Mr. Speaker, it is with a great deal of emotion and a great sense of responsibility that I rise in the House as the member for Bourassa. I would like to begin by thanking my family, my friends and the volunteers who worked with me on the campaign. Their patience, dedication and confidence made it possible for me to be here today. This victory belongs to all the people with shared convictions who pounded the pavement and listened to voters.
I congratulate the right hon. Prime Minister on his appointment and applaud the Speech from the Throne read by His Majesty King Charles III. This speech maps out a decidedly forward-looking path guided by a vision for a stronger, more equitable and more innovative Canada. For this vision to work, it has to encompass the full range of realities, including the reality in Bourassa. I am from Bourassa, a vibrant, diverse and proud riding. Bourassa is a welcoming place, steeped in history. Sadly, it is also one of the most poverty-stricken ridings in Canada. Nearly 48% of its households live below the low income cut-off. It has a lot of single-parent families and is in desperate need of affordable housing, access to employment and psychological support. These challenges do not define us, but they are of concern. It would be nice if our government would take these factors into account. We need more investments in social housing, more recurrent funding for community organizations, funding that is as permanent as possible, and we we need to pay special attention to education, the success of our young people and mental health.
I will now address the three issues of greatest concern to me.
The first is public safety. The Speech from the Throne talks about stricter enforcement of violent crime laws, and with good reason. I am fully on board with this desire to strengthen the rule of law, but we must not stop there, because every act of violence and every crime is preceded by multiple indicators and warning signs that are, more often than not, ignored. Let us talk about those indicators and warning signs. We cannot have a serious conversation about public safety without talking about chronic poverty, the shortage of sports, cultural and educational infrastructure for our young people, and the lack of safe green spaces. Some neighbourhoods are in dire need of these things. We also need to talk about the underfunding of community organizations, which often play a lead role in prevention. As I have said, we need to take a balanced approach to prevention and address the concerns expressed by members on the other side of the House. These are the indicators and warning signs I talked about earlier. If we do not invest in intervention and prevention, we will continue to pay the human, social and economic price for failing to step up today. We must strike a balance between deterrence and prevention. We must be firm in enforcing the law, but we also have to give young people reasons to believe in the law.
The second issue that resonates with me is artificial intelligence. I am an IT specialist. From a young age, I became actively interested in AI and was a believer in it long before it was used by most members of the House for the most basic of tasks. In my opinion, AI can speed up access to government programs. It can cut red tape for our organizations and industries, as well as for our citizens. It can also provide faster and more personalized services to citizens. It can improve infrastructure planning, emergency management and public facility maintenance in a much more proactive way. In today's world, there are many examples of this, which I will go into later. I would like to see our government align itself with this vision. This technology must, of course, remain a tool for serving people and putting them front and centre. It must never replace compassion and must never create new forms of social exclusion. We must build AI that is ethical, inclusive, transparent and accessible to vulnerable regions such as Bourassa.
The third issue that concerns us all and that several of my colleagues have spoken about is support for seniors. I cannot conclude my first speech without talking about an important segment of our society and population: our seniors. In Bourassa, many of them built our community through their hard work, commitment and wisdom. Today, many of them live alone. They may be isolated and living on very limited incomes. They have been very clear about two things.
The first is that they want a home support program. They want to stay in their own home and their own neighbourhood for as long as possible. To do that, they need more accessible home support programs, home care services, psychosocial support, paratransit and accessibility upgrades. These are very urgent needs.
The second is that they have financial anxiety. Seniors want their incomes to be protected against inflation. They want their pensions to be indexed to the actual cost of living. We must listen to them. Supporting our seniors is not just a social measure. It is a moral duty. It is a societal choice for the future.
In closing, being a member of Parliament means speaking on behalf of the people who elected us to sit here and who put their trust in us. It means speaking for young people, families, newcomers and especially our seniors. I am here to represent Bourassa with pride, dignity and, above all, determination. I am committed to standing up for my community's interests, sharing its realities and working with everyone to build a fairer, safer and more innovative Canada.