Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Simcoe North.
I would like to dedicate this, my maiden speech, to my father, Mark Lake, who passed away three years ago this week. Given my lack of political involvement during his lifetime, he would not have dreamt for a second that I would today have this great honour and yet I can scarcely imagine being here had it not been for his wisdom and influence in my life.
It is my tremendous pleasure to stand here on behalf the people of Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont. As this is my first time speaking in the House, I would like to take a few moments to express some appreciation. First, I want to thank God for the experiences in my life, even the hard ones, that have prepared me for this moment and those that will follow.
I thank my family, my wife Debi and my kids Jaden and Jenae, for embarking with me on this family adventure. I want to thank my mom, Bonnie, for showing me by her daily example what it means to put others before oneself, and my grandma, Eleanor Lake, for giving me my dad and for teaching him to be the amazing father that he was.
I thank all of my constituents, of course, regardless for whom they voted, for making our little piece of Canada such a wonderful place to live. My constituency is a perfect snapshot of capturing what makes Canada the greatest country in the world: a mix of urban and rural; French and English; blue collar and white collar; and truly multicultural, with 30% of the population being from a visible minority.
This constituency is also representative of the Canada-wide recognition that we need to change the way we govern this country if it is to remain great. On January 23 the people of Edmonton--Mill Woods--Beaumont, who had elected a Liberal in each of the last four elections, voted Conservative by a 17,000 vote margin.
At this time I would like to recognize the man who served Edmonton--Mill Woods--Beaumont prior to the last election, a dedicated and well-respected parliamentarian for 26 years, the Hon. David Kilgour. The reason the Liberals were able to hold on to the seat for so long is that David knew the importance of putting his constituents first and he had a heart for service. For that, he will always be held in high regard by the people back home.
I will move on to talk about the Speech from the Throne in a moment but first I want to acknowledge a group of Canadians who are close to my heart. They, like myself, are parents of young children with autism. My son Jaden is 10 years old now and was diagnosed with autism when he was two. I would like those parents to know that I have been where they are. I have experienced the same emotions that they are experiencing right now: the intense love that a parent has for his or her child; the fear that accompanies the discovery that there is something different about the way the child is developing; the hope of finding out that there is a treatment that is helping other children with similar challenges; and the utter frustration and disappointment as time ticks away while the child waits for that treatment.
I am also fortunate enough to have lived in a province that has made treating autism a priority. I absolutely believe that my son is a different person because of the behavioural therapy that he has received over the past eight years.
While it seems clear that the responsibility for providing the treatment programs children with autism so desperately need lies with the provinces and territories, I want those parents to know that I will do everything that I can to promote action to the full extent that the federal government can play a role within its area of authority.
Now I would like to talk about the five main priorities of this new government, starting with the revolutionary new federal accountability act and accountability in general.
A lot of people have asked me what it was that drove me to leave my business career with the Edmonton Oilers Hockey Club to get involved in a life of politics. Over the past several years I have been growing increasingly disillusioned and frustrated with the disastrous combination of high taxation and the lack of both stewardship and vision on the part of the previous Liberal government.
A quote by Alexander Hamilton sums up my feelings and I think those of many Canadians who have started to wake up just in time to what has been happening over the past 13 years. He said, “Those who stand for nothing fall for anything”.
With this Speech from the Throne we finally have a government that is prepared to stand up for something, a government that recognizes what so many Canadians already know: that as great a country as Canada is we could be so much better.
Accountability is not something to be feared unless one is hiding something. In fact, most business managers would tell us that a well-planned and straightforward budget and a good set of rules to monitor and govern it are actually very freeing.
When I was the director of ticket sales with the Oilers, I had to submit and then operate within an expense budget for my department. On a fairly regular basis I would sit down with our vice-president of finance to ensure we were running smoothly according to the rules we had set out. I enjoyed this process because I knew that I was being a good steward of the company's money and it was important to me that the shareholders were comfortable with that knowledge as well.
Here our shareholders are all Canadians and they deserve to have that same level of accountability, that same comfort level, and that is what the federal accountability act is all about.
The second of the five priorities mentioned in the Speech from the Throne is the commitment to reduce the GST immediately from 7% to 6% and then eventually to 5%. As has been mentioned several times in this House but seems to be conveniently ignored by those across the floor is the fact that this is a tax cut that will benefit every taxpayer in the country, including those at the lowest income levels who do not make enough money to pay income taxes in the first place.
This is a tax cut that people will see every day and it cannot be taken away by stealth while they are out working hard to make ends meet. Most important, it is a clear, unambiguous step in the right direction for all Canadians.
The third of the five priorities in the Speech from the Throne is a promise to make the safety of our streets and our citizens a priority. As I have talked to people in my constituency, both during the election campaign and since, the topic of crime is consistently mentioned with almost unanimous support for the positions my party has laid out in this area. Citizens, as well as police and prosecutors, are sick and tired of the rights of criminals trumping the rights of law-abiding citizens. It is time to treat serious crime seriously. It sounds so ridiculously simple and yet we are constantly hearing about violent criminals receiving short or conditional sentences, often only to reoffend when they should still be in prison. That is clearly unacceptable.
I will skip the fourth of the five priorities, child care, but I will come back to it in a moment.
The fifth priority is the government's commitment to work with the provinces to establish a patient wait times guarantee. Along with accountability and crime, health care was one of the top three issues in my riding that people wanted to talk about on their doorsteps. There are many concerns but the general theme I heard was that the health care system was not working the way it should for the amount of money going into it. The complaints were almost never about the level of investment in the system. Rather, the conversation almost always centred around the return Canadians are getting in terms of service.
Canadians want and deserve a universal, publicly funded health care system that they can trust to be there for them when they need it. With our aging population, the demands on this system are only going to increase. It is good to see that we finally have a federal government that is making the health care of Canadians a priority.
I have purposely left until the end of my time the choice in child care plan because I want to give it the attention it deserves. Let me begin by saying that I do not begrudge parents choosing to send their children to day care. It is a choice that my wife and I have not made for our family but I have many friends and family members who are terrific parents and use day care.
I also want to point out that our choice in child care plan, unlike the Liberal plan, has a component whereby we will work with the provinces and territories, employers, community and non-profit organizations to create more child care spaces that meet the needs of ordinary Canadians.
During the election campaign I heard the former prime minister talk often about the Liberal day care plan as the first new social program in a generation. Backed by an army of government funded special interest groups, Liberals espoused the virtues of their sacred and “progressive day care plan”, which blatantly left hundreds of thousands of Canadian families unfairly paying through their taxes to fund other families' child care choices.
To quote the view of C.S. Lewis on progress in general, which is a long quote but it captures the essence of this debate perfectly in my mind, he said:
We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place you want to be and if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.
To illustrate the difference between the two plans, I want to use the example of a family in my riding for whom I have tremendous respect, the Matychuk family. Jeff and Nancy Matychuk have five children ranging in age from 5 to 14. They are a one income family with one vehicle, a 12 year old minivan that does the job, usually. They live in Edmonton in a modest home with no garage. Jeff takes the bus to work, a one hour ride each way downtown, so that Nancy can have the van to move the kids around. Jeff's income last year was about $39,000. The Matychuks do not use day care, institutional or otherwise, and their kids are as well-rounded, mature and social as any we could ever meet. This is a truly incredible family that has chosen to forego many of the luxuries we take for granted because they feel it is the best decision for their family and they do it gladly.
For the purpose of this illustration I want to pretend that Jeff and Nancy were just starting their family and that Amy, the 14 year old, was born this year. Under the Conservative choice in child care plan, over the next 15 years, until the youngest child turns six, the Matychuks would receive 36,000 after tax dollars to help with the costs of raising their family. Under the Liberal plan they would receive absolutely nothing. In fact, under the Liberal plan they would actually pay through their taxes to send their neighbours' kids to day care. That is simply unfair no matter how we look at it.
Thankfully, on January 23 Canadians voted for a well thought out and straightforward plan that will give real support and real choice to all Canadian families when it comes to child care.
I wish to take a moment to congratulate all members of the House on the honour that their constituents have bestowed on them. I look forward to working together with everyone here to ensure that Canada remains the greatest country in the world in which to live.
