SYDNEY RIVER – What a difference five months can make.

Elected in October 2019 to serve as a Liberal MP for the riding of Cape Breton-Canso, held for the previous nineteen years by fellow Grit Rodger Cuzner, Mike Kelloway had no idea that Parliament would soon be shut down as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and that he would be doing the bulk of his work via phone calls and teleconferencing from his home in Sydney River.

And yet, as he spoke to TELILE 24/7 host Adam Cooke early in April, the rookie Member of Parliament was upbeat as he spoke about his conversations with constituents around the riding, which takes in the counties of Inverness and Richmond, wide swaths of the Cape Breton Regional Municipality, the towns of Port Hawkesbury and Mulgrave, and several portions of Guysborough and Antigonish counties on the mainland side of the Canso Causeway.

“In the past two weeks I’ve seen some improvement in terms of self-isolation, and certainly, I’m told that more and more people are doing that,” Kelloway reported.

“But it’s not good enough. We need everyone to self-isolate…We need everybody to work together and do a full-court press on this when it comes to self-isolation.”

Kelloway also stressed the importance of getting the word out concerning the federal government’s key assistance programs for those impacted by the pandemic and its accompanying economic downturn – specifically, the Canadian Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) and the wage subsidy for business owners trying to keep their employees compensated while attempting to address their businesses’ uncertain future.

The Liberal MP also credited the people of Cape Breton-Canso for giving him the encouragement to push for a basic income for Canadians earlier this year – a move that, according to Kelloway, has come to fruition to a degree with the various moves Ottawa has installed to deal with the pandemic.

“Our briefing note got flagged by the Minister of Finance, and he said, ‘There’s some really good ideas and some really good insight here,’” Kelloway recalled.

“And I said, ‘Don’t think me, thank the people of Cape Breton-Canso.’ Because I reached out to the tourism operators, the MLAs throughout the riding, private businesses, not-for-profits…And it really was those folks that helped form that briefing note.”