Michelle Ferreri

[Government Business No. 4—An Act to Provide Further Support in Response to COVID-19, December 16th, 2021]

Madam Speaker, right now what we need to focus on is how we help get better treatment facilities. We have a lot of harm reduction. We are talking about a lot of these things, and we need to get the cost of living down as well.

When we look at this, a lot of opioid addiction starts out of hunger as well. We need to look at how we are helping people survive the cost of living. People who have jobs are using food banks. That is where we should be focusing our attention.

[Government Business No. 4—An Act to Provide Further Support in Response to COVID-19, December 16th, 2021]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the comments and the member's trip down memory lane in terms of his first speech.

This speech is about Cassy and mental health and people dying of opioids. That is what we need to be focusing on. Where is the treatment? Where is the money going to mental health facilities? That is what I would ask.

Of course everybody needs their vaccination, and of course we need to follow public health guidelines, but right now we have 75 people who died from an opioid overdose in Peterborough since March 2020 and we have had 25 who died of COVID. The government should not ignore what the opioid crisis is; it should do its job.

[Government Business No. 4—An Act to Provide Further Support in Response to COVID-19, December 16th, 2021]

Madam Speaker, what a moment. What an experience to stand in the House of Commons. I thank my constituents of Peterborough—Kawartha. I am here because of their support. I am here because they believed in me. I promise to do my best and do what I learned growing up in Douro, Ontario: work hard. Just like the Journey song says, I am just a small-town girl, and I truly believe in the lessons a small town teaches: help others with genuine service.

I want to take everyone back to June 2021. I received a call from a very distraught mom named Kim, whose daughter Cassy was missing. Cassy suffered from schizophrenia, and Kim felt the media was not giving her disappearance the attention it deserved, because she was a person who lived on the street. Kim did an interview with me on my social media, pleading with people to get Cassy home. Within 72 hours, Cassy was located in the sex trade in Toronto and brought home to Peterborough—Kawartha, thanks to the people on social media who shared that.

I never met Cassy. I just chatted with her mom, but I want to fast-forward to August 2021, during the campaign. Just outside of my campaign office was a very distraught and distressed woman. I approached her and asked how I could help. She looked into my eyes and told me she was scared. She told me she had nowhere to live and the people on the street were hurting her. I noticed a wings tattoo on her chest, the same tattoo her mom Kim had described to me when we put out a call to find her. I wondered if this could be her, so I asked if her name was Cassy. She said yes.

Cassy was like many people who are forced to live on the street and struggling with mental illness and addiction. She had a mom and a family who loved her, but that is not always enough. Trauma and circumstance landed Cassy here. She did not choose this life.

I want to point out that I am splitting my time with the member for Miramichi—Grand Lake.

Cassy did not choose this life. I did not see Cassy every day, but when I did, she was distraught, exhausted, hungry and afraid. She did not have a home, and she did not have the intervention to help get her the treatment she needed. On September 20, 2021, yes, the day of the election, while I was running around with my team, I received a text that cut me to the core. The text was from Cassy's mom, and it read, “Cassy is dead. She was the body behind the music store. Family still to be notified so I don't think they have released her name to the media.” I was absolutely shattered. I was gutted emotionally and heartbroken. I felt I had personally failed Cassy.

How did the system fail Cassy? How many more people like Cassy will be failed? In that moment, I questioned why I was running in politics and why it mattered. My partner Ryan was with me and, like a great partner does, he recalibrated me and picked me up. He took my hand and said that by taking this job as a member of Parliament, I could be part of the change that was needed for all people like Cassy.

I applied for this job because I know we can do better. We need to change how we talk about mental health; we need to better understand the complexities of addiction, and we need to change policy that intervenes when people like Cassy do not have the capacity to take care of themselves. We need the infrastructure and resources dedicated to building forward-thinking mental health treatment facilities. Mental health impacts every single one of us.

We have heard about so many programs and so much money being dumped into mental health, but the reality is that things are not getting better. They feel worse. Money does not solve everything. If we are not spending money in the right places or we do not have a reasonable timeline to allocate funds, vision or an innovative plan to partner with money, we cannot expect change. We need to change how we think and talk about mental health. This is what will help us change how we treat it. Humans have an incredible track record of not understanding something until we experience it.

Fortunately, and unfortunately, most of us have experienced how devastating mental illness is. Most of us know that our mental health contributes to our happiness, our creativity and our productivity, which are directly linked to our economy. Our economic crisis is a mental health crisis. How can we expect people who cannot afford food or a home to get out of the poverty cycle? We have to get the cost of living down if we want to be serious about mental health. We have to create an environment that fosters independence and confidence.

I was appointed as shadow minister of tourism, and I know first-hand how much this industry is suffering. Many of those devastated by the pandemic do not want more loans; they want to work. One of my favourite economic solutions comes from the member for Carleton, who said that programs and subsidies need to be three things: timely, targeted and temporary.

Much like I said earlier, this economic crisis is a mental health crisis, and I will work diligently to help in the recovery of lost jobs. We need to be reunited with friends and family. We need each other more than ever. We need to acknowledge and respect public health guidelines, but we also need to be more prepared to deal with what is our new normal. We need to transition to learning to live with COVID.

This pandemic has magnified the opioid crisis. My riding of Peterborough—Kawartha has one of the highest rates of opioid deaths in the country. We have the second-highest overdose rate in the province of Ontario. We have people dying in the streets and in their homes. I myself have lost friends and family to overdoses and suicide.

As I stand here today, I want to leave this message for myself and for all of the people of my riding of Peterborough—Kawartha: We cannot give up; we cannot stop. We must work every day to learn what works, but more importantly, what does not work. I will work for Peterborough—Kawartha and for every Cassy who was failed by the system, because I believe that when we take care of our neighbours, we take care of our entire country. We cannot stop believing.

[Business of Supply, December 9th, 2021]

Mr. Speaker, I would love to hear more from my colleague about how we are going to help the homeless situation, which is dire in my riding of Peterborough—Kawartha, with this motion.

How would implementing the three specific targets in the motion help the homeless crisis?

[Peterborough Petes, December 6th, 2021]

Mr. Speaker, today I am very proud to share the story of #CoachCal, a six-year-old from my riding of Peterborough—Kawartha. Cal was selected after auditioning for the next gen program. He was granted a single-game contract with our OHL team, the Peterborough Petes, to give the pre-game pep talk. His pep talk went viral on social media and has been trending across North American media. It has over three million views on the NHL’s TikTok.

I cannot deliver the speech as well as Cal, but I want to share some of my favourite words from his passionate speech: “Everyone in this room has a dream, but those dreams don’t just come to you, you have to earn it. This is a team and each one of us brings something to the team.” Cal's words are a powerful reminder of what we should be focusing on, both on and off the ice. As his MP, I am very proud of his hard work, and I will do whatever it takes to get the “W” for Peterborough—Kawartha.

[Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply, December 2nd, 2021]

Go ask your constituents.

[Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply, December 2nd, 2021]

Madam Speaker, while I deeply respect my colleague's passion, saying something louder does not make it true.

While I appreciate that he is talking about child care and all of these things, I am curious to know why it is so much worse, if you are doing so many things. I have heard from your colleagues, saying that the cost of living is the worst, that we have never had a mental health crisis so bad and that things have never been worse, yet you are telling us that you are doing the best job possible.

Why is it so bad, if you are doing such a great job?

[The Economy, December 1st, 2021]

Mr. Speaker, this morning, I asked on my Facebook who had started or finished their Christmas shopping. My inbox quickly filled with heartbreaking messages from my constituents who had no money to buy food or pay rent, never mind Christmas presents.

Our economic crisis is a mental health crisis. How can we help people if they cannot afford groceries? How can we help people if they cannot afford a house or rent? How can we help people if they are so stressed about paying bills that they cannot sleep at night?

The average Canadian carries a debt of over $70,000. What a burden to carry. What a burden to leave to our children. The cost of everything is going up. Wages are stagnant and the Prime Minister just shrugs his shoulders.

The biggest crisis we are facing is the cost of living. The Conservatives will not just accept it as just inflation. We will fight for Canadians.

[The Economy, November 26th, 2021]

Mr. Speaker, our economic crisis has created a mental health and suicide crisis. During the election, I knocked on one man’s door and he showed me what he was eating for dinner, cat food. This is not an exaggeration. Food bank users are at an all-time high. Canadians need to know a timeline. When will the government take the right action to support parents, children and seniors so they are not eating cat food?

[Order Respecting the Business of the House and its Committees, November 25th, 2021]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to address my colleague about being a woman with children and the argument being made today that it is hard. I know it is hard. I have three children. It is excruciating being away from them, but this is not about us. This is about something bigger than us. This job is not a normal job.

We took this job on to serve Canadians. Anyone who has worked on Zoom or virtually knows that the smallest technical glitch can squeak anything through. We are here to represent democracy. This is not about us. When we took this job on, we knew that we were representing something so much bigger than us. It is not about us, and members can bring their families here.

Why are they not open to pairing and negotiating here? How is it one or the other?