With all due respect, I'm not sure how this committee runs, but we should respect the witnesses enough to allow them to answer a question. There were a couple of things said I take issue with.
I never said this bill was going to make me feel better. It might make you feel better, but it's not going to make me feel better. I think it's just going to make Italians aware of what happened in the past. The Liberal governments in the past did not apologize. I said that in my speech, If you would listen. The Liberal Party did not do the job, but the Conservatives are the ones that have been divisive. They chose to apologize to the Chinese community, the Japanese community, and the Ukrainian community, without apologizing to the Italian community. There is no divisiveness in the Italian community; it's the Conservatives that have this divisiveness.
The Italian community is about more than about bocce clubs. The problem is not with your dad who got here and made a success of it. My dad was a success also. I think Dean was saying his dad made a success of it. That's not the point. The point is that Italians who came here had to change their names and today we don't even know that they're Italians. These were professionals who came here in the forties and the thirties. We lost a whole generation of professionals. These are people who could have been in Parliament. They probably were in Parliament, had Italian names, but were forced to change them. That's the issue.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, members.