Bill Siksay on the rest of his spring session plans

Finishing off my roundup of queer MPs, I caught up with NDP MP Bill Siksay at the end of last week.

Q: How was the rest of your winter break?
A: It seems like so long ago now. It was good. I actually came back to Ottawa for a couple of days during the holidays, which was a very strange thing to do. I worked in the office, which is even more strange. But it was good to be away, do some stuff in the riding, pay attention to the nomination that was coming and that kind of thing.

Q: What else have you got lined up for the spring, now that this big hurdle with C-389 has been cleared?
A: We’re working on the bill. Now that we’ve got it through the House, we’ve got to work on finding a sponsor and getting it through the Senate. That’s in some ways a bigger project than getting it through the House and it will take a considerable amount of work. I’m also doing stuff with the Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament. We’re sponsoring an all-party discussion on what’s next in the nuclear disarmament agenda for the end of February, so that’s another one of my pet projects that I’ll be doing some work on. And I’ve got all of my committee stuff to work on.

Q: What has been going on in the ethics committee lately?
A: We haven’t had the drama that we’ve had in other moments. We’ve been doing a study in open government including proactive disclosure, open data and access to information, so we’re continuing that study. The Canadian government is way behind some other key governments on that – behind Australia, the United States and the UK on open data and open government, so we’ve been hearing witnesses on that and hearing from other levels of government who are doing a much better job, like some of the municipalities in Canada.

Q: Your thoughts on whether we’re going to have a spring election?
A: I have no clue. No clue at all. We’ll go day by day.