Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member from Vaudreuil—Soulanges.
I am grateful for this opportunity, as this is my first speech in the House in 12 years. I was the member of Parliament for Kenora—Rainy River from 1988 to 2004, so for some 16-plus years I had the great privilege of sitting in the House on both sides, through the first term of my mandate as the member of Parliament when Brian Mulroney was in power and then of course under the Chrétien government. Therefore, it is a great honour for me to have the chance to stand here in this place again. It is a great honour for those of us who spend a lot of time thinking about the business of the nation, so I am thankful for this opportunity to speak.
Before I get into the remarks about the Speech from the Throne, I want to thank the people in the Kenora riding for their support. As members know, historically the Kenora riding has been a very tight race between three parties, and sometimes just two. In this election it was no different. The former minister of natural resources under the previous government and the leader of the NDP and I went at it for I believe it was 11 weeks. That was an interesting campaign and we had a good chance to talk about the issues in the north.
Before I talk about the north, I want to first thank my family and my wife Lana for letting me do this again. This is a great place to work if one believes in improving the lives of those in the region one comes from, and I know this cannot be done without one's family. When I first came here in 1988 I had no children. When I left I had two children, one who was 10 and one who was six. Now they are grown up, and I am very proud of both Samantha and Daniel, who played a big part in my campaign.
I am here because I belong to a particular party, but I am also here because I am a northerner and a rural Canadian. As members might know, sometimes we spend a lot of time in this place talking about issues that are more urban than rural because it is a fact of life that there are many more urban Canadians than there are rural Canadians. Therefore, I am here representing the views of northerners and some of the unique issues that we face.
I am also here to say that I do not think I would have run in this campaign if it was not for a leader and a party that had put forward an agenda for real change. Real change has to take place every so often in this country, every so many generations, because people insist that those changes take place. Therefore, I want to thank the leader and the Prime Minister of Canada for giving me the opportunity to be here to talk about real change.
In the last campaign, over 70% of people in our region voted for change. That means they were not happy with the previous government, and they certainly were not happy with the direction that we were going in, so here we are at the very beginning of a new mandate with a new government talking about real change.
I strongly recommend to the members of Parliament who are on their first tour of duty and just starting out to go out and ask their constituents what they mean by “real change”. We cannot just assume that everybody has the same view. For the last number of months since I was elected I have been out there talking to people, to mayors, to councillors, to different organizations, whether with respect to health care or education, and obviously with first nations, about what they expect from this government. What is most interesting about what we are hearing from people is that they want a government that is active, that cares, that wants to do things, and that believes it can make a real change.
In a region like mine, we see a lack of infrastructure and a lack of development. It is a part of the world where 42 first nations live and where over 20 of those first nations still do not have roads and are still looking for a basic piece of infrastructure that most Canadians take for granted. Then we in this place wonder why first nations people struggle and we talk about it on a regular basis.
It is pretty simple. If people's homes and driveways cannot be accessed on a day-to-day basis, it is very difficult to build an economy. It is very difficult to build sewer and water. It is very difficult to build infrastructure. When we talk about infrastructure, I want to remind my colleagues not to forget the importance of regions like northern Ontario where we are still struggling to get basic infrastructure in place.
When the Prime Minister and the Liberal members talk about major infrastructure development, they have to understand how important that is to those first nations and the north. They have to understand the importance of what we are trying to achieve in the north when we talk about basic infrastructure.
Why did I run? It is because I think northern Ontario, under the previous government, has fallen further and further behind. All first nations in the region had their capital funding cut. All first nations in the region had their provincial territorial organizations cut; they organize all the work that these communities do. We know that is happening, and we say to the party opposite that that is not going to hold for very long because communities need to grow.
I ran on real change. I ran on frustration, because of a particular view that I think all Canadians share, that the basic principle of government is that we look after our elderly and our children, and make decisions that are best for our country in the long term.
When I talked to veterans in my region, they were angry at the government for making major cuts and making their lives so difficult that they could not take it anymore. They felt they had to start going out. They were talking about demonstrating. I knew we were in trouble as a nation.
There was the cutting of funding to the Experimental Lakes in my region, one of the most successful research facilities in the world. It was cut by that government of the day, saving them a total of $1.5 million. It embarrassed us all around the world. Scientists could not figure out how anyone in their right mind would do something like that to a facility that was making such a difference for our environment.
We can look at things like health care. The previous prime minister's decision to have an 11-week campaign gave me the opportunity to go door to door and talk to a lot of people. The number one issue for many people in regions like mine is health care, and issues related to health care, such how we are going to deal with seniors, elders, and home care.
In the short time that I have left, I just want the House to know that this government, like any other government that runs on major, real change, is not going to do it in the first 100 days and is not going to do it in the first term. It takes a decade to make the kinds of changes that we are promoting here on this side of the House.
I, like everyone else on this side of the House, think the platform that we ran on was the right one, but we have to take our time to get it right and make sure we put in place those long-term changes that will improve the lives of this generation and the next generation to come.
I am honoured to be in this House. I have sat in almost every position one can think of except Speaker. I have been a minister, a parliamentary secretary, and a committee chair. All the things I have done in this House have taught me one thing, and that is that if we work together and remind ourselves that the election is over and now it is time to govern, we will make some very good decisions for the people we represent.
