Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to rise today. I know that much has been said over the last day and will continue to be said this morning in this place. I am glad and honoured to be here to lend my thoughts about the remarkable life and service of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on behalf of the people that I represent in Barrie—Innisfil.

I want to begin by expressing my deep and sincere condolences to the family of Her Majesty and to King Charles. I hope they are finding great comfort with the outpouring of love and respect on such a grand scale by all of her, and now his, loyal subjects in every part of the Commonwealth and, indeed, in all corners of the world.

The Queen's passing, frankly, has been like the loss of a family member, as it should. Her Majesty is the only monarch a generation-plus has known, and we have experienced every moment of her life, every joyous occasion, every triumph, every sorrow and every challenge.

I looked back at just some of the historical events that our Queen has presided over in her 70 years of reigning the Commonwealth, and they are quite remarkable. Much has been said over the last couple of days about that, but it is important to highlight that her service did not just start with her coronation in 1953. It started well in advance of that, in 1945, when the Queen joined the British military when she turned 18. She joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service, ATS, as a mechanic during World War II. The Queen made a state visit to the United States, where she addressed the nations of the United Nations General Assembly, on behalf of the Commonwealth, and then she opened the 23rd Canadian Parliament, becoming the first monarch in Canada to open a parliamentary session. She was the first monarch to visit West Germany.

There were so many disasters, so many joys and so many triumphs. I am thinking back to 1966 and the Aberfan disaster, which led, eventually, to the 1969 Mines and Quarries Act.

In 1975, Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, Prince Philip, paid their first visit to Hong Kong. This was the first visit to Hong Kong by a reigning British monarch. As has been mentioned, she opened the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. In 1979, Margaret Thatcher became the first female prime minister of the United Kingdom, which meant that the people of Great Britain had, effectively, two iron ladies.

In 1982, on April 17, Queen Elizabeth II and then prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, as well as then minister of justice Jean Chrétien and André Ouellet, the then registrar general, signed the proclamation that brought the Constitution Act of 1982 into force. The proclamation confirmed that Canada had formally assumed authority over its constitution, the final step to full sovereignty, not far from where we are today.

In 1991, she addressed a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress, following the coalition victory in the Gulf War. In 2015, she became the longest-reigning British monarch, surpassing her great-great-grandmother, Queen Victoria.

There has been sorrow, much sorrow, including the loss of her beloved husband of 74 years, Prince Philip, in 2021. Of course, this year, the Queen celebrated her Platinum Jubilee, after a record of 70 years on the throne.

As the most widely travelled Commonwealth monarch, Queen Elizabeth II made 22 official visits to Canada and seven to Toronto. Her first was in 1951, as Princess Elizabeth, where she visited in place of her father, who was ill, and her last was in 2010.

Through everything, she did it with strong determination, grace, humility, wisdom, loyalty and, above all, selfless service.

She was also modernizing the monarchy, bringing it into the 21st century. Think for a minute how communication and technology changed over her lifetime and how she ably adapted to that, from that first radio address pledging herself to a life of service, to a recent video with Paddington Bear on the occasion of her Platinum Jubilee. She was always there to communicate and give comfort in good times and in bad.

We will miss her steady hand and her confidence that no matter how bad things are, they will be better. For me, Her Majesty's eternal optimism and humility is what I will miss the most.

I am sure by now, since the Queen's passing, millions of people around the world have seen that Paddington Bear video produced just three months ago for the Platinum Jubilee concert. It was one of the last times any of us saw the Queen before her passing because she was just not fit enough to attend the concert.

It is stated in a recent BBC article that the video was written by some of the people who worked on the Paddington films. They said, “We knew Paddington and the Queen stood for, and still do stand for, certain similar values—the idea that, be kind and polite and the world will be right.” That was said by co-writer James Lamont recently in a BBC Radio 5 interview.

He also said:

It just felt very natural that those two could share a space together. They would both welcome each other, because they're both cut from the same cloth.

We also thought there was some inherent comedy in the idea of Paddington, who we know is a bit of a klutz and a bit of a bull in a china shop at times—putting him in Buckingham Palace in front of the Queen, where etiquette and behaviour are obviously paramount.

Little did anyone know that the video produced through the magic of television would provide so much comfort to so many in this time of grief, but it has. There is a scene in the video where the clumsy bear, after squishing his lunch, reaches into his hat and offers Her Majesty his marmalade sandwich, his favourite, saying he always keeps one for emergencies, to which she replies, after reaching into her purse, “So do I...for later.” Today, so do I, for later.

At that moment, they came together and embodied so many of the values that the world needs right now: kindness, toleration, being kind to strangers and politeness, things that are about one's character. It is those values that Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth embodied throughout her whole life, no matter how good or how bad things were. That is what made her so special and it is what we should all strive to be.

Today, I pledge my allegiance to King Charles III. As I conclude, I will leave everyone with the words of a clumsy, lovable bear who became an unlikely royal mascot, who has been a source of comfort and who has brought a smile to people around the world during this difficult time, words that many of us would have loved the chance to say to Her Majesty: “Thank you Ma'am, for everything.”

John Brassard

$478,972.00