Questions?

I want to tell the member, your inaugural speech was amazing. You say you ramble—you can ramble all you want in this House. It’s going to be welcome.

You would have shamed the previous member from Bruce–Grey–Owen Sound. He used to go, go, go, but you would just put him in his place today. For those that have listened to Bill Walker when he was in this House—he would always have a good time with us in this House.

Listen, you’ve demonstrated that your experience through getting here, you have heart and compassion. That’s something that many of us have in this Legislature—all of us have in this Legislature. We’ve all have those stories. I remember meeting up with Januzhe Pochwalowski. He was an immigrant who came to Canada. He was having so many problems raising his two boys—nobody would listen to him. He kept saying, “Listen, there’s something wrong with my pension. There’s something wrong with my pension.” I listened to him. I heard him. We looked at his pension and managed to deal with WSIB. We found out that he had not been indexed. I called him into the office and said, “I have some bad news for you. You know those years of pension you were entitled to that didn’t come? They’re coming. You’re going to be getting $186,000.” And it was just something that we do.

As an opposition, we are critical of this government. We will criticize the government. We will oppose. That’s our job. My question to you will be, will you be hearing to respond to the opposition or will you be listening to understand the points that we’re bringing across?

Thank you. And the thing is that he was just one of many. I have had that experience over and over and over again, of being a person that took the unconventional approach, the person that listened.

The thing with him or the thing with my neighbour and my neighbour’s daughters is that they’re not going to fall through the cracks. They are protected. But what increasingly bothered me more and more was that the only common element in that—this is not to pat myself on the back; this is why I became involved—was me. If they hadn’t come across me as the crown or me as their busybody, interfering neighbour, that wouldn’t have happened. And I felt that in a province like Ontario, that simply wasn’t good enough.

I firmly believe that a rising tide lifts all boats. I believe that that is what this party stands for. It stands for investing in people early on, in giving people the tools that they need to build themselves up. But I wanted to be able to be here and tell stories like the story that I just told so that you understand what it’s like for people that live in this different world, in this far more disorganized world, and know that they’re not past hope. They’re not past help. And we can absolutely do a great deal for them. And that is, in large part, why I ran: in order to be here.

To finish this off, in my last few days—I’ll get to the bag of milk, actually. I had had both a good day and a bad day at work. It was a good day because I’d had yet another full-grown man sobbing, in happiness, on the phone to me, and I had made a really, really big difference in his life. I was happy about it, but I was also frustrated because I thought, I know that there’s not very many people that are doing what I’m doing, so I’m having an incredibly small impact right now, even though I’ve had major impact on this one man.

My mother was over, and I was saying, “I don’t know. What do you do if you want to make things better? If I have influence, but it’s very small, do you go into politics?” And she said, “Well, you know, it could be something to consider.” And then she left, and she went to the grocery store to get a bag of milk. And while she was at the grocery store, she saw a gentleman, John Wright, who is sort of a local businessman, and she distantly recalled seeing him on Facebook, in perhaps a Conservative Party function locally. So she went up to John and asked him if he had any party involvement and said, “Jess just wants to talk to somebody about it.”

John is the type of person that does everything at just 100 miles an hour. So before the next day was even finished, he had two people that were involved locally, Mike Dearden and Peter Tudisco, and had arm-wrestled them into calling his random friend’s daughter who had a slight interest in politics.

They were really the originators. Peter Tudisco and Mike Dearden were the ones that took this away. If it weren’t for them, I absolutely would not be here. They made this happen. I was working full-time as a crown attorney, caring for a very, very ill dog at that point, and they were the ones that absolutely did this, while also having a wonderful sense of humour about it.

Mike will be watching this, and I feel entitled—because I have 20 minutes to talk—I have a phone full of text messages from Mike with no response from me, of us being at events with him sending me a message that says, “Wrap it up, Jess. Wrap it up. Okay, you’ve talked too much.”

I also want to thank Jim Schmidt. Jim was the candidate for Kitchener Centre. He unfortunately did not win but is just an absolutely stand-up guy. He was one of my main touchstones during the entire campaign process. We’d meet for lunch regularly. He was always the one who actually knew what date things were due, how to get the phone and who’s email I was supposed to have, and then he would also comment that he would really appreciate it if he could see me eat a vegetable once in a while—he still hasn’t.

I also want to thank Brandon Lukach, who’s another one of my neighbours. Actually he’s another part of that neighbourhood. Brandon is somebody that dropped out of school when he was in grade 10 due to a combination of circumstances, and I’m proud to say that we got him to successfully write his GED back in March and now he will be on to bigger and brighter things. I’m very proud of him for that.

I also want to talk about Joe and Corey Kimpson. When I started doing social media for my campaign, I came across this business, a paintball field called Flag Raiders that I remembered was closed down. I reached out to them to say, “Look, I’ve got about as much power as a goldfish in an empty bowl, but I’m happy to come talk to you and see what’s happening.”

I went out to the field and I just had this immediate—I don’t know—connection with the two of them, but particularly with Corey Kimpson. We talked about paintball, we talked about local businesses. I think maybe one week later, she sent me a package about Flag Raiders and then not even a week after that, our next connection was me sending her a panicked message, asking if she knew anybody at the Rotary because I had just been asked to go to a Rotary gala that started in two hours. She wrote back, “I think I know some people.” Then I wrote back, “Will you go with me?” So she was my date at a Rotary gala with two hours’ notice, having only ever spoken to me once before. Her and Joe put up signs. They managed my social media. They were just incredible.

I also want to talk about—I call them my Holy Trinity. I know that some of them are watching. Angie, Monica and Marie are three wonderful ladies. I met Angie through Facebook. Monica was one of the only people that responded to one of our riding-wide emails, and Marie was a person who came out to one of our events. I remember being so incredibly touched, the first time we had a super canvass when Marie came out and gave her time to me because I was never expecting somebody I didn’t know that didn’t owe me anything would turn up. But those three did and they turned up over and over and over again, and I absolutely owe them.

My aunts, my nurse aunts, Auntie Deb and Auntie Moe, would come out as well. Carl—reliable Carl and Tyler, who, when they came, I knew with a breath of relief that we would at least probably finish this canvass. And Rob Elliott—Rob was a regional organizer, and he came in in the last 10 days of the campaign to get us over the finish line—just an absolute ray of sunshine. He came on after, again, to help me set up the office, and if it weren’t for him, all of my phones would still be tin cans on strings.

Anyway I owe so many people: Megan, TJ, Alide, Bill, David, Lauryn, Jenn, Max and Chris, but I want to end this again by saying thank you to my parents.

Question?

The honourable member from Kitchener South–Hespeler obviously, in eight years as a crown prosecutor, was not just prosecuting people, but was working with people. She obviously understood the clarion call of former Chief Justice Brian Dickson, who said we must have both law and compassion, because a prosecutor is not just prosecuting, but listening to people, an officer of the court serving the people.

Now, in this new role of being a member of provincial Parliament and having gone through a campaign, what would the honourable member say would be her top highlights of dealing with people, both on the campaign trail and since her election on June 2?

Thank you, Speaker, and thank you as well to my colleague from across the aisle, who had a really great speech. I liked that you started and ended it with your mom and dad, and I liked the phrase you said about mostly just notes. I’m going to ask you a question, but if you prefer, if there’s something in your notes you didn’t get to speak about, just say, “I wanted to bring this up,” because sometimes you have that feeling when you sit down, when you wanted to mention someone’s name.

I was just wondering if, newly elected, anything stood out to you—it’s been about two months now—from the time of your election to today that you didn’t really expect, or that surprised you, or that you found interesting after being elected.

Congratulations to the member opposite on an excellent inaugural speech. I actually listened with a lot of interest, especially as you were describing your background as a crown prosecutor. I can only imagine some of the situations that you’ve been in, especially in those courtrooms trying to do right by the person that you’re representing or the situation that you’re in.

I was actually just quickly doing some calculations based on things that I’ve learned in my community of Toronto Centre. And what I’ve learned in Toronto Centre is that there’s a disproportionate number of Indigenous people who are incarcerated or perhaps held in correctional facilities, and yet their actual population size in Ontario is actually pretty small. And I’ll just give you a quick example: 31% of Indigenous adults are in custody, yet they only represent 4.5% of the population. Indigenous youth are 43% held in correctional facilities, and yet they only represent 8.8% of the population.

I think that if I was to drill down a little bit deeper into, basically, what you said, you were talking about your individual efforts of working within the system to help people. I’m curious to know your position and your values on how it would translate to changing the system, the structural deficiencies that we see in the system, so we can actually help people by changing the systemic problems that are here, that keep the Indigenous population in correctional facilities or incarcerated. How would you bring that type of thinking to the House?

Having gotten to know my colleague a little bit over the last while—obviously, energy galore, very talented. Eight years as crown prosecutor, both federally and provincially, alternative justice—you’ve shared some really interesting stories. You’re compassionate about it and you’ve shown results. But family first—that’s obviously important to you. Tell us a little more about your dad.