If some members of Parliament had trouble adjusting to a new physically distanced world in the wake of COVID-19, the Sea to Sky’s Patrick Weiler wasn’t one of them.
“In some ways, it’s actually kind of levelled the playing field a bit, because it’s a new way of working for everybody,” Weiler said during an interview in Whistler Village on July 20—his first trip to the resort since the pandemic forced people into isolation.
“I‘ve worked on international teams before, so using—back then it was Skype, now it’s Zoom—but I have experience coordinating across time zones, and so for a lot of other people, they didn’t have that. Working online was a learning curve—just learning how to use the mute button was tough for some.”
Despite the challenging circumstances, Weiler said he was fortunate that his staff, and Parliament itself, was able to adapt quickly.
First elected in October 2019 at 33-years-old, Weiler was just starting to find his way as a rookie MP when the pandemic struck in March.
“I was just kind of getting my feet under me,” he said.
“I had gotten my whole staff together, and had kind of gotten settled in and everything and then the pandemic hit, and everything kind of got thrown for a loop.”
Of two committees Weiler sits on—Government Operations and Estimates (GOE) and Natural Resources—only GOE has continued to meet throughout the pandemic.
It’s one of three committees that will look into the contract at the heart of the Liberal government’s WE charity scandal, in which the government doled out a sole-source contract worth almost a billion dollars to the charity, despite Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s family (as well as other ministers) having close ties with the organization.
“I think people rightly want to know all the details of that spending … Pretty clearly, there was some mistakes made, and the prime minister and the finance minister admitted as much,” Weiler said.
“They should have recused themselves from that decision, that’s pretty obvious.”
While some mistakes can be expected when you’re rolling out programs to respond urgently to something like a pandemic, “at the same time, something like this, where there is a real apprehension of bias, those decision-makers should have recused themselves from that,” Weiler added.
Though much of the government’s recovery spending has been focused on immediate relief to date, there is real potential for a “green recovery” moving forward.
In rebuilding the economy, “likely what it’s going to mean is a lot of investments that would take place over the next 10 years, and a lot of that is going to be frontloaded, so we need to make sure that when we’re making those investments, it’s going to go into areas that will count and that are going to set us up for success in the future,” Weiler said, adding there is an energy and environment caucus within the Liberal Party that he’s been working with on the issue.
The caucus recently heard from officials in the European Union about their own economic recovery, which directed about a third of a $750-billion recovery plan to green recovery efforts.
“That’s really important input for us,” Weiler said.
Key to Whistler’s economic recovery will be access to labour, and while it was announced in February that a new subcategory would be created specifically to capture the Sea to Sky corridor’s unique labour market data (which would provide greater access to foreign worker programs for local businesses), the pandemic threw a wrench in those plans as well.
The labour market data in question is generated through the EI program, which was rolled into the new CERB program when it launched, Weiler explained.
“It essentially made so much of that data unusable,” he said.
“And until the CERB is phased out, until we move into whatever the new EI system is going to look like … we’re not going to be able to have the subcategorization.”
Proposed changes to the Investment in Canada infrastructure program could prove beneficial to the corridor as well—specifically for advocates of regional transit.
If the proposed changes go through, things like regional transit could potentially be covered by the 12-year, $180-billion fund, Weiler said.
The change could finally pave the way for regional transit in the Sea to Sky, which is expected to come with a $3.32-million price tag (see Pique, July 4, 2019: “Province rejects funding model for regional transit.”).
While it’s been incredible to see residents, businesses and others step up and adapt to challenging circumstances, “we’re not out of the woods yet,” Weiler said.
“For me, I’m here for everybody. If people have a question about a program, I’m happy to answer it. If there is an issue with something, if we’re missing something, I want to hear about it.”
