SoVote

Decentralized Democracy

Member of Parliament

Hon. Hedy Fry

  • Member of Parliament
  • Liberal
  • Vancouver Centre
  • British Columbia
  • Voting Attendance: 57%
  • Expenses Last Quarter: $106,078.52

  • Government Page
Context: House Hansard - 166 - Mar/8/23
Hon. Hedy Fry (Vancouver Centre, Lib.)
Madam Speaker, I want to thank those members in the House who spoke so passionately and eloquently in support of this bill. The bill was brought forward, as was said, by Senator Mégie, who is a fellow physician from the Senate. I then brought it to the House. The need to remember is very important. With Bill S-209, we want to remember, and we want to learn. Remembering means that we learn from our mistakes. There are so many things we did wrong. We need to learn from them for the next time there is a pandemic, and there are going to be more pandemics because we are now a global world in which everyone travels. Everyone moves from place to place, and therefore disease can spread globally very rapidly. Therefore, we need to learn from our mistakes. We also need to learn from the things we did well; we should maybe do them sooner or deal with them differently. A pandemic is all about science. Science is all about evidence. There is evidence in this pandemic that we need to learn from. That is one of the reasons for remembering. The second reason for remembering is that we need to honour the frontline workers, the heroes in this pandemic. They went out there, gave their lives and suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. We now have a problem in our medicare system because all our frontline workers are burned out. They do not want to work anymore because they are so burned out by the trauma of going through this. We also want to remember the victims, specifically all those people who died. We heard everyone speaking eloquently about the seniors, as well as about the youth, whose education was interrupted and who were alone and did not have anyone to turn to. We heard about all of the people who were not able to meet and the families disrupted. We need to remember that. We need to remember the 50,000 Canadians who died from this particular pandemic. We need to remember those things. A day of remembrance is not unknown. We have Remembrance Day every November 11 because we want to remember World War II. This was the war we thought was going to end all wars, but it did not. As we are now living through the war in Ukraine, we remember what we should have remembered and should have learned to prevent some of these things from happening and to make sure they do not continue to happen. Pandemics are like wars. They indiscriminately affect, kill and wreak destruction in the path of people. They do not pick and choose. Now that we are a world that is together, as my hon. NDP colleague said, we need to remember that we are now a global community. We are no longer isolated in our own little nation states. The next time there is a virus, bacteria or something that is going to destroy us, we know it is again going to be a global pandemic. The World Health Organization remembers and recalls this pandemic. It is warning us about future pandemics to come. If we can learn, remember and honour, then this is what this pandemic remembrance day is all about. I want to thank those who supported my bill from Senator Mégie.
562 words
All Topics
  • Hear!
  • Rabble!
  • star_border
Context: House Hansard - 111 - Oct/17/22
Hon. Hedy Fry
Madam Speaker, I agree with the hon. member. We need to remember all those people who passed, all those people who are now chronically ill, and all of those people who were overworked, overwrought and burned out, as we are seeing right now in the system. This is about remembering all of that, but it is also about remembering what we must do and what we did not do, and about learning lessons. Therefore, I want to thank the hon. member for her support.
84 words
All Topics
  • Hear!
  • Rabble!
  • star_border
Context: House Hansard - 111 - Oct/17/22
Hon. Hedy Fry
Madam Speaker, I understand the logic behind the hon. member's question. However, the thing about remembering is that when we do not remember, we do not learn. This is not just saying, “Let us remember.” It is saying let us look at what we build to protect ourselves the next time around. One of those things is obviously going to have to be to shore up our health care system. One of those things is going to be to make sure we have frontline workers; to make sure we do what we need to do to keep, recruit and retain nurses; and to look at physicians. In British Columbia alone, we are now looking at helping family physicians to go back and practise family medicine. We are looking at incentives. Those are some of the things we do. As I said in my speech, what we do not do is just sit there and say we remember. Of course, that would be a ludicrous thing to do, but by remembering, we find out what we did wrong; we look at what the outcomes have been, and we try to prevent those things from happening again by creating new systems and by helping to build a new resilience to everything. That would mean—
216 words
All Topics
  • Hear!
  • Rabble!
  • star_border