Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak about my colleague from Beaches—East York.
I come to this place as a relatively new MP, but I had the privilege of collaborating with the member in my former life, leading a think tank at Toronto Metropolitan University. I greatly appreciated that we had the chance to engage on a number of the ideas he mentioned in his speech, particularly competition policy and responsible technology.
What I especially appreciate about our departing colleague is his ability and commitment to attach thoughtful policy to committed politics. Our colleague is a person of ideas and he is deeply committed to the underlying change that can happen with more attention to those issues.
We collaborated for a brief time on the industry committee. In fact, we had an exchange at the industry committee yesterday with a representative of one of those mega-platforms, which I think summoned the spirit of our departing member for Beaches—East York. In that time, I had the chance to understand his commitment to deep engagement on the issues and why and how it matters to get the details right, to get deep into the weeds of an issue, to call those involved in that issue to account and to be responsible, and to engage more broadly in how these big systems that are so removed from people, on the face of them, actually touch our constituents in all kinds of ways. These issues include affordability, protection online or those precious creatures that do not have their own voices in this place.
I deeply appreciate my colleague's commitment to bringing those system-level issues and questions and bringing them down to our constituents, not only in his riding but on behalf of those who care about similar issues across Canada. Our colleague represented an area east of the Don River. I represent an area west of the Don River. In the Toronto caucus and in some of the political engagements we had, I learned a lot about the way we can have committed politics and attach them to thoughtful policy.
With that, I wish my colleague the best in his new venture and new adventures. I know this place and our country have been stronger because of his service.