A few weeks ago, I was privileged to join members of Hamilton Police Service on a ride-along. Unfortunately, many people in Hamilton are suffering from addictions issues, so I wasn’t surprised that all but one of the calls we responded to that night involved a person under the influence of either drugs or alcohol. What did surprise me was the level of compassion displayed by police when they interact with these people. Here are a few examples:

Police prevented a man who was dressed completely in dark clothing, walking straight down the middle of a dimly lit street, from being hit by a car. Police convinced him to go to a shelter and actually drove him there. He could have been killed that night and an unsuspecting driver’s life forever changed.

I watched as police, along with paramedics, de-escalated a family crisis involving a mother and a troubled youth. The youth was eventually calmed and taken to hospital for treatment.

I witnessed wellness checks of our homeless population and police handing out canned good to people who knew them by name.

But I also saw the dangerous side of policing. At the beginning of the shift, I had taken a selfie with a young rookie cop I knew, Marco Arif. By the end of that shift, he was off to hospital with serious facial injuries that he received during an altercation on the job.

I want to thank Constable Arif, Sergeant Scott Hamilton, and all of the women and men who work for Hamilton Police Service.

Now, more than ever, we need our police, and now, more than ever, they need our support.

It’s my absolute honour and pleasure this morning to introduce you to three incredible police officers from the Toronto Police Service. Some of you may remember my member’s statement from a while back about a grassroots organization called Project Hope, started by these three officers. They have since gathered almost half a million dollars in donations for recent immigrants and refugees to Canada, as well as the survivors of the earthquakes in Türkiye and Syria. On their own time, they do outreach work, making sure that new arrivals to Canada who maybe haven’t experienced Canadian police get a positive experience right off the bat. The work they do can’t be understated.

Murtaza Popalzai, Mustafa Popalzai, and Farzad Ghotbi, thank you so much for coming.