NDP MP Bill Siksay’s bill on trans rights is heading to committee this fall. I caught up with him after Question Period today.
Q: How was the rest of your summer?
A: Great. It’s over now, it’s long gone.
Q: I hear you took a trip to Australia.
A: I did.
Q: So this was a personal trip? No work?
A: No work. I recommend it. Far, far away. May God bless and keep Ottawa far away, at that moment. And now I’m happy to be back.
Q: What’s on the agenda for the fall? What’s the committee schedule looking like for your trans rights bill?
A: I haven’t heard yet. That’s something we still have to figure out. We still have to figure out what the committee wants to do, whether they’re going to have the hearing on it or not. They’re not required to do that – they could send it back to the House without doing that. That’s still to be determined. The committees aren’t up and running yet, but that’ll be the key thing running on my agenda this fall, and trying to get that through committee and back into the House and passed, and on to the Senate.
Q: Have started making any inquiries there as to who might sponsor it?
A: Not yet.
Q: What else is on your agenda this fall?
A: We’ve also got to get the Ethics committee back up and running. We were at a very crucial point in our investigation as to political interference in access to information requests, so I’m hoping that the committee will re-engage that, and get on with it as we reconvene. It’s a very serious issue, it’s a very serious issue about Parliamentary privilege, and it’s one that’s serious for the institution of Parliament.
Q: I see that committee has a new chair now, Shawn Murphy. What are your feelings about how this will play out in terms of the tone of the committee?
A: We’ll have to see. I’m not sure who else is on the committee – that’s not been finalised yet to my understanding, so we’ll see who’s there and what happens.
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