Madam Speaker, before I begin I wish to inform you I will be splitting my time with the member for Milton.
I want to express my overwhelming gratitude to the people of Whitby. I am so happy to be here. It is such an honour to be sitting in the House and to have the opportunity to serve at the highest level of our democracy. I am elated by the fact that the people of Whitby chose me and the Liberal Party to represent them in the House.
I also want to thank each and every member of the House on their election. I also thank the hon. Leader of the Opposition for his years of service. I would like to acknowledge the many exceptional people who made profound contributions to my campaign. No matter how small or large their involvement was, I am forever indebted to them and touched by their generosity and all they gave. They inspired me every day, and continue to do so. There are too many people to name, but I want them all to know that they paved the way for me to be here. I thank them for putting their confidence in me. I will never take for granted the great privilege it is to serve in the House.
I would like to also thank four generations of women in my life who have been the bedrock of my family: my grandmother, mother, sister, my wife, and my eight-year-old little girl. These strong, resilient women have supported me in so many ways and really provided a foundation of love and support for me throughout my life. I thank them from the bottom of my heart.
I also want to acknowledge my father for his 30 or more years of service in the public service. He was a police officer for the Peel region and served on the National Parole Board. I thank my dad for always being a great role model to me and showing me what a life of service is really about.
I want to state something plainly and clearly with all the force and conviction that I feel for it: The Liberal Party of Canada is truly the reason I ran in this election.
Before entering federal politics, I was an entrepreneur, a sort of special type of entrepreneur: a social entrepreneur. I built a mission-based consulting company, specializing in social innovation. That is right, social innovation. What does that mean? Social innovation is applying new approaches to society's toughest and most persistent challenges. I spent over a decade working with teams of people, mostly in the non-profit and charitable sector, but in many cases across all sectors, to facilitate inclusive, consultative processes using design-thinking and collective-impact approaches that generated innovative solutions to achieve systemic change. I have worked on ocean protection, energy efficiency, food security, affordable housing, children's health and nutrition, environmental monitoring, waste reduction, workforce development, child care settlement, seniors care, education, mental health, diversity and inclusion and many more.
In over 350 projects, I studied the persistent social challenges and took the many perspectives of stakeholders into account to generate innovative solutions with many stakeholders.
Based on these experiences, I see that the Liberal Party in the last term really stepped up to the plate. It consulted the key stakeholders on these important issues and matters to Canadians, and gathered research and engaged partners and actors from across Canada in formulating solutions and strategies for change. It made evidence-based decisions and then committed significant and appropriate resources to make strategic investments in addressing the many issues that matter to Canadians.
This is the very definition of good governance. Since joining the party, I have been absolutely awestruck at how open, authentic, supportive and hard-working the people in this government really are, including our cabinet and leader. Responsive, accountable, visionary, strategic and hard-working: I think these are what Canadians want in their government and why we have been chosen to deliver on this for another term.
During this election, the people of Whitby shared many stories, experiences and concerns with me at their front door. They talked about the many challenges they were facing in their daily lives and their concerns about their families and preserving their quality of life. They identified pressing issues that are important to them and that should be top of mind for this government moving forward. These included supporting our seniors, addressing climate change, building a stronger local economy, making home ownership more attainable for many and developing a central infrastructure to reduce commute times. They talked about the pressures they experienced from the rising cost of living.
I heard about the challenges experienced by parents who had children with developmental disabilities. I heard about the need for community safety and the need for youth mental health supports and programming and many others.
The most prevalent issues for Whitby that I will discuss today are seniors, climate change and local economic development.
In supporting our seniors, I will say that it was a pleasure to meet many of our seniors across Whitby over the course of the fall. I visited many seniors homes and talked to hundreds of seniors. As we know, a higher proportion of the population is reaching the age of retirement, and I am grateful for the opportunity to have engaged with seniors and heard their feelings and concerns.
Many talked about income security, the rising cost of living and the limited availability of affordable housing options that are really geared to their needs, and the challenges they have experienced in accessing health care. People told me about the cost of medication and dental care, which is putting additional strain on them.
Our government over its last term began addressing all of these issues in our communities, including making the largest contribution in history to the Canada pension plan, increasing old age security and the guaranteed income supplement, and returning the age of retirement to 65 after the previous Conservative government raised it to 67. We also laid the foundation for national universal pharmacare, and the national housing strategy certainly focuses on the needs of seniors. I was extremely happy to hear that seniors were explicitly mentioned multiple times in the Speech from the Throne. It is clear that our seniors are top of mind and important to us in addressing their needs moving forward.
Again, we are making seniors a priority by increasing old age security for people over age 75 and implementing national pharmacare with dental benefits and increasing the survivor benefit by 25%. There are a significant number of things in the platform that are really going to help support our seniors.
The next issue I want to talk about briefly is action on climate change. This is the top issue for my constituents. Many times over they told me of their great concerns about flooding and other environmental disasters. We have taken their needs seriously, and in the throne speech it was good to hear many references to climate action. In fact, our government has done more on climate change than probably any other government in Canadian history, and has always listened to science-based research and data. We have taken international targets seriously and are putting in place instruments and tools to achieve the long-term behavioural change that will address the causes of the issue.
We are making positive steps forward. We declared a national climate emergency. We put a price on pollutants. We protected 14% of Canada's coastal and marine ecosystem. We developed a pan-Canadian framework on clean growth and climate change with the input of stakeholders from across the country. This framework allowed each province and territory to have input and set targets for reduced emissions by building resilience while growing our economy at the same time. This is a really balanced approach, thinking that the environment and the economy can go hand in hand.
We are doing and committing to a lot more in the platform for this term. I am really proud to see things in there like planting two billion trees, protecting 25% of our land and oceans by 2025 and, eventually, by 2050, getting to zero carbon emissions.
We know that we have to move to electric vehicles, support green infrastructure and increase the energy efficiency in people's homes. We are making it easier for them to do that.
Lastly, my constituents wanted the government to help build a stronger local economy, and there are many opportunities to do that. The most important thing for me is to acknowledge the track record of success of our Liberal government since the last term. We have created just under one million jobs, reduced poverty significantly, invested in infrastructure, invested an unprecedented amount in R and D and innovation in high-growth industries, supported the skilled trades, invested in small business and have set up regional economic agencies, development agencies and more. I think—