Arnold Chan, the member of Parliament for Scarborough-Agincourt, has had a significant week.

Chan turned 50 last weekend, introduced gun-control legislation on Monday and, in a powerful, 20-minute speech, forced the House of Commons to take a good, hard look at itself.

With his wife, parents and brother looking down from the spectators’ seats in the chamber, Chan stood and asked his fellow MPs to “to treat this institution honourably.”

A couple of ways to do that, Chan suggested, would be to throw out the “canned talking points” and for MPs to spend more time actually listening to each other.

“We can disagree strongly, and in fact we should. That is what democracy is about. However, we should not just use the formulaic talking points. It does not elevate this place. It does not give Canadians confidence in what democracy truly means,” Chan said.

Listening may be more important than talking, he said.

“That is when democracy really happens. That is the challenge that is going on around the world right now. No one is listening. Everyone is just talking at once. We have to listen to each other.”

He summed up his words, and the purpose of them, this way: “My advice is simple. We should use our heads, but follow our hearts. It is as simple as that.”

Chan singled out Green Leader Elizabeth May as the kind of parliamentarian that is needed more in the House, calling her a “giant” for her reverence for the institution.

“She is dedicated to her constituents,” Chan said. “She practises, both here and in committee, the highest standard of practice that any parliamentarian could ask for. Despite strongly disagreeing, perhaps, with the position of the government of the day, she does so in a respectful tone.”

Chan’s words had an immediate impact. Fellow MPs, from his own party and in rival parties — and yes, May, too — stood up to say they’d heard him loud and clear.

What prompted this cry from the heart from Chan? Many wondered whether he might be quitting. For the past few years, Chan has been battling a pernicious, nasopharyngeal cancer that first hit him shortly after he first came to Parliament in a 2014 byelection.

He endured aggressive treatment for the cancer immediately after he was diagnosed, felt well enough to run and win his seat again in the 2015 general election, and then the illness returned in the spring of 2016.

Chan hinted in his speech this week that the cancer has taken a toll on him — and more worryingly, that it threatens to continue taking a toll on him.

“I am not sure how many more times I will have the strength to get up and do a 20-minute speech in this place, but the point I want to impart to all of us is that I know we are all honourable members,” he said.

And some of the speech sounded a bit like a farewell or an elegy. He talked what values his parents had passed on to him and his pediatrician brother and how much he valued his wife and three children.

Later, though, Chan said he had just wanted to take advantage of his family’s presence in the House to say some things that had been on his mind. Here, though, is the remarkable thing — while Chan has been battling cancer, it’s the health of Canada’s democratic institutions, not his own health, that he wanted to talk about in a public place. His prescription for better health wasn’t complicated or difficult, either. He just wants politics to be a little more polite, a little more traditionally Canadian and polite.

“It is the basic common civility we share with each other that is fundamental. It is thanking our Tim Hortons server. It is giving way to someone on the road. It is saying thanks. It is the small things we collectively do, from my perspective, that make a great society, and to me, that is ultimately what it means to be a Canadian,” he said. “I would ask members to carry on that tradition, because that is the foundation of what makes Canada great.”

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Chan, born in Canada’s centennial year, 1967, is worried about the state of political debate in this year, Canada’s 150th anniversary. He says he’s not going away — he attached an #iaintquitting hashtag to his Twitter posts this week. But it’s an open question whether his words or advice will endure.

The Green party leader, focus of Chan’s praise, had not a bad idea for a Canada150 project after he spoke. “His words should be etched in marble,” May said, “so we remember that what makes us Canadian is that we are willing to decide it is important to be kind.”

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