Statements By Members
Mr. Speaker, this week is Mental Health Week, and this year's theme is empathy. Of course, this is an interesting place and time to be making a statement on empathy. How do we, not just politicians but all Canadians, passionately debate critical issues in a way that does not relentlessly chip away at our collective mental health? For starters, I would argue that we all need to scale down the verba…
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Mr. Speaker, last Saturday was World Autism Awareness Day and 24 years since my son, Jaden, was diagnosed. Jaden would normally be in Ottawa with me, but last week, he tested positive for COVID. He has bounced back quickly, but sadly is not able to travel. As the years go by, we learn more about autism and both the strengths and challenges that come with the label; still, so much remains unknown. …
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, even after the imposition of vaccine mandates, some Canadians chose to remain unvaccinated. Many of them sacrificed jobs and their ability to travel to see loved ones because of their authentic anxiety about COVID vaccines. The Prime Minister's response was to go on television and proclaim that many of those Canadians were “racists” and “misogynists”. What does the minister have to sa…
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Mr. Speaker, the health minister talks a lot about numbers. I am wondering if he can tell us whether mental health, particularly the mental health of Canadians who still today cannot work or travel to see loved ones because of the mandates, is one of the metrics being considered in regard to lifting the mandates. If so, what specifically are those mental health metrics?
Read full speech →Statements by Members
Mr. Speaker, the last few years have been incredibly tough. For most of us, our mental health is not where it should be and many around us are really struggling. Everyone should remember the name BeThere.org. It is the award-winning Canadian brain child of jack.org and, quite simply, a tool the world needs to know about right now. Its five golden rules are a must for anyone who loves someone who m…
Read full speech →Orders of the Day
Madam Speaker, a year ago this week, I made a one-minute statement in the virtual House of Commons from my basement in Edmonton. I have reflected on that statement a lot over the past few weeks. Yesterday, as I listened to the debate and monitored my very active and animated social media feeds, I decided to work that statement into my speech this morning, if for no other reason than to anchor my o…
Read full speech →Orders of the Day
Madam Speaker, I want to commend the hon. member because it might be the first time I have heard a Liberal member mention Alberta in the House. She has to recognize, first of all, that among my constituents, almost universally, the feedback we have gotten back has been opposed to the Emergencies Act. My staff tell me probably 95% of the feedback we have gotten has been people asking me to oppose t…
Read full speech →Orders of the Day
Madam Speaker, to be clear, Conservatives have been unequivocal in denouncing the clearly negative aspects of what happened outside this place, while at the same time clearly supporting individuals from across the country who have legitimate concerns about the approach the government is taking. In regard to the plan the hon. member mentioned, I would point out that her party supported the plan. We…
Read full speech →Orders of the Day
Madam Speaker, let me be 100% clear. This party, every member on this side of the House, is 100% against the issues he is talking about. We are against violent white supremacy, white supremacy of any kind, racial bigotry of any kind, and other bigotry of any kind. What I actually said was I will not be afraid to have conversations with people I do not know as I am walking from my apartment to the …
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Madam Speaker, I am pro-vaccination, but I have friends and constituents who are not. They have made a different decision. We have had conversations about it and I cannot convince them. Many of them have reached out. Some of them who were working for the public service are not anymore as they lost their jobs. I talked to more than one person who had to give up their house because of it. They are c…
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Madam Speaker, the Liberals seem almost giddy today when talking about the effectiveness of what is going on out there. There was never any question that it was going to be effective. The question is whether it is justified. That is the question. I listened to the hon. member's speech and I appreciated his tone and what he had to say. If we are using the Emergencies Act today for this, in what oth…
Read full speech →Orders of the Day
Mr. Speaker, my hon. friend talked about this going off the rails right from the very beginning. If one talks to many of the folks who have been expressing their concern about vaccine mandates, this went off the rails for them when the Prime Minister said that many of them were misogynists and racists. There has never been a retraction of that and there has never been an apology. I am going to giv…
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Madam Speaker, today and throughout the day, at different times we have seen the self-congratulatory attitude of the Liberals as they talk about the measures being effective. This might be partly because effectiveness is a new concept to them and they are not used to that in their caucus. I would argue that effectiveness is not the measure by which we should be looking at the situation today, but …
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Mr. Speaker, there are kind members of Parliament on all sides of the House. The House is full of kind individuals, and there is none more kind than the member who has just spoken here, so I think it is absolutely regrettable that the Liberal and NDP strategy today has been to label every Conservative member of Parliament with the acts of a few individuals that we all unequivocally agree are unacc…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola. On April 29, 2003, I got a call at home from my brother Dan. I remember everything about that moment, exactly where I was in the House, the fact that I just finished an episode of 24, then in its second season. It was a beautiful spring day and there was a light breeze coming in through the patio…
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Mr. Speaker, I am broadly supportive any time we can bring experts together to discuss issues as important as this one. We are at such a unique time right now in our parliamentary history. We have just gone through an election campaign where every single party had major promises and a lot to say about not just the opioid crisis but mental health in general. I look forward to working with members o…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, there are a few things. One of the things that is not talked about enough in this country is the concept of recovery. I know for some people there are all sorts of different connotations when we start talking about recovery, but more than anything, I would love to have my dad able to be up in the gallery as I am giving a different speech in this conversation because he was able to rec…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Chair, we are having yet another debate on this issue, saying some important things with lots of great sentiment. The member has been a member of Parliament for a long time and was a minister at one point in time. One would think she would have influence within her own party, especially with her credentials. I am wondering what specific action her government has taken that she can point to a…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, if the government does not know the number, how can Canadians be expected to? A Google search will eventually tell us that the 24-7 number for the Canada Suicide Prevention Service is 1-833-456-4566. Since the December 2020 vote, more than 4,500 Canadians have tragically lost their lives to suicide. We have so much work to do together on mental health in this country, but this is a re…
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Mr. Speaker, it is now 420 days since Parliament passed a unanimous motion that referenced the “alarming rate of suicide in Canada”, called it a “national health crisis” and demanded the House take “immediate action” to institute a nationwide three-digit 988 suicide prevention hotline. My question for the minister today is simple. What is the current number that Canadians should remember so that i…
Read full speech →Adjournment Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, tonight I am following up on a question I first asked on December 7, eight days ago. For the context of my question, it is important to note that in the eight days since I asked this question, according to the statistics, 88 Canadians will have died by suicide. In that time, in those eight days, we will have lost 88 Canadians to suicide. It was 370 days ago that the House came togethe…
Read full speech →Adjournment Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, I am thankful this is an issue that members of all parties can agree on. I will point out for those watching who are interested right now that if they do a Google search and wade through all of the documentation on the government website eventually they will find that there is a 24-7 number for the Canada Suicide Prevention Service. The number is 1-833-456-4566 for those who need that…
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Mr. Speaker, this is a national crisis. Saturday marked the one-year anniversary of a unanimous House of Commons motion to take “immediate action” on an easy-to-remember, 24-7 three-digit suicide prevention hotline: 988. Since that unanimous vote, 4,000 Canadian lives have been lost to suicide. In their darkest, most desperate moment, Canadians should not have to do a Google search to find help th…
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Mr. Speaker, I would not have risen on this, but I will because the Liberal whip stood up on it. Precedence is important. I was on the government side for many years and while I was trying to answer questions, I could not hear because the Liberal whip was one of the people yelling at me. The precedent at the time was that sometimes the Speaker would stand to ask people to be quiet, but never once …
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Mr. Speaker, 361 days ago, the House came together to vote unanimously on the motion put forward by the member for Cariboo—Prince George to take immediate action to establish a nationwide three-digit 988 suicide prevention hotline. In a world where we can hold a $600-million election in the midst of a global pandemic, surely we can activate a three-digit telephone number that nobody is using and w…
Read full speech →Speech from the Throne
Madam Speaker, I am pretty sure that had there been a commitment to electoral reform in the throne speech, it would have been ignored by now. As the member knows, there was a commitment to electoral reform back in the 2015 Liberal election campaign, and it was one of those moments where all the members of the opposition were united in a proposal brought forward. He might remember that the campaign…
Read full speech →Speech from the Throne
Madam Speaker, the hon. member and I were once seatmates. It seems strange to say, but we were right on the boundaries of our respective parties at one point. Now we are about as far away as we could be in the House. However, I always enjoyed our conversations. When it comes to the measures the member is talking about, he will find a willing ally in our party in pushing the government to account. …
Read full speech →Speech from the Throne
Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak for the first time in this Parliament. This is my sixth time being elected to represent my constituents, first in Edmonton—Mill Woods and then in Edmonton—Wetaskiwin. I want to thank those voters first and foremost. As my hon. colleague said, we would not get the opportunity to do all of the other things that we do if we were not accountable to our voters a…
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Madam Speaker, I do not always appreciate every question the hon. member asks when I am speaking, but I appreciate that one. Maybe it is in the spirit of what happened earlier in this place. The mental health issue is one on which all parties were pretty much on the same page during the election campaign. The parties put forward plans to take very meaningful action on mental health. As we try to m…
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