DOMINION - A tumultuous start to his career in federal politics may have greeted Mike Kelloway in 2020, but the Liberal Member of Parliament for Cape Breton-Canso is hopeful for his constituents and the people of Canada as 2021 gets under way.

Elected in 2019 following the retirement of longtime Liberal Rodger Cuzner, Kelloway started his work in Ottawa with appointments to the House of Commons Standing Committees on Health and Justice. His work on the Health Committee included the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, which dramatically altered the parliamentary landscape ten months ago and has led to Kelloway and many of his colleagues doing much of their work from, and within, their constituencies. 

Through it all, the first-term Cape Breton-Canso MP has been impressed with the willingness of the Trudeau cabinet to listen to his concerns and those of his constituents on everything from securing emergency funding during the pandemic period to recognizing the needs and rights of seasonal industries such as tourism and the Atlantic fishery. 

Kelloway is also hopeful that solutions can be reached in the ongoing dispute between Richmond County's Potlotek First Nation and the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans. Local DFO officers seized hundreds of traps from St. Peter's Bay that were set out by Potlotek as part of a moderate-livelihood fishery that the Mi'kmaq community had launched in early October. 

"The Minister of Fisheries and Oceans continues to meet with industry officials and First Nations communities, and I'm optimistic that, at the end of the day, we'll find a framework with which to work," said Kelloway.