I am so very honoured to stand in this House today to deliver my inaugural speech. And let me begin by congratulating you, Speaker, on your re-election. I know you will serve this Legislature well. I also wish to congratulate each of the members of this assembly. The voters have chosen you to serve. This is an awesome privilege, a tremendous honour and an incredible responsibility. I look forward to working with all of you.

As a new member in this House, I would like to express my thanks to the staff of the Ontario Legislature. From the first moment I arrived here at Queen’s Park, a little lost and not even sure where to park, the friendliness and professionalism has impressed me. I was amazed to find the security officer at the door recognized me, greeted me by name and made sure I found my way around. And I have found every member of the staff here to be absolute professionals. I must say through you, Mr. Speaker, to the Clerk, that he has built a fantastic team. They are all providing exemplary service to this Legislative Assembly, its members and the people of Ontario.

Mr. Speaker, as you noted when recognizing me, I stand in this place representing the amazing riding of Hastings–Lennox and Addington. At over 9,100 square kilometres, it is one of the largest electoral districts in southern Ontario. Driving from the north end starting at the edge of Algonquin Park in Hastings Highlands township down to the South Shore Road on Amherst Island in Loyalist township, it is more than a four-hour drive—and there aren’t many direct routes as you travel the rugged and picturesque Canadian Shield.

It is safe to say that Hastings–Lennox and Addington has some of the most beautiful countryside in Ontario. These are also the ancestral lands of the Haudenosaunee, Mississauga and Omámíwinini peoples. Since time immemorial, the Indigenous peoples have been and continue to be the stewards of the land. Notably, today, within this riding are the lands of the Tyendinaga Mohawk territory, and their First Nations Technical Institute, which teaches Indigenous students from across Canada. Indigenous-owned and governed, this post-secondary institution has 35 years of rich history and has produced more than 4,000 proud graduates.

HL and A, as we call it, is a beautiful space preserved for successive generations. But it also contains an abundance of amazing and vibrant communities. Our 18 municipalities and two counties harbour almost a countless number of towns, villages and hamlets. From Denbigh to Stirling, from Stella to Lake St. Peter, and in between, so many different communities, each with its own timeline, its own heartbeat, its own story.

I was recently honoured to be present at the celebration of the 200th anniversary of the town of Marmora as they unveiled a statue celebrating its history as one of the original mining towns in Canada. Deposits of iron ore were discovered, followed by deposits of gold, copper and silver, leading to the development of nearby settlements like Eldorado, Cordova Mines and Blairton.

We are an historic part of the country. In the village of Bath, in Loyalist township, is the Hawley House, built in 1785. Just three years shy of being the oldest building in the province, it is recognized as the longest continuously inhabited residential home in Ontario. That same year, 1785, mills were being built in nearby Napanee, which would then ship flour to the towns of Montreal and Toronto. There are many towns with histories dating back to the 18th and 19th centuries, when Ontario was still part of Upper Canada, and we are very proud of our historic contributions to building this nation.

So, yes, the region is both historic and industrious. Traditionally, the northern part of the riding has been heavily involved in mining and forestry, hunting and fishing, and all the related tourism that those activities bring. Further south, away from the granite of the Shield, we have a tremendous agricultural sector, from grains and orchards, to some of the best meat and dairy in the country. And beyond these sectors we have amazing cheese factories, and in more recent years, have become one of the best beer and winemaking regions in the world.

While Hastings–Lennox and Addington is home to traditional industries, it also has ties to modern transportation infrastructure, with large facilities for train assembly and testing, automotive tire production, and, most recently, I was pleased to stand with our Minister of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade as he announced a new $1.5-billion manufacturing site for battery components for electric vehicles. HL and A is very much a part of the future of the automotive sector. Speaker, as beautiful, historic and industrious as our riding is, its greatest asset is its people. And it’s to those people today that I express my gratitude and my pledge to represent them in this venerable place to the very best of my ability.

I must make mention of the organizers and volunteers that worked with me through the election campaign. Their dedication and their efforts are an amazing testament to their belief in our democratic system. There are so many people involved in that for whom I have so much gratitude. I don’t wish to name some and miss others, so I will simply humbly say thank you to the entire team.

I will specify my appreciation for one of those volunteers: my predecessor, my mentor and my friend, Daryl Kramp. Daryl sat in this chamber during the last term of government, so many of you know him, and you know that he is, quite simply, legendary. He’s one of the few Canadians who have been elected to federal, provincial and municipal office. For decades, he was the guy that everybody knew, and everybody turned to, to get things done right; and alongside him for even longer, Carol Ann, the light of his life and a wonderful partner in all he has done. Daryl was well known for working collaboratively with all members across party lines to achieve the desired goals, and it was Daryl who showed me what it takes to be an effective and compassionate MPP. I will attempt to live up to that Kramp standard.

Speaker, I’d like to provide a little of my lived experience to describe what brought me to this House. Like many people, I grew up in a time when it was considered impolite to discuss politics, religion or money, but this was not the case in my childhood home. Our dinner table encouraged wide-ranging conversations about just about any topic, and, specifically, about the events and government activities of the day at all levels. It was through these conversations that I learned of taxation and unions and law enforcement and court systems, of economic development and health care, balancing rights and responsibilities and so many other topics. It certainly seemed to me that my father knew a lot about just about everything. It never dawned on me that many people would consider him uneducated because he never passed grade 10.

On the other hand, my family household was a very strong patriarchy. We could discuss, but we could not oppose my father—at least not without risking a change to his temperament that would not be good for anyone. So in my childhood while I learned about government, I also yearned for an environment that would actually be open to debate, to hearing from all sides, exploring new ideas and, hopefully, coming to positive directions to move forward.

It was with this lens that I headed out into the world, and while I enjoyed and, at times, excelled in school, ultimately my own distractibility did not blend well with the structure of academia, so I did not do very well in school—at least not until many years later when I returned to achieve my post-secondary work.

In my teens, I ventured out to work. I spent much of the next decade working as a dishwasher, a cook, a telemarketer and in an array of different jobs that allowed me to support myself. I was, what we would call today, the working poor. In fact, for a brief period I was financially strapped enough that I was unable to pay my OHIP premium—for those who remember OHIP premiums. So I was without coverage under our universal health care system for about six months.

Of course, during that time, I managed to sprain my ankle. So what did I do? I wrapped it myself, I endured the pain and stayed off it for a week or so. I lost work, and I lost wages, but I understood that that loss was cheaper than going to the hospital would have been. These are choices we should not have to make, and I’m grateful that today in Ontario our government and our health minister have repeatedly affirmed our support of universal health care so that Ontarians don’t have to make such choices.

Speaker, that story is about a minor injury and a relatively young person, but I am about to tell this assembly a much tougher story, which demonstrates even more how truly grateful I am for our health care system.

In May 1995, I was joyously blessed with the birth of my second child, my beautiful daughter, Carly Jean Bresee. She was an incredible, healthy, happy child, and if you will allow a father’s loving bias, amazingly intelligent and incredibly beautiful. Carly grew up continuing to be happy and healthy, always doing her own thing. She excelled at school, she was very social and she was very active in her preferred physical activity, competitive dance.

But then in the fall of 2011, at age 16, Carly began experiencing exhaustion and lethargy. She very uncharacteristically missed school, so we thought she might have a cold or some similar ailment, but as it persisted, we took her to the doctor who ordered bloodwork. As an indicator of her great health up to that point, that was the first time since she was born that she had required bloodwork. She visited the lab on Monday and, on Tuesday, I received a phone call that I will never forget, and I certainly hope that no other parent receives such a phone call. The doctor called me directly, instructed me to take Carly to the emergency room immediately and informed me of her likely diagnosis: leukemia.

That was mid-November. Over the next few weeks and months, we learned a whole new vocabulary: ALL, neutrophils, cytotoxicity and more. We learned about the very high rates of success with certain treatments for childhood leukemia, but then the more refined test came back and we learned that this was a rarer form of cancer that would be harder to treat. After one particular treatment that had been very damaging to her and deemed not successful, I asked the oncologist what we would do next. Her answer horrified me. She said, “I don’t know.” By March, it was clear that chemotherapy and radiation would not work. The only viable option, the only hope, was a very risky one, a bone marrow transfer.

The first good news we received, and against the odds, her brother was a good match for a bone marrow transfer, so we could do the transfer treatment. We spent months here at SickKids. It was a very dark time.

During one of those dark and scary nights, I made the mistake of googling what it would cost to perform that procedure if I lived in the United States, without a universal health care system. It showed me that if I didn’t live here in Ontario, I would have been given a choice: pay $1.2 million or watch my daughter suffer and die.

Mr. Speaker, I’m not a wealthy man, and while I would have done anything to save my daughter’s life, there was no way on God’s green earth I could write a check for $1.2 million. That would not have been a choice, it would have been a death sentence. But we do live in Ontario and our health care system is amazing. And so the treatment went ahead and it was successful. Carly would live.

But, Mr. Speaker, I must finish the story. After her successful bone marrow transfer, supplied by her heroic brother, she did thrive. For the next five years she completed high school, she went off to the University of Waterloo and she studied medicinal chemistry. She wanted to do research to make better treatment drugs for anyone that had to go through what she went through. In time, she met and fell in love with a wonderful young man named Jon.

Unfortunately, at the end of her third year of university, the cancer came back, and this time it was untreatable. We lost my beautiful baby girl in September 2017. To the end, she was, and we still are, eternally grateful for the amazing care provided to her by the wonderful people at our hospitals. I miss her every day.

I want to assure this House and all the residents of my riding and across the province that I will always support and fight for universal health care. My residents have told me that they want a great health care system. They want a system that works. They want a system that they gain access to with their health card, not their credit card.

Mr. Speaker, with regard to my personal political engagement, I take you back in time a little bit to the fall of 2000. Connor and Carly were just five and seven years old. I found out that my local municipal government was going to change the format of one of our parks, change it to a manicured flower garden and community gardens—changed from the large open space, well grassed, and a place for children to play. I disagreed with that. I looked at the members of our council at the time, and realized that they were all long-time community supporters, mostly of the grandparent set, so I decided to run for a seat. It may not have been the nicest way to say it, but I started my first campaign for elected office saying that the current members had too much grey hair. I would learn to regret that choice of words. That was 22 years ago, and I was fortunate enough to be elected, and, yes, that park is still open as a play space for children.

As I started on council, I could discuss and debate many ideas, but too often I heard that we could not do this or that because the province won’t let us. So once again, I went looking for a place to express my views. For better than 20 years, I attended the AMO, the ROMA and the Good Roads conferences and signed up for all forms of committees and caucuses. I kept going back to my childhood belief that everyone wants to or should want to openly discuss new ideas, different approaches and even debate those ideas.

Now, seven elections later, I find myself here in this chamber, and honestly I am in awe and inspired by the people of all party stripes, whom I have admired. I am truly honoured to be here.

After all these years in office, I do understand that the people who vote for us expect us to speak our minds, but they also expect us to work civilly with our colleagues at the table, in the Legislature and in committee; to discuss, deliberate and debate the merits of the many ideas brought forward; and in the end, to try to get it right.

So Mr. Speaker, I pledge to speak my mind in this House, to bring to this place the comments and concerns of my constituents and to work co-operatively and collegially with all members of the assembly, regardless of the party, for the betterment of the province.

I would like to extend that spirit of co-operation to all, to encourage inclusion for our residents, especially those who have been historically excluded. We need to recognize the contributions and the voices of the 2SLGBTQ+ community, the BIPOC communities, persons with disabilities and any other disenfranchised group. Collectively, we must strive to ensure that all people are heard. For too many years, too many of our citizens have been left out.

My lived experience is that of a white male settler. I know I have a privilege bias, and I must commit to listening to people with a different lived experience and to being an ally to them. I believe we are living in the best province in the best country in the world, but like every other jurisdiction, we have our challenges, our current and historic mistakes, issues to fix. We must be open to discussion, to debate. It’s what gives us the opportunity to grow and to change, to recognize the failures of the past and to improve upon it.

This is not to degrade the difficult and tremendous actions of those who came before us, but rather it is to stand on their shoulders, to rise above, because they built the foundation on which we stand. I look forward to working with all members of this assembly, and I’m confident that we are ready to get it done.

Finally, Mr. Speaker, I do want to thank my amazing family: my mother, Leslie; my stepmother, Barb; my children, Connor, John, Alice and Liam; my two grandchildren; and, most of all, my incredible and supportive wife, who is in the gallery today. It is because of their love and support that I can do this. They drive and motivate me. Through them and thanks to the voters of Hastings–Lennox and Addington, I have finally come to a place where we can have that open discussion and debate, and I am so looking forward to it.