No matter what the former Canadian astronaut’s reasons are - I didn’t even read what they are - Mars should not be our next major off world exploration by living humans - robotic rovers, yes, humans no.
Our next major off world exploration by living humans should be a moon base.
It can be like a “boot camp” for how best to make a “human habitat” camp, off world, and how to make it work. There is all sorts of things that can get “field tested” on the moon.
Meanwhile, by continuing to use robotic rovers on mars we can add to what knowledge of Mars we have, which will make for better exploration of Mars by living humans when we are ready.
We can also begin building a space platform. It would fist be used as a travelers station for the trips back and forth to & from the moon. Reusable space vehicles for going back and forth to and from the moon would be docked there. Humans going to the moon would only need vehicles to get them to the space platform, not vehicles that would take them all the way to them moon. They would have their own “shuttle craft” for the moon landing & returning to the orbiting vehicle that took them to the moon; when it was time to return to the space platform orbiting earth. From the platform, they would take another kind of “shuttle” to return to earth.
It would be the “boot camp” for those things a space platform can do for us too.
Together the moon base experience and and space platform experience will prepare us for major explorations of Mars by living humans.
At some point it might be understood to work best constructing in earth orbit - in modules that get put together - the long range space vehicles, and as reusable vehicles. The heavy-lifting from earth’s surface (energy resource wise) would only be done in stages building the vehicles, and then not again. Leaving high earth orbit has a lower energy requirement, and doing so leaves a payload ability for the fuel-energy for the long distance travel.
We learn to walk before we learn to run.
I tend to agree with keeping things a bit closer to home than wandering to Mars for what? The real reason should be to find other planets like ours, but Astronomers seem to feel anything within reach is a dead planet, so what is to be accomplished by going outside our short range area of near space and moon?