- Member of Parliament
- Caucus Chair
- NDP
- Cowichan—Malahat—Langford
- British Columbia
- Voting Attendance: 66%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $140,733.69
- Government Page
- Oct/23/23 11:53:31 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I do believe I heard the member for Winnipeg North debate this motion just 20 or 30 minutes ago. I am just wondering whether the Table could check on that, and I am wondering how this is proceeding at this point.
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- Jun/12/23 10:28:23 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, back in 2017, when my third daughter, Isla, was born, my wife went through an extremely difficult pregnancy. She was hospital-bound for about eight weeks. Everything turned out fine, but I was required to be there to look after my other two daughters.
For the entirety of September and October 2017, I was forced to be at home. Of course we did not have hybrid Parliament at that time, so I missed a number of caucus meetings, votes and opportunities to represent the good people of Cowichan—Malahat—Langford. I understand its value there.
That being said, I do enjoy my time physically in this place. I actually like serving physically with members. I feel that being here in person makes our committees work properly but, again, I understand that different people who serve in this place are in different situations.
I want to tag on to the question of resources. There is a continuing problem with this hybrid Parliament over the safety and health of our interpreters. Whether it comes from people using improper headsets or speaking without them, that is a resource question. I would like to know from the parliamentary secretary, either through the Board of Internal Economy or the government itself, could he speak to addressing that very real problem in making sure this place continues to function?
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- Jun/2/22 5:40:23 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I appreciated all of the examples the member for Wellington—Halton Hills cited from the mother Parliament. There are a lot of lessons that we can draw from them, and I think he would agree with me that time is our most valuable currency in this place.
I would be curious to hear the member's thoughts on Fridays. I agree we should keep Fridays, but maybe there is an opportunity to pass the 2:30 p.m. mark to give members of Parliament the option for more space to debate private members' business. Maybe we could devote some time to take-note debates. It would be there as an option for members who were willing to participate.
I also liked the member's interventions on the summer. May and June are silly season because we are trying to cram eight sitting weeks into a nine-week space. It would do a lot more for our sanity if maybe we spaced every two sitting weeks with a constituency week but went into the summer. We could have more time, but try to keep our sanity. I would like to hear his thoughts on that.
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- Jun/2/22 4:38:50 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, on the first part, I will share a rare moment of sympathy for parliamentary secretaries who have to stay, because we know that, especially at this time of year in June, otherwise known as “silly season”, sometimes the House is sitting until midnight, so parliamentary secretaries have to be there and ready, possibly, to stay until 12:30.
On his question, I like his ideas about adjournment proceedings. If we could find a way to schedule it after QP, that would be great. We are all here during the middle of the day.
On the voting question, I am not sure if I am going to land on one side or the other, but as long as we agree to the premise that we are going to try to make this a more family-friendly and inclusive environment, I am open to a more in-depth discussion at the procedure and House affairs committee on what that would look like.
I think we should approach that debate with an understanding that we need to find a way to get more people to participate, because right now I think they look at what the House of Commons schedule is like, and they just do not see how they could manage that with their family responsibilities. That is something I think we, hopefully, can all agree needs to change in this country.
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- Jun/2/22 4:36:34 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, absolutely, I am open to all ideas on this. As we all know, on Fridays we sit from 10 until 2:30. For people like me, their riding is about as far away from Ottawa as we can get, so that is valuable time for me to be able to get back to my riding and spend time with my family and my constituents.
However, there are Fridays when I am staying here in Ottawa, and if I was able to give a signal to the Chair and other members of this place that I wanted to debate a certain private member's bill, we could find a way to schedule that, and we could probably make up the time past 2:30 to maybe schedule two, three or four private members' bills.
For any opportunity, I am flexible, just as long as we agree on the premise that more Private Members' Business does need to find time to have debate in this place.
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- Jun/2/22 4:25:01 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I want to start by recognizing what a privilege it is to serve as a member of Parliament in this place. It is an honour I have had since 2015. To the constituents of Cowichan—Malahat—Langford who are watching today's debate, I know it can seem a lot like inside baseball. We are talking about the Standing Orders of the House of Commons. It is not always the most riveting of subject material, but I will say to them is that this debate is important because the Standing Orders allow us as their elected representations to do our job effectively.
I want to approach today's debate from the perspective as a member of the opposition, because I think that for members on this side of the House, the Standing Orders sometimes take on supreme importance, especially in the context of a majority government, as I experienced during my first four years here, but also in the context of a minority Parliament. It is what gives us a structure, some semblance of reliability on what our day would be like and the tools that we could use to try to push different agendas.
I think many members would agree with me that in this place time is our most valuable currency, and once it is spent, we do not get it back. Essentially, a lot of the House's business is the management of time. There is a constant battle between the government's priorities and what the opposition wants, and sometimes that can lead to some pretty epic clashes. I have been witness to that over the years.
I can remember my first experience coming into the original House of Commons chamber in Centre Block in December 2015. I had just had my orientation session, and I was walking down the hallway on a lunch break. The security guard saw me wandering around aimlessly. She asked if I wanted to go inside the chamber, and I asked if I could. She said, “Yes, you are a member of Parliament. Just tell me when you are finished, and I will lock the door.”
My very first experience of not being in the gallery, but actually being in the chamber, in Centre Block, was to have that entire chamber to myself, to just sort of feel the weight of history. One could almost re-enact the famous debates that had happened in that place, the great moments of Canadian democracy.
Then, of course, I received my gigantic green book, House of Commons Procedure and Practice. A lot of my parliamentary colleagues would acknowledge that I am a little bit of a geek on procedure and practice. I have not had as much time as I would have liked in recent days to devote to that because my critic duties are keeping me quite busy, but I have always been interested in the mechanics of how this place works. I want to take this opportunity to both draw on the experience that I have had over the last six and a half years to maybe suggest ways that the procedure and House affairs committee could maybe take some of the substance of today's debate and make some improvements to how we operate in this place.
I just want to start off with a nice quote from the great Stanley Knowles, when he gave a speech to the Empire Club in 1957. He said:
It is the opposition's right to insist at all times on the full protection of the rules of debate. The government is entitled to that same protection, but in addition it has its majority with which to establish its will. The opposition has only the rules for its protection, hence the authorities on parliamentary procedure emphasize the greater importance to the opposition of the only protection it has, the protection of the rules.
That sets the context of why, from this side of the House, this debate probably takes on a little more importance, especially when we do have those majority governments. Speaking on the time as a currency aspect, we all have great ideas for legislation. The government absolutely does monopolize most of the time with Government Orders, but we have had some tremendously good ideas coming not only from members of the back bench on the government side but also from the opposition side in the form of Private Members' Business.
It is to our great loss that we do not spend more time discussing Private Members' Business. One thing I think the procedure and House affairs committee should take a look at is trying to carve out more time in a sitting week to debate Private Members' Business so we can get a full spectrum of ideas, get them their airing, and really encourage those ideas to come forward and have that substantive debate.
In the 42nd Parliament, I drew position 159, so it took me four years just to get to the first hour of debate. I was substantially more lucky in the 43rd Parliament being in the top 30, and I think in this one I am in position No. 94. It is all luck of the draw, but if we had more time each week, more members would have that opportunity to put forward their ideas.
I have heard in previous speeches the need for more importance to be attached to PMBs for when they go to the other place, and I know we do not have control over the rules of the Senate, but at the end of the 42nd Parliament we did see a lot of very good private member's bills from the House unnecessarily held up. I think that was shameful to the democratic process.
I would also like to see giving members of Parliament the opportunity to launch take-note debates based on their petitions. We know that petitioning the Crown is one of the oldest practices in our system of Parliament. In fact, if we go back to the days of the 13th century monarch Edward I, this was a way for the commoners to petition the Crown their grievances, and the substance is still very much the same. We as members have the opportunity to stand in this place, make a short introduction on the nature of the petition and what people are asking for, but it would be great, after we get a government response to that petition, because sometimes they are quite unsatisfactory responses, to have the opportunity to pursue the government's response in a more fulsome way and make sure that we can debate it.
With question period, I often joke with my constituents that question period is an hour of my life I will never get back each day I am here. It is a fact. The 35 seconds we have to pose a question and the 35 seconds the government has to answer does not lend itself to credible debate in this place. We had a unique time in the early days of the pandemic in 2020 when we had the COVID-19 committee of which all members of the House were members with basically a super committee of the whole, and we set up a system like at committee, where members could have five minutes with a minister of their choice. If our question was not actually answered by the minister, they could not just go back to the same old rote talking points or they would look quite foolish. It actually forced both minister and questioner to have a fulsome debate, to have backup questions and to stick on point.
I know we might have to figure out how the timing works out in the five minutes, but the rules are in committee of the whole are basically that the minister gets approximately the same amount of time as the questioner used to pose the question. We could adopt the same rules there. I know that question period is when most Canadians tune in, but I always tell my constituents please, please do not judge our work based on that one hour alone. I know the rest of the work that we do is not as interesting, it does not have the same kind of fireworks, but is far more substantive, and there is a real opportunity for reform.
On the other side, we do have the ability during adjournment proceedings debate to follow up on questions where we felt the answer was not satisfactory, so either we reform question period to give a little more exchange or we give more time to adjournment proceedings so we are not limited to just three per day. I know time is a valuable thing in this place, but we could find opportunities to schedule that.
I will end on this: We need to have a serious conversation about how we make this place more family friendly. We have found through the pandemic that we can operate in a hybrid fashion. Speaking for myself, I do enjoy being back here in person. I love seeing my colleagues in person, but I also want to recognize that we are trying to encourage more people from different backgrounds to come to elected politics. The way to do that is to make it more family friendly.
We need to show young women and young men, those with families, those with different life circumstances, that they can come here and serve, whether it is in person or online. That is a healthy thing for our democracy, to try to make sure that we build a legislature that is reflective of what Canadian society looks like.
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- May/10/22 5:50:32 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am a non-religious person, and I have let the daily prayer continue as it is, but on the principle of it, I do have to ask this question: If I am a non-believer, as a duly elected representative of this House, why do I have to accept that I have to endure a reference to an “almighty God” that I do not believe in? I think the principle is a valid one, and I am going to vote for this motion.
However, I would ask the member about the reference that we attempted to make to Canada's relationship with indigenous peoples, because we have a very long colonial history, and I believe it is a secular acknowledgement of the way the Canadian state has harmed indigenous people. I am just wondering why the Bloc was not prepared to accept our amendment to its motion today.
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- May/10/22 4:15:58 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I agree with my colleague across the way that there are a number of very pressing issues facing Canada. I am not religious. I do not believe in God. I come in and I accept the prayer. I just let it go.
On the principle of today's motion, because my colleague was talking about inclusivity, if I had been an MP who was a very strong atheist and overly so, how is it inclusive to people who do not believe in God to stand in this place and hear a reference to an almighty God that they do not believe in? Surely, if we are talking about inclusivity, we should just make it a period of solemn reflection. Each person, in their own way and whatever religion or God they believe in, can make that reference on their own terms. I believe Parliament's role, in terms of protecting religion, is making laws in this place so that people can choose to believe the way they wish to without fear of any persecution or discrimination.
On the principle of the point, how is it inclusive to people who do not believe in God to make that reference to an almighty God when they are members of the people's House?
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- Dec/7/21 12:18:39 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to ask the member about a specific part of this motion, paragraph (m), where the committee's work will be supported by an order of the House. In my view, this section of the motion is probably informed by the troubles that standing committees had in the previous Parliament and this may, in fact, be saving this special committee time, because it will be backed up by a full-force order from the House.
Does the member have any comments on that part in relation to the troubles we experienced in the previous Parliament?
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- Dec/7/21 11:47:14 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, a unique part of this motion to create a special committee is that it would be accompanied by a special order of the House, which is informed by experiences of standing committees in the previous Parliament that ran against obstructive measures from members of the government and had to request the House's help to solicit documents and actually have them put before the committee.
I wonder if my colleague has any comments on the fact that we are probably saving some time by putting a special standing order of the House in the motion so the committee is equipped with that before and would not have to make use of it at a later stage.
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