Mr. Speaker, I am so honoured, as always, to speak in the House and to speak to the nature of our democracy. I have been here for 19 years. I think I always took our democracy for granted, but I realize that our democracy is under threat. Democracies around the world are under threat, and I think we have to frame the fragility of democracy within the debates we have here. Our obligation in taking on government and in taking on legislation cannot be about undermining the fundamental principles of what Parliament has done and what Parliament stands for.
I mention that because I was here in 2014 at the time of the horrific killing of Corporal Nathan Cirillo. I was here during the shootings on Parliament Hill. I remember the lockdown and I remember the trauma. I remember, early the next morning, feeling that I needed to go to the War Memorial just to be there and seeing people from all over the city of Ottawa who felt the need to be there at the site of that horrific killing.
I have to say how shocked I was that I was told Parliament was going to meet that day, after the shooting, after the trauma. People were grieving and nobody had slept that night. I remember asking our whip why we were holding Parliament that day. He said to me that we had to show nothing would stop Parliament from working. We went there that day, and that was a really profound moment, one of the most profound moments I have had as a parliamentarian.
In March 2020, we were hit by COVID. I remember sitting in the seats as we were starting to learn about COVID and the fear of COVID and not knowing what was going to happen. Suddenly there was a global shutdown. What did it mean when we all had to go back to our communities? The fact that the technical teams of Parliament put together a hybrid Parliament that made it possible to vote and meet so that we met every single day throughout that time, to me, was a really profound moment. I think that all of us as parliamentarians need to say that this was one of the highlights of what we are as a democracy, that even though we were facing the biggest medical crisis in 100 years and people could not be together, democracy was going to keep going.
That was a game-changer for me. Out of the hybrid Parliament that we created, incredible tools were fashioned that made it possible to vote and made it possible to hold hearings, things that we did not think we could possibly do just three or four months before or even a month before. The fact that our civil service rose up and managed to get CERB together was an unprecedented victory. I know many civil servants who worked through that Easter weekend in 2020 to make that a reality so that people did not lose their incomes, did not lose their homes.
Regardless of our political battles with the government, as parliamentarians we need to say that at times of national crisis, we come together. At times of insurmountable odds, we rise above them. Then we can go back to throwing rocks at each other and kicking sand in each other's faces. However, there are moments when we need to say there are fundamental things that we accomplish.
We accomplished the ability, in a country as vast as ours, to hold democracy together. Do we sell that at the side of the road along with a bunch of old hubcaps and old Elvis paintings and say that we are going to have a yard sale, or do we ask how we keep this going?
I have been here long enough to remember what it was like when I was first elected. There was a real bravado and machismo culture. We always talk about Parliament being family friendly. It is not family friendly. There is nothing about it that has ever been family friendly. We always said that we wanted to be more inclusive. There was nothing inclusive about it. When I was elected, the stories I heard were about marriage breakups and alcoholism, because people left their homes and people were never back in their communities. When my sister died, I was on the road the next day doing my parliamentary work. I never got to grieve because that was just the way it was. We sucked it up and we did that.
What we learned out of COVID was that we all had to see the world in a different light. I want to really stress that what we are discussing tonight is not about us. I know my Conservative colleagues keep talking about people being able to phone it in and sitting at home on their computer. We are talking about the fundamental change that happened after March 2020 and the way all of us had to relate to the world. All of us began to reassess relationships and what we do.
From Lucretius, the Roman philosopher, we have what is called the “Lucretius problem”, which is that no one could ever imagine a river larger than what one had seen. None of us could imagine COVID. I remember talking to my staff when COVID hit, saying that we could not keep the office closed for a week, that it was impossible. We never thought we would be two years into it and doing work virtually. We adapted. In that adaptation, in my office, the staff rule was that we keep those phones running no matter what happens. If people called, we would answer them. We were there for them. I remember saying to my staff many times, if they were feeling burned out, to just take the day, go for a drive, do anything, but that we were there to help people.
Out of that reality that we lived through, we began to see life in a different way. Many of us realized that some people were way more effective working the phones than having people in the office all the time. This hybrid model was something people got used to. People began to think about their families, about the life they had not had, and said they were not willing to go back to the old way of commuting, sitting in traffic for hours and sitting in their little cubicles. People were demanding an alternate way of doing things to be more effective. I certainly see that with the offices I run. I have a riding that is bigger than the United Kingdom, and I have been noticing how some of my staff have been way more effective with this hybrid model of being able to do some of their intense case work at home and some days going into the office, and that people have also changed how we deal with that.
In terms of what we do politically, I think the issue of accountability is hugely important. The ability of an MP to talk to a minister without having to worry about staff is a fundamental of how we do our job. It was really difficult during COVID to be able to resolve issues, because we could not go over and just sit and talk, and do those one-on-one negotiations. It was really difficult at times to do committee work when we could not talk to each other, but we can do that now.
At the same time, that does not preclude the ability of people to do their job in a region and a nation where it is 5,000 kilometres for some people to get here to go to work. There is the ability of people to be in their ridings during the fires and emergencies and still be able to vote. The ability of people dealing with loved ones who are sick and dying to be there with them and still be parliamentarians is a profound advancement on the notion of democracy. Democracy is not about a bunch of older white guys like me saying that we roughed it back in the day and so should new members. Democracy is about asking how we can make it possible for other voices and more inclusive voices to participate. That is one of the things the hybrid model has given us.
It means that we will be here the vast majority of the time, where we should be, but it also means there is the possibility that if there is something essential for members to be at in their riding, or sometimes essential to be at with their family, they can do that. That, to me, is what we should be talking about. This is not about us failing to do our job. This is about us recognizing the reality that Canadians are also facing. They want to be able to work more effectively in the wake of COVID, and to do it in a way that is inclusive and respectful and also recognizes the life balance that is needed.
None of us were able to think about what COVID would do to us, and I do not think that any of us are the same after COVID. I know I certainly am not. COVID changed me. It changed how I saw the world. It also changed my voters. We now deal with issues that we never dealt with before. In my office, in the space of two days, I had to call the OPP. That never would have happened before. Our staff deal with pressures that they never dealt with before in terms of threats, in terms of just the social crisis that we are facing and the mental health pressures. Maybe this is all a bad hangover from COVID, but all of our staff are having to look at this. When I am dealing with the staff who represent me in my offices, I am very much thinking about how I can maintain the service to community, the service to people, while also making sure the protection of my staff is intact.
I am really interested in how we actually came together through the hearings on the hybrid Parliament and how we came through the notion of an incredible technological revolution that happened in democracy. It is funny. I have talked to my provincial colleagues, and some of my provincial colleagues are Conservatives. The first thing Doug Ford did was to kill all of that and go back to the old school, the old way of doing it because they wanted to look like they were showing up for work. They were like, “Oh my God, you guys actually get to do that. Do you actually have a functioning hybrid Parliament that works?” Yes, we do. It is about respect for the vast regions of this country, because not all of us can get on a single flight and get to Ottawa. Not all of us can be there all the time.
If we are going to have an accountable democracy, we need to be looking at ways of doing this that respect and understand difference, diversity and the immense geographic distances. For me, this is not an issue of praising or blaming government. This is about us as parliamentarians coming together and saying that our larger function is to democracy itself, and to be accountable to democracy means that we have to make sure that people can participate in that democracy. In Canada, that has not always been that easy. As I have said, there was an old school world that I came from and I was very much in that old school world. If someone had said to me that we would have a hybrid Parliament before COVID, I would have said, “Not on my watch. No way. We will stay up and we will vote every night, all night, as long as it takes.” That is what we did against the Harper government, and I was proud to do that, but it is also not something that is sustainable.
The fact is that people can do this. I myself, right now, am back home in northern Ontario. I will be heading to Ottawa again next week. I get in the car tomorrow, but we have been through brutal fires in our region and we have had a number of issues. There are issues that have to be attended to by us as parliamentarians. The ability to vote and have the voice of the people I represent heard is, I think, showing that we respect democracy at its most fundamental level, which is that we are just the representatives of democracy for our people. We are there for a time for our people, until our people decide to choose someone else to go in our place, but the ultimate focus of democracy, at the end of the day, is their voices and their ability to know that someone from their region was able to vote, no matter what the circumstances.
The hybrid Parliament has worked. We have to give huge thanks again to the translators, who have worked under extremely difficult situations. It has also taught parliamentarians that they are not really the kings of the planet. They have to also be part of a system that recognizes that our translators can burn out and our staff can burn out. Democracy is about that balance. I think we have managed to do that with this. I think this is something that we can all take credit for.
At the end of the day, when I go to a committee meeting and the minister is not there and he or she is there virtually, I am not happy. I will say that. I expect them to be there in person. I expect that the government does not exploit this. I think that if we are going to make these House orders permanent, we have to always hold government to account. They do need to show up and they do need to be there in person as much as possible, but it is valuable for us to have this space where people can at times participate virtually from their regions or while they are on the road as parliamentarians, such as for committee work, to know that they can do hearings.
Just last week, I had to find myself a library in downtown Toronto to participate in hearings, and it was really exciting to be able to do that, to know that I was still able to participate and I was not cut off from the democratic process, because I had a responsibility to do the work that I was doing while I was travelling, but I also had that responsibility to the people of Canada.
I am very pleased that we have moved in this direction. I think Canada could be a model to the world. I will urge my colleagues to really reflect on this. Democracy is in a fragile moment. Democracy is undermined. It does none of us any good to burn the house to the ground to score a point. Sometimes we need to say we can actually all work together. Some days we can do better, and then we can go back to kicking the crap out of the government as per our job as opposition.
Let us make sure the system that we built around us is something that is sustainable for the long term, that is inclusive, and that will bring in more people and more voices into a much more diverse Canada. That is the Canada that I want to be a part of.
