Thank you very much for coming. I know it's difficult for you.
I remember you from when you were running as an Alliance candidate in 2000. I was also an Alliance candidate. I remember how unique it was having an 18-year-old run at the time. It's not an easy time to be young and working in government. You had the Liberal Party at one point not long ago calling people who worked for us young, 25-year-old jihadists. I'm not sure how that would have made you feel, but there is obviously a lot of disrespect that comes from the opposition. They seem to pile on. You've acknowledged that you've made a mistake. You don't feel wronged or slighted by what happened, and I commend you for that.
I can tell you as an Italian Canadian that it's truly funny to be here and listen to the Liberals, in particular the Liberal Party, start talking about how frightening it is that the Conservative Party of Canada is actually speaking to immigrant communities or new Canadian communities. As somebody who grew up in the 1970s and 1980s with Italian parents who came in the 1960s, I can tell you I spent a lot of time at meetings where the Liberal Party of Canada did nothing more than talk about how bad Conservatives were, how pathetic the NDP were, and why the only party you could ever trust was the Liberals.
One of the reasons I became a Conservative was because through all those years I saw that the Liberals didn't really care about new Canadians; they only cared about their vote every once in a while.
Look at the Italian Canadian community. I'll get to a question. A Liberal member of Parliament sponsored a bill we have in front of this House that sought to apologize to Italian Canadians. They didn't bring down that bill through 13 years of Liberal majority. They didn't think the Italian Canadian community was important enough to talk to during all of those years of majority Liberal government, but when they thought they could divide the Italian community and sought to win a seat in Vaughan, they brought a bill forward that they knew would try to divide or put a wedge between the Italian Canadian community. They're all about wedge politics, and it is truly, absolutely offensive to somebody whose parents came here and busted their behinds—as yours did—to hear this kind of garbage from the opposition.
This is a minister and a government that has welcomed and brought in 280,000 immigrants to this country, the largest portion ever. When the economic downturn struck, we actually opened the doors more because we see immigrants as a positive benefit to our community. We work with our provincial partners to make sure that the right type of people are coming to Canada so they can have jobs when they get here. We've reformed the refugee system to make it more responsive so that the right people are getting here. We've reduced the waiting list from a million people almost in half, if not even further. We've increased the budget for Immigration Canada dramatically. Through all of this the opposition have consistently voted against us at every turn, and yet the only thing they can bring forward to committee are young people...they call them jihadists. They tell us that we should somehow be worried about young people working within the public sector.
Let me ask you this again. Did you make a mistake, yes or no?
