Kamal Khera’s special status as parliamentary secretary brings little to Brampton

As the saying goes, “with great power, comes great responsibility.”

Kamal Khera, Brampton’s most vocal MP in the House of Commons over the last four years, is the only Liberal incumbent from the city to hold the position of parliamentary secretary during that time.

These positions mostly fly under the public radar but are widely coveted by those who manage to climb up Parliament Hill as an MP. They create a direct pipeline of information between the elected official and party leaders in cabinet.

Brampton West’s Khera held a number of secretary roles over the last four years as she spent varying amounts of time with the ministers of health, revenue and international development. Her positions saw her speak frequently in the House of Commons over its 540 sitting days and endowed her time in Ottawa with a special level of responsibility when compared to her local colleagues. 

In the end, her powers did little for the city.

To her credit, Khera’s involvement on a number of national files allowed her to highlight significant issues in the country and the world. Yet despite holding the ear of cabinet members, Khera was unable to secure any significant investment for Brampton to solve ongoing problems like the health-care crisis, violent crime and affordable housing. 

According to the Library of Parliament, parliamentary secretaries play a “vital, if often unrecognized” role in assisting members of cabinet. These positions, appointed by the prime minister, are mainly to “provide a link between ministers and parliamentarians” and tasks MPs with carrying out certain jobs, like routine matters in the House, work on committees as non-voting members and some other “extra-parliamentary” duties. However, the role has consistently evolved as different MPs and different personalities make it their own. 

“Because the office is loosely defined, it is easily adapted to meet the administrative and political needs of the government of the day,” library documents state.

Soon after forming the new government in 2015, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau moved Khera — who briefly worked as a nurse — into the parliamentary secretary position for the minister of health. The appointment encouraged many in Brampton, as assistance is desperately needed at the federal level to attain a new hospital. Having an MP with the ear of the minister of health was a great first step. The appointment offered Khera a perfect opportunity to advocate directly for her city’s needs on the health-care front.

The Pointer was unable to find one instance in the House of Commons where Khera raised Brampton’s desperate need for an additional full-service hospital. It’s unclear whether she ever advocated privately to the minister of health or ministry itself. Khera did not immediately respond to repeated requests for comment.

She held the position for just over two years. In that time, she spoke out on a number of health-related topics, including First Nations and Inuit health, health-system reform, palliative care and the opioid crisis.

In particular, Khera praised the Good Samaritan Drug Overdose Act, which “aims to address a systemic barrier that is preventing individuals from seeking help for an overdose.”

“I would like to start off by acknowledging the alarming rise in opioid-related overdose deaths occurring across the country,” Khera said in May 2016. “Drug use is a significant public health and safety issue in Canada that can have wide-ranging impacts on individuals, their families and communities at large.”

And while the Liberals did go on to approve the widely praised Good Samaritan Drug Overdose Act, a law that protects individuals from drug-possession charges should they need to call authorities for someone overdosing, there is no House record of Khera mentioning the crisis unfolding in her own backyard.

According to Peel Public Health, the region saw 496 emergency department visits related to opioids in 2017, the latest year for which complete data is available. This is not only an unsettling 96 percent increase over the 253 ED visits in 2016 but a shocking 520 percent increase from 2003 numbers. And the crisis continues: Through nine months of 2018, Peel saw 254 ED visits related to opioids.

Khera has publicly stated that she is keenly aware of the issues in her riding. She made repeated references in the House of the many town hall meetings she hosts in her riding of Brampton West.

“I listened to the voices of the residents. At the doorstep, at the coffee shops, at community events and at our office. I listened. Over 1,000 residents engaged in our series of town halls on key priorities such as democratic reform, national security, climate change, health care, veterans affairs, defence, immigration and infrastructure. I listened,” she said in October 2016. “As the House sits this fall, I am here to fight for the values, priorities and the voices of the residents of Brampton West, because with a government that listens to Canadians, better is always possible.”

It was an encouraging statement, but as the months progressed, the name Brampton West all but disappeared from the House.

For the remainder of 2016 and most of 2017, she rarely mentioned her home riding. In fact, throughout her time in Ottawa, while being the most active MP in the House of Commons, standing to speak 287 times, she only mentioned Brampton approximately 10 percent of the time.

At the start of 2017, Khera was transferred out of the health-care ministry to become the parliamentary secretary to the minister of national revenue, and her statements in Parliament morphed from the realm of health care into taxes. In the year and a half she held this position, she spoke in the House about tax havens, corporate taxes and tax evasion. 

The role also placed her as non-voting member on the standing committee on finance, allowing her the opportunity to observe and comment on the preliminary budget process. It was a particularly valuable place to be in order to bring items to the committee’s attention. 

The Library of Parliament states that, on committees, parliamentary secretaries “represent the minister’s views and address political issues that may arise. They share departmental information and may work with committee chairs to plan appearances of ministers and departmental officials.”

During her time on these and other committees, Khera rarely spoke. The parliamentary record lists only four such instances, the latest in 2017. By comparison, as a full voting member of several committees, Khera’s colleague Ruby Sahota of Brampton North spoke more than 1,500 times.

Some of the extra duties of parliamentary secretaries include travel. In 2017, Khera got the attention of the media when she went to Tanzania "to see first hand the challenges faced by the local population." The $5,000 trip was paid for by World Vision Canada, despite the ethics code ostensibly barring parliamentary secretaries from accepting such gifts. 

“Before I left, I proactively contacted the conflict of interest and ethics commissioner, who approved the travel. Upon my return, I submitted the proper declaration,” Khera said in March 2017 when the issue arose. 

For the latter part of her term, Khera was shuffled to the parliamentary secretary for the minister of international development. In that role, Khera travelled to Oslo for a conference on ending sexual- and gender-based violence and Bangladesh to view the Rohingya refugee crisis first hand. She shared updates about both on Twitter. 

Throughout her four years in Ottawa, Khera was relatively active on social media, Twitter in particular. Like her colleagues, she used the platform to share updates on Liberal successes, including the recent $11-million investment from the feds for electric buses in Brampton and the $54 million announced this summer to support initiatives against guns and gangs in the GTA. It’s unclear how much of that funding will go directly to Brampton and Mississauga. 

More frequently, Khera used the platform to share her outings in the community, attending religious events, community picnics and local business openings.

According to her expenditure reports, Khera rarely used her budget to host town halls and meetings with her constituents. Her most active year was in 2017-18 as she held 12 such meetings in Brampton. She hosted only 12 others over her remaining three years: three in 2015-16, one in 2016-17 and eight in 2018-19. In November 2016, Khera said in the House that she hosted 10 such town hall meetings “over the summer.” Those meetings don’t appear in her expense reports, which hold only two entries for that year: the Santa Claus Parade in Brampton, which she attended “to discuss constituency issues with stakeholders,” and a meeting with 22 constituents at a Tim Hortons in February 2017.

With the election mere days away, Khera is in a tight race to secure her second term. According to polling aggregator 338Canada, Khera currently leads the riding with 41.1 percent of support, followed by Conservative challenger Murarilal Thapliyal who sits with 34.2 percent and the NDP’s Navjit Kaur with 16.4 percent.

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Twitter: @JoeljWittnebel