Mr. Speaker, all of us in this Chamber work very hard but I want to mention something special about our colleague, the member for Surrey Central.
He became an MP in five years and eight months after immigrating to Canada, 2,005 days, a record in Canadian history. Today he has been an MP for exactly the same period of time.
During his two terms, in addition to serving his constituents well in the second most populous riding in the country, he has made a significant contribution to our Parliament. He not only actively participates in debates, he is in fact one of the most frequent speakers in the House.
He has introduced scores of motions and bills, among them recognizing foreign academic credentials, whistleblowers' protection, disallowance procedure for regulations and eliminating GST on top of other taxes.
He has been our deputy House leader and four times elected co-chair of the Joint House and Senate Committee on Scrutiny of Regulations and, I should say, one of the only two opposition members to chair any committee.
He has broken the Parliamentary record for consecutive voting attendance.
It is no wonder that we call him, on this special day, the “iron man of the Canadian Parliament”.