- Member of Parliament
- Member of the panel of chairs for the legislative committees
- Liberal
- Fleetwood—Port Kells
- British Columbia
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $140,090.09
- Government Page
- Nov/25/21 4:27:37 p.m.
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Again, Madam Speaker, out of respect for a person I do respect quite a bit, I will answer.
The fact is that Dr. Suzuki issued a statement today in which he retracted his comments and apologized for them. We have to recognize that this gentleman is extremely passionate and sometimes passions get away from people. Lord knows, who among us has not been guilty of that from time to time? The story is now straight. Hopefully it has settled down and we can move on.
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- Nov/25/21 4:26:02 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I respect my colleague a great deal and I have no problem answering his question.
What is going on with the Wet'suwet'en territory is concerning. It is troubling. As politicians, we do stay out of the way of policing matters. We also have to defer to the Province of British Columbia, which is basically setting the framework for what is going on there.
That said, in the spirit of reconciliation, I think that more work does need to be done. I appreciate the member's question because it raises a very important, pertinent, current matter.
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- Nov/25/21 4:24:20 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I think we are missing an important point here, which is that in spite of the presence of a hybrid voting system, anybody and everybody would be free to come to the House to fulfill their duties except if they were sick or if they were fearful of getting sick. At that point, the hybrid system would allow them to do their jobs.
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- Nov/25/21 4:23:21 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, that is exactly what this motion allows. A fully vaccinated person who does come down with COVID-19 could still go to work.
The Conservative opposition to this measure would deny that person the opportunity to serve their constituents.
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- Nov/25/21 4:12:39 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will note, with pleasure, that I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Brossard—Saint-Lambert.
I want to spare a moment for all of us in British Columbia. There are more weather events on the way. Our thoughts are with our emergency services people and everybody else still trying to recover.
After almost 20 months, so many aspects of our lives have been upended by this once-in-a-century pandemic. As difficult as it has been, Canadians have found ways to adapt. This includes finding new ways of working and doing business that minimize the risk of transmitting the COVID-19 virus.
The House has not been an exception. In the last Parliament, we agreed to modify our proceedings in accordance with public health guidelines. This included a hybrid approach, with members participating in the House and committees proceedings both in-person and through video conference.
This was a reasonable approach, because it allowed all members to participate in all types of House business, while limiting close physical contact with too many people. We know that limiting close contact is a key measure to stop the spread of the virus. It was the right thing to do, not only because we wanted to keep parliamentarians safe but we also wanted to keep safe the staff who support us, our families and our constituents.
COVID-19 is unpredictable. I know a family of three, two people in their late 50s and a mom in her 80s, all with compromised health systems, and all who had COVID and did not know it. On the other hand, a robust chap in his late 50s, an outdoorsman and enthusiastic bhangra dancer, the husband of one of my staff, in fact, ended up in an induced coma for two months, a candidate for a lung transplant, still doing his best to walk for more than a few minutes without needing to rest.
We have seen examples of long-haulers, who suffer for extended periods. A recent Washington Post article noted, “The worst effects include debilitating weakness and fatigue, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression, difficulty thinking, and hard-to-define challenges functioning in daily life. Family members, suddenly thrust into the role of caregivers for a seriously ill loved one, endure emotional and practical difficulties of their own.”
A year ago next month, we thought we would see the end of the pandemic in sight, thanks to Canada's world-leading vaccination program rollout. Unfortunately, at the outset of this 44th Parliament, the pandemic lingers, longer than we had hoped. We are getting close to finishing the fight against it, but we still must remain vigilant.
We know that government members, members from the New Democratic Party, the Bloc Québécois and the Green Party are fully vaccinated. Personally, I do not see any problem disclosing my status as a breach of my right to privacy; rather, it is a signal to our families, staff and everybody here that I am not among those more likely to spread the virus. However, if I am unlucky enough to be laid low by COVID-19, I owe it to the people of Fleetwood—Port Kells, who I thank for honouring me with my third term, to keep doing what I was elected to do. What our government is proposing will allow that.
It is a mystery that the leader of the Conservative Party would want to deny that ability to anyone in this place, especially members of his own caucus. However, his opposition to a reasonable tried and tested alternative will do just that.
It is a further mystery why Ottawa's best-kept secret is whether a Conservative MP next to other members in the lobby or at committee is vaccinated or not. I would not be surprised if a Conservative raised a question of privilege on that matter, the right to a safe, secure workplace. We saw a member of the Bloc do so a couple of days ago, and it is a mystery to see the Bloc's position on this.
I would point out that vaccine mandates are not new. The United Kingdom had one in 1853 to address the smallpox epidemic. In 1905, the United States Supreme Court, in the case of Jacobson v. Massachusetts, upheld the constitutionality of mandatory smallpox vaccination programs to preserve public health.
The Conservatives might think of themselves as the freedom party, but those freedoms exist in the context that also recognizes the duty we have to one another in the interests of the common good. As the party of the charter, we Liberals fully understand that in some ways personal choice should not trump our collective rights. It is a matter of reasonable vigilance.
That is what the motion before us today is all about, vigilance. The motion is about allowing all members of Parliament to fulfill all their duties safely. As noted, we have a tried and tested model of a hybrid Parliament that was used in the second session of the 43rd Parliament, and the motion before us would mostly reinstate the approach used then.
The motion mainly seeks to do five things. First, it would allow members to participate in proceedings of the House, either in person or by video conference, provided that members participating in person did so in accordance with the Board of Internal Economy's decision of Tuesday, October 19, 2021, regarding vaccinations against COVID-19, and that reasons for medical exemptions followed the guidance from the Ontario Ministry of Health entitled “Medical Exemptions to COVID-19 Vaccination”. As well, the National Advisory Committee on Immunization informs us on this. The motion temporarily suspends or alters a few Standing Orders to facilitate this move.
Second, the motion would similarly allow members to participate in committee meetings remotely or in person provided that they met the vaccine requirements set out by the Board of Internal Economy.
Third, it would provide for documents to be laid before or presented in the House electronically. This includes the documents that the government is required by statute to table as well as petitions or other documents that any member may wish to provide.
Fourth, the motion sets out how and when recorded divisions are to be taken in the hybrid format. I will return to this in a moment.
Finally, for the current supply period, it provides for Supplementary Estimates to be referred to and considered by a committee of the whole. This is in keeping with past practices of the House to allow for scrutiny of the estimates early in a new Parliament before standing committees have been constituted.
The motion would keep these measures in effect from the day it is adopted until Thursday, June 23, 2022, before the House adjourns for the summer. This time frame would allow the House to safely conduct the business Canadians sent us here to accomplish for them. After June, we could have another look at how we conduct our proceedings, taking into consideration the best health advice at the time.
Focusing now on the motion's provisions relating to voting, I wanted to first acknowledge how this single act is one of the most important that parliamentarians carry out. During the early months of the second session of the last Parliament, members in the chamber voted by the traditional process of row-by-row. Members participating by video conference were called on one by one to cast their votes orally. While these voting arrangements were successful and used for over 50 votes, they were time-consuming. Some votes required as much as 50 minutes to complete. However, the House also agreed to develop and test a remote voting application, and one was introduced in March. With this application, a vote could be completed in 10 to 15 minutes. The remote voting application was used successfully for over 120 votes.
Today's motion would put this app back into use, allowing us to express our will safely, securely and conveniently. Although the remote voting app was successfully used in the last Parliament, the motion would take the prudent step of directing the House administration to carry out an onboarding process of all members for this app to be completed no later than Wednesday, December 8, 2021. Once the onboarding is complete, but no later than December 9, the app would be put into use.
Paragraph (q) of the motion ensures that there would be integrity in the use of the app. Among other things, it requires that votes have to be cast from within Canada using the member's House-managed device. Also, the visual identity of members must be validated for each vote. This could be verified by the whip of each party recognized in the House.
Any member unable to vote via the electronic voting system during the provided 10 minutes could connect to the virtual sitting to indicate to the Chair their voting intention. The motion is therefore very careful to put in place contingencies should members encounter problems with the voting application, so as to not disenfranchise them. We want to avoid disenfranchising people.
Some have argued that the literal act of standing up to be counted during an in-person vote is too important to be set aside. I do not want to argue that tradition. I would simply say that the motion aims to put in place reasonable, temporary measures to allow each member the ability to safely vote.
For each vote, members' names will still be recorded in the House journals allowing all to see where they figuratively stood on the issue voted on.
The motion before us also seeks to arrange a deferred schedule for recorded divisions on most types of debatable motions, or a motion to concur in a bill at report stage on a Friday. Specifically, votes would take place after question period on a day depending on when the time recorded division was requested. This order would be in keeping with past practice of the House, would provide members with some predictability for when votes would occur and would allow us to better manage our time both in and outside of the House.
I know all members of the House agree that we want to put this pandemic behind us. Through the Speech from the Throne, we set out an agenda to do just that. We are securing the next generation of COVID-19 vaccines, especially for kids—
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- Nov/24/21 5:47:32 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, if I go into the lobby over here, I know all but one person has been double-vaccinated. I know the one who is not, and there is a darn good reason for it.
Does the hon. member not agree that he is playing Russian roulette every time he goes into that lobby over there? He does not know who he is mixing with or who could have something nasty, especially when the opposition House leader has indicated that a person who is unvaxxed is more likely to transmit the disease to somebody else.
I am wondering this. What kind of risk management does my colleague use to deal with this?
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- Nov/24/21 5:17:02 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I sat in the House yesterday and one of the member's colleagues stood and raised a question of privilege, saying that it really offended her privilege to have to be in the House, cheek by jowl, with people who might make her sick. What does he say to her?
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