Residents of the Burnaby North-Seymour riding can now meet with their local MP, even when he’s in Ottawa.
Liberal MP Terry Beech is the first MP to set up video conferencing between his constituency office and his parliamentary office in the nation’s capital. That means he can virtually meet with constituents while on business in Ottawa.
“We were the first office in Canada to have this technology implemented and set up,” Beech said. “Now a whole bunch of MP offices are adding these to their offices.”
Beech said he had to get some parliamentary policies changed to before moving ahead with the videoconferencing. So far, he’s had several people use it.
“I had one constituent who really wanted to have a face-to-face before the medical assistance and dying debate concluded. He was able to come into our board room and have that meeting,” Beech said.
He’s also video-conferenced with a university professor, a high school student, a BROKE member, a local pastor and a cross section of people talking about the Kinder Morgan pipeline.
“The technology is so wonderfully seamless you can actually have up to 24 people on either side of it and have a very productive meeting,” he said.
“Other MPs have been trying to get it from every party,” he added. “We were the first one to actually make it happen.”
