping, again, that we can move forward with this conversation in a more constructive way and get to the heart of what is a very thoughtful motion that hopefully everybody in the House can support.
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- May/4/23 12:32:26 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will point out that the hon. member, in his defence, mentioned coming in 15 seconds before the member for St. Albert—Edmonton stopped speaking. I will point out that it was the precise moment that chaos descended on this conversation. It was his question for the hon. member for St. Albert—Edmonton that triggered the condescension and mockery among his colleagues over here. It was his question where he talked about the member's being "supposedly affected“, which he apologized for unreservedly but reservedly a few minutes ago, and that was what triggered the other parliamentary secretary to the House leader, though it is hard to keep track of the parliamentary secretaries to the House leader over there, the member for Winnipeg North, who then said to his laughing colleagues that the member is not credible, talking about the member for Wellington—Halton Hills.
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- May/4/23 12:27:54 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, continuing my comments, if we actually listen to what the member for Kingston and the Islands said, he said, “if Conservatives were bothered by it”. That was the caveat he added when he mentioned that just a few minutes ago—
Mr. Mark Gerretsen: That's not what I said. That's not what I said.
Hon. Mike Lake: That is what you said. I am not going to get into a heckling match, because that is how we got into this challenge in the first place.
There were about four members at the time, including those two members, who were laughing as the conversation was happening specifically related to the member for Wellington—Halton Hills and the—
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Madam Speaker, I am loving these questions from all sides. They are hitting the nail on the head. They indicate there is a real understanding of what needs to happen.
The “nothing about us without us” conversation is something that I think we continue to get better at, but we have a long way to go. It is a challenge. There is a segment of the autistic population that is able to clearly communicate what it is like to have autism. There are other people on the autism spectrum in Canada for whom it is a bit more difficult to communicate, but I think that we are all learning that we have a long way to go to include those voices.
I have one more quick comment on that. What is very important is that we make sure we are including indigenous Canadians with autism in that conversation as well, because I think they have been under-represented in many of the conversations over time.
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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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- 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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- 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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