- 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
Mr. Speaker, the member said “round of applause, everybody”. He should know that he cannot talk to other members in the House. He can talk only to you.
I am more than willing to accept and recognize the fact that they balanced the budget in 2015 on the backs of veterans.
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Madam Speaker, perhaps my intervention will be more of a comment than a question, but I am happy to hear the member's thoughts on it.
Let us be absolutely clear on what happened with this one particular individual. There was a case worker in Veterans Affairs who should never have been giving any kind of advice regarding MAID. They were certainly not qualified to do that, and that individual no longer works for Veterans Affairs. That is the reality of the situation. Pertaining to medical advice, that should only ever come from an individual's physician and the medical experts who are qualified to do that.
Let us be clear that this was an isolated incident. The individual no longer works for Veterans Affairs. It is very clear what has happened with this individual and the fact is that they are no longer employed by Veterans Affairs.
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- Nov/4/22 12:07:25 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we will certainly look into this and get back to my colleague from North Island—Powell River.
Caring for veterans has always been a priority of the government. We reinstated a number of the veterans services offices after they were closed by the previous government. We will continue to work with veterans.
I sincerely hope that this can be an issue that we work on across party lines because our veterans deserve the best.
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- Nov/3/22 12:28:16 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, one thing the government should focus on actually comes from a comment I heard from a colleague of the member for North Island—Powell River. We need to do more to find out where homeless veterans are. The reality is that there are many homeless veterans out there, but we just do not know there physical location. We know they are unaware of a lot of the supports that exist.
I understand that we rely a lot on community and volunteer-based organizations to collect that data. I do not know the extent, personally, to which the government is collecting that data, but we need to work better at finding individuals who are homeless, veterans in particular, so they can be made aware of their supports.
The federal government, in my opinion, should be focusing on that in addition to everything else.
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- Nov/3/22 12:26:31 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will not admit to anything about which I am unaware of the details. However, absolutely nobody should be discriminated against in our country.
In particular, when we talk about veterans, if there is one issue that all members of the House should be able to get behind is that the safety, security and supports for our veterans are of absolute paramount and we should spare no expense to ensure that is the case. We will always have different opinions as to how that should be done. I think we can work in a collaborative way to forge some kind of consensus on how we move forward with that.
To the member's question more specifically about discrimination, clearly I do not see a place for that. I do not condone it. I would certainly urge anybody who is in a position of authority to do something about that and look into it.
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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 12:08:19 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I agree with the member for Edmonton Griesbach that we should allow nothing to stand in our way to house, in particular, these 5,000 veterans who are homeless.
It would be very easy to put money to this, and I do not think anybody in the House would disagree with that. However, as indicated by the member for North Island—Powell River who spoke before the member, one of the real challenges has to do with getting in touch with these veterans who are homeless. Quite frankly, many of them do not know that the supports are there, and we do not know where many of them are physically located because they are homeless.
I wonder if the member could comment on the position that perhaps the government should be taking to get the word out there and to try to get in touch. Is there anything that we can do beyond putting money towards something, which I know everybody in the House would agree we should do?
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- Nov/3/22 11:53:40 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the member for North Island—Powell River's intervention was quite insightful. She really hit the nail on the head with her comment toward the end which talked about how there are many veterans out there who just do not know that services are available to them. I think the government needs to play a stronger role, quite frankly, in getting in touch with these veterans.
I know that in my riding of Kingston and the Islands a few years ago, there was an effort one Sunday morning, which I believe was happening throughout the country, where we went out into our communities, specifically to the areas where we knew homeless people were living, to get in touch with veterans. For starters, it was to try to locate them and account for them, but it was also to help them become aware of the services that were available.
I wonder if the member could comment further on where she sees opportunities to reach out to veterans, in particular those who are not aware that services are available to them, so we can give them the services they deserve, and which the government should be providing them.
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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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- Apr/5/22 4:49:59 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, some of what the member said is factually incorrect. He accused the Liberal government of playing shell games and specifically referenced the fact that the percentage of GDP includes veterans' pensions. Is he aware that in 2018, NATO amended its definition of the 2% to include veterans' pensions? They are part of the calculation now, despite the fact that he uses that as an example to suggest that there is some kind of “shell game” going on.
More importantly, to address one of the comments toward the end of his speech, he said that we need to back up our talk with actions. What is that? Is he referring to when Stephen Harper was a tough guy with Vladimir Putin and told him to get out of Ukraine? Was he backing that up with action at the time? I ask because at the time he was spending less than 1% of GDP on our military.
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