- Member of Parliament
- Member of the Board of Internal Economy
Deputy House leader of the government
- Liberal
- Kingston and the Islands
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $112,228.33
- Government Page
- Mar/19/24 1:09:18 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, if the member is concerned about homelessness and initiatives this government has put forward, I would encourage him to not be tempted into voting against all the opposed items the Conservatives will be putting up. As I indicated, two of them, the Reaching Home program to address homelessness and the Canada housing benefit, are on the chopping block as a result of the opposed items the Leader of the Opposition has put forward.
The reality of the situation is that, while he says we are subsidizing the fossil fuel industry, we have phased out the fossil fuel subsidies. The only way we continue to subsidize, in any way, the fossil fuel industry is to help to deal with abandoned orphan oil wells. That member might that think that it is not our problem, because they were companies from 50 years ago. We should leave the wells there, and that would be the end of that. Unfortunately, governments at the time did not think it was good to ensure that the proper money was in place to deal with those wells later on, so now society has to pick up the tab. That is the unfortunate reality. However, it is something that we have to do in our environmental interests.
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- Jun/21/23 6:19:09 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I can assure the member that homelessness did, and always has, existed in her riding. It is nothing new. Maybe she is just realizing it now, but I can assure her that homelessness in her riding is most likely something that is not unique.
What I would say is that we have an obligation to support Canadians in the best way that we can. We have seen the various different measures that have come forward, whether it is the grocery rebate, the housing top-up or child care. We have brought countless measures into this place to help Canadians.
I hope the member realizes that the Conservative motion put forward today calls on us to balance the budget, which means that a number of those measures would have to be eliminated. The Conservatives have yet to tell us which measures it would be. I certainly would like to know because I am sure that would impact those who are homeless in her community.
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- Jan/31/23 2:07:55 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, on January 10, Kingston City Council unanimously passed a motion that declared a mental health and addictions crisis in our city. City services are stretched beyond what they can and are mandated to provide to those who are experiencing homelessness, mental health and addiction challenges.
The city's motion specifically requested assistance from the provincial Ontario government to invest in additional health care resources, including treatment and rehabilitation beds in Kingston, to support those in need. It further goes on to request the province to lead an emergency working group of frontline health care and social workers to develop long-term solutions.
Our federal government is willing and ready to help provinces and territories deal with the mental health and addictions crises that are happening throughout the country. That is why we established a ministry of mental health and invested, through budget 2022, $100 million over three years to support harm reduction, treatment and prevention at the community level.
I fully support this declaration, and we need all levels of government to work collaboratively together to tackle the mental health and addictions crisis happening throughout our country.
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- Nov/3/22 12:13:27 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Lac-Saint-Louis today.
Normally, I am very critical of the opposition, the Conservative Party in particular, moving motions of concurrence like this. I usually feel as though it is an opportunity to try to slow down government legislation, but I am grateful the opposition moved this today. It is very important that we have this discussion as we lead up to Remembrance Day.
Quite frankly, I have learned a lot sitting here this morning while listening to what other members have had to say. Any opportunity we have to further educated ourselves on the issues that veterans are facing, in particular as it relates to homelessness, are opportunities we should take. I am more than happy to have the opportunity to speak to this.
I have mentioned that we are approaching Remembrance Day. The Tuesday morning after Halloween, my six year old started talking about Christmas, as young children do as they move from one festive day to the next one. I made a point of saying, “Frankie, I think it is better if we talk about Remembrance Day for the next 11 days before we get to Christmas. He asked me what Remembrance Day was.
That gave me an opportunity to explain to him about the men and women who had gone out to various parts of the world to defend the values we hold so dear and to give us the quality of life we have. His eyes completely expanded as he was absorbing what I was saying. Obviously, a six year old cannot understand the realities of war, the complexities of global and foreign affairs, and the struggles our country has gone through to give us our incredible quality of life. Any opportunity we have to talk about this important issue is one that we need to have inside and outside the chamber.
It was referenced by the veterans affairs parliamentary secretary that one in 60 Canadians are veterans. We should stop and reflect on the number of individuals who have come from our country, and currently reside in our country, who have given that incredible quality of life. He talked about his recent trip abroad and about the people in the countries that Canada helped liberate many years ago through different wars. In particular, I think he was talking about World War II.
I was immediately reminded of my own family. I literally would not be standing here today had not been for the men and women who fought for our country. My grandparents on my father's side came from Holland and my mother's came from Italy. They moved to Canada in the 1950s from their war-torn countries. My grandfather, up until he passed away in the mid-nineties, would tell the story of the Canadians who liberated Holland.
My grandfather and grandmother owned a cornerstore in Hilversum, which is about 20 minutes north of Amsterdam. When the Germans moved into Holland and started to occupy it, he had to hide, as many men did during that time, from the Germans every time they would come through the country looking for men to work in factories.
As the war dragged on and the Germans started to run out of people to work in these factories and as it was becoming more clear they were struggling, they would walk into houses. They would bang on the front doors of houses in Holland, walk in and take men who would often not return home. My grandfather told the story of how he would hide from the German soldiers, as many other men would, to avoid being ripped from their families.
One day, he came out of hiding to see Canadian soldiers walking in the streets of Hilversum, literally liberating his country that had been under German rule for three years, I believe, by that point. They were liberated by Canadian solders. It was at that point my grandfather said that was where he wanted to live, in a country whose individuals had travelled across the world to defend values and freedoms.
As a result, my grandparents packed up their family and left their war-torn country with literally nothing but the idea and the dream of having a better life. They travelled on a boat, and my dad still has the ticket from that boat, to Canada, where they eventually ended up in Kingston. My mother's story is not much different, just from another European country at the time. As a result, I am the product of the decisions made by both sides of my family that allow me to be here today and to be in Canada.
I say this because when we talk about Canada being a country that promotes peace around the world, we quite often get caught up in this idea and lose sight of what that really means. We get caught up in thinking that it means people who stood in the chamber, debated in the chamber, created laws and policies and engaged in diplomatic foreign affairs throughout the generations before us somehow created Canada's incredible reputation. I would argue that this has very little to do with the politicians who were in this room and so much more to do with the men and women on the ground, even today, representing Canadian values.
When I was on the defence committee, I had the opportunity to travel to eastern Europe to study Operation Reassurance and Operation Unifier, and nothing moved me more on that trip than when we were sitting with the chair of the defence committee for Ukraine. He asked if we knew why the Canadian brigade had all these other countries lined up to be part of it. He said it was because those countries had the option of joining the brigades of the United Kingdom or the United States, but they were not interested as they wanted to be part of Canada's brigade.
When we talk about Canada's leadership throughout the world, it is not the leadership, in my opinion, that comes from this room; it is the leadership of our men and women and how they engage with people in other parts of the world.
I say all this to set the premise for how we should be taking care of these veterans when they come back from serving our country. The member for Barrie—Innisfil, in addition to others today, brought up Homes for Heroes. This is an organization specifically geared toward helping veterans find stable places to live so they are not homeless. As many members in the House have said, it is an absolute travesty that there are 5,000 homeless veterans in our country, which I did not know before I heard it in the debate today, after the incredible sacrifices they made for us.
Homes for Heroes is doing great work, and I understand the federal government has been helping to employ people to engage in growing this organization and making the operation successful. I am very familiar with the organization because it recently established a location in the city of Kingston to house veterans.
One of the biggest problems with housing veterans and finding and establishing communities, like what Homes for Heroes is striving for, is ensuring we have the right pieces of land to make that happen.
Unfortunately, because of decades of processes that have been put in place to rezone property, it can become quite cumbersome for organizations that are quite feeble in their operations and do not have the resources that larger developers might to properly go through the process of rezoning land to create villages like what Homes for Heroes is doing. The federal government needs to continue to explore with its provincial counterparts how to expedite that process. In Kingston, the provincial minister was able to say that the province was going to put an end to the process.
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- Nov/3/22 11:37:51 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I certainly appreciate the passion of the member. There are not a lot of people in this room who can get more vocal than I can at times, but he is certainly one of those members.
He brought up a lot of interesting and I think debatable points about affordable housing. This government has done a lot, and even though he says that nothing has been done and nothing has been built, that is simply not the case. I can reference my riding, where a number of projects that have been funded by the federal government are now open and housing individuals who are in need of affordable housing. I will say that unfortunately, and I was listening closely, I did not once hear the member talk about the actual issue, which is affordable housing for veterans.
There has been a lot of good discussion today from all sides of the House. I have heard the Conservatives talk about Homes for Heroes, and I have heard many other discussions about housing veterans. I wonder if the member would like to reflect specifically on housing the veterans who are in need right now and to depart from the more general topic of homelessness and focus on veterans.
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