Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise and to be back. Congratulations to you, Mr. Speaker, on just moments ago being affirmed as our Deputy Speaker of the House. I look forward to your great and very capable ability to sit in that chair as you demonstrated over the past four years. It is a real honour to be standing again in this House.
I want to start, this being my first opportunity to do so, by thanking the constituents in my riding of Kingston and the Islands for putting their faith in me to come back here and represent them in this new Parliament. There is nothing quite like the feeling of knowing that one has the support of one's community to represent its residents and to make sure that their voices are heard in Ottawa. It is an incredible honour for me to have that.
I also want to take the opportunity to thank the tremendous number of volunteers, just like all of the members in this House. We all have dedicated volunteers in our ridings who make our elections a reality and are able to bring us through the finish line.
There is no doubt that I have that great amount of support in my riding as well. In particular, I want to thank the Queen's University Liberal Association members, who have spent hours and hours donating their time and volunteering. It gives me the sense that the younger generation is keenly interested in politics, and I have a great sense of optimism when I see these young people getting involved in politics.
I also want to thank my staff in Kingston. I have Ann, Nicole, Kaitlin and Parth, who do amazing work representing me and interacting daily with my constituents. In Ottawa, I have Jeanna, who does great work to keep me on schedule and make sure I am here when it is my turn to speak and whatnot.
Most important, I thank my family, my wife Vanessa and my children Mason, Frankie and Vivian. It is not easy, as most members in this House would know, to leave the riding behind and go for several days at a time without seeing the family. Even with the advancements of technology, it is still not the same as being there in person. I am incredibly grateful for their love and support, as it is required in a job like this.
I also want to congratulate all of my colleagues, the 337 other members who are in this House for this session of Parliament. We all come from different parts of the country. We have been duly elected by our constituents.
This time around, our constituents throughout the country have decided to bring the Liberal Party back in government but in a minority situation. Canadians have mandated us to work together in a collaborative way so that we can build legislation and present it to Canadians. That truly reflects the form of this Parliament.
It is worth pointing out that some pretty incredible legislation has actually come along in minority parliaments from this chamber, for example the creation of the CPP. Even our Canadian flag was created during a minority government. Health care was created during a minority government. There are tremendous examples of how we can work together, and I look forward to working with all members of the House to bring forward meaningful legislation that reflects the will and demands of Canadians.
I would like to talk about three things in particular that resonated with me in the throne speech, one being the desire to improve the security and strengthen the economic position of so many Canadians. I also want to talk a bit about the government's commitment to health care, and pharmacare in particular. Of course, I also want to address a topic that I have spoken about many times in this House: climate change.
First, when we talk about more security for Canadians and strengthening the middle class, I was extremely proud to be part of a government the last time whose very first opportunity to present legislation in this House was to give a tax cut to the middle class and ask those making significantly more, the one per cent as we might coin them, to pay a bit more.
One of the other things we did very early on, probably the second or third piece of legislation that came forward, was the Canada child benefit. Through the data that came out of Statistics Canada a few years later, we saw the impact that had of lifting just under a million, or by this point probably a million, Canadians out of poverty, and in particular almost 300,000 children out of poverty. This is the impact that these policies are having on Canadians.
That is why I was extremely pleased to see in this throne speech similar talk. It is important to mention that a throne speech is a guiding document. It is a principled document that sets the overall agenda for a government during the time it will be governing. To see the commitment and the dedication to continuing to build on that was extremely rewarding.
In particular, looking forward, raising the basic income exemption to $15,000 so that the Canadians who require it the most will not be burdened with any tax up to that $15,000.
Also, affordable housing is mentioned in the throne speech. My riding in particular has an extreme shortage of housing right now. Our vacancy rate is at 0.6%. For those who do not know, a healthy vacancy rate is around 3% or 4%. That means that housing costs are being driven up, whether to buy or rent. It is putting people in some very difficult situations.
Knowing that we will continue to build on our infrastructure, and not just the bricks and mortar but also the social infrastructure that goes into the housing family unit and how we can support them, I am extremely pleased to see.
Regarding increases to the CCB, that signature program that lifted hundreds of thousands of people and children out of poverty, we will now extend it to assist children under the age of one to provide more assistance to them.
I have two very young children in my family, one just over three years old and another just over one year old. I know the challenges that can be put on families who have a child under the age of one, a newborn.
Knowing that people who are already struggling will have the opportunity to tap into more of the resources available to them, and to be taken care of and to be looked after more in that very precious time of the first year, is extremely encouraging. I also know it will give the opportunity to see even more children and families being lifted out of poverty.
On the second topic of health care, in particular pharmacare, I am very encouraged by two things that were talked about. The first is pharmacare, developing a plan that will address the prescribed medication needs of all Canadians. There are many people in our communities, mine in particular, who have to choose daily between taking their full prescription or paying for rent or food.
The reality of the situation is, when they live in a country as rich as Canada with the advancements we have, I do not believe people should be making those decisions between medications and taking care of other necessities in life. It is important for us to bring forward this plan on pharmacare and I look forward to it.
The other issue is access to a family doctor. I am so glad to see that our government is talking about making sure that every Canadian has access to a doctor. In Kingston, we had a huge shortage of doctors a number of years ago and we set out a plan as a city council to bring more doctors in.
The only problem was that we ended up stealing them from neighbouring communities and creating problems for them as we were attracting them to our community. Having a nationalized plan to attract and retain doctors in Canada so that everyone has access to a family doctor is incredibly encouraging to see.
Finally, when it comes to climate change there is no issue more pressing for future generations than the action that we take with respect to climate change and the action that we take now.
As the previous minister of the environment said, we are the first generation to feel the effects of climate change and we will be the last to be able to do anything about it. We need to accomplish some of these extremely ambitious goals of reaching net zero by 2050. We need to reduce our plastic consumption right now by reducing our single-use plastics, and we need to continue to grow that green economy and invest in technologies that will drive us into the future both economically and sustainably from an environmental perspective.
I look forward to working with my colleagues in the House over the next months and years as we make sure that we continue to bring forward legislation in a meaningful and positive way for all Canadians.