Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I am broadly supportive any time we can bring experts together to discuss issues as important as this one. We are at such a unique time right now in our parliamentary history. We have just gone through an election campaign where every single party had major promises and a lot to say about not just the opioid crisis but mental health in general. I look forward to working with members o…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, it is now 420 days since Parliament passed a unanimous motion that referenced the “alarming rate of suicide in Canada”, called it a “national health crisis” and demanded the House take “immediate action” to institute a nationwide three-digit 988 suicide prevention hotline. My question for the minister today is simple. What is the current number that Canadians should remember so that i…
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Mr. Speaker, if the government does not know the number, how can Canadians be expected to? A Google search will eventually tell us that the 24-7 number for the Canada Suicide Prevention Service is 1-833-456-4566. Since the December 2020 vote, more than 4,500 Canadians have tragically lost their lives to suicide. We have so much work to do together on mental health in this country, but this is a re…
Read full speech →Adjournment Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, I am thankful this is an issue that members of all parties can agree on. I will point out for those watching who are interested right now that if they do a Google search and wade through all of the documentation on the government website eventually they will find that there is a 24-7 number for the Canada Suicide Prevention Service. The number is 1-833-456-4566 for those who need that…
Read full speech →Adjournment Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, tonight I am following up on a question I first asked on December 7, eight days ago. For the context of my question, it is important to note that in the eight days since I asked this question, according to the statistics, 88 Canadians will have died by suicide. In that time, in those eight days, we will have lost 88 Canadians to suicide. It was 370 days ago that the House came togethe…
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Mr. Speaker, this is a national crisis. Saturday marked the one-year anniversary of a unanimous House of Commons motion to take “immediate action” on an easy-to-remember, 24-7 three-digit suicide prevention hotline: 988. Since that unanimous vote, 4,000 Canadian lives have been lost to suicide. In their darkest, most desperate moment, Canadians should not have to do a Google search to find help th…
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Mr. Speaker, 361 days ago, the House came together to vote unanimously on the motion put forward by the member for Cariboo—Prince George to take immediate action to establish a nationwide three-digit 988 suicide prevention hotline. In a world where we can hold a $600-million election in the midst of a global pandemic, surely we can activate a three-digit telephone number that nobody is using and w…
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Mr. Speaker, I would not have risen on this, but I will because the Liberal whip stood up on it. Precedence is important. I was on the government side for many years and while I was trying to answer questions, I could not hear because the Liberal whip was one of the people yelling at me. The precedent at the time was that sometimes the Speaker would stand to ask people to be quiet, but never once …
Read full speech →Speech from the Throne
Madam Speaker, the hon. member and I were once seatmates. It seems strange to say, but we were right on the boundaries of our respective parties at one point. Now we are about as far away as we could be in the House. However, I always enjoyed our conversations. When it comes to the measures the member is talking about, he will find a willing ally in our party in pushing the government to account. …
Read full speech →Speech from the Throne
Madam Speaker, I am pretty sure that had there been a commitment to electoral reform in the throne speech, it would have been ignored by now. As the member knows, there was a commitment to electoral reform back in the 2015 Liberal election campaign, and it was one of those moments where all the members of the opposition were united in a proposal brought forward. He might remember that the campaign…
Read full speech →Speech from the Throne
Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak for the first time in this Parliament. This is my sixth time being elected to represent my constituents, first in Edmonton—Mill Woods and then in Edmonton—Wetaskiwin. I want to thank those voters first and foremost. As my hon. colleague said, we would not get the opportunity to do all of the other things that we do if we were not accountable to our voters a…
Read full speech →Speech from the Throne
Madam Speaker, I do not always appreciate every question the hon. member asks when I am speaking, but I appreciate that one. Maybe it is in the spirit of what happened earlier in this place. The mental health issue is one on which all parties were pretty much on the same page during the election campaign. The parties put forward plans to take very meaningful action on mental health. As we try to m…
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