Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I had the honour of heading out to Halifax this year and seeing where my parents got off the boat. My dad had a grade six education, and my mom had a grade three education. My aunts and uncles all came in the 1950s and early 1960s.
My dad died very early, but he accomplished an extraordinary amount. He was buried with a Canadian flag in his casket.
I talked to my uncle the other day about this. We had a long conversation. There's never been any sorrow or embarrassment in our household in talking about this. His words to me were profound. He said, “Apologize for what--for allowing a million of us to come to this country? You're sitting in Parliament. I'm sitting in a really nice, beautiful home. I'm retired. My kids have all gone to university. We've lived an extraordinary life. You've been back to Calabria. You've been to Roiano. The way it is now is certainly not the way it was in the 1950s when we left there. Without this country you wouldn't have had anywhere near the advantages you have now.”
I was at the Markham Centennial Bocce Club on Sunday. We were opening up this brand-new bocce club in Markham. If you had told me when we first moved to Markham in the 1970s that there would be an Italian mayor, an Italian member of Parliament, three Italian councillors and a regional councillor, and I'd be cutting the ribbon for the Markham Centennial Bocce Club, I would have told you you were crazy; it was not going to happen.
On what concerns me about this, I do believe it's divisive. At that event on Sunday nobody said that Canada needed to apologize for anything it had done. Every single one of them--like you, like Ms. Minna--is a proud Canadian. They're proud of their Italian heritage.
But what troubles me most about this bill--and I talked about it in Parliament--is there can be no denying it was Liberal Prime Minister Mackenzie King who interred the Italians. Liberal Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent refused to apologize to Italians. Liberal Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson refused to apologize to Italians. Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau refused to apologize to Italians. Jean Chrétien, a Liberal Prime Minister, refused to apologize to Italian Canadians.
Ms. Minna talked about being the president of the congress in 1992. One year later she sat in Parliament and could not get Jean Chrétien to apologize to Italian Canadians. As a cabinet minister, she could not get her cabinet colleagues to agree to apologize. Prime Minister Martin refused to apologize to Italian Canadians. It was only a Conservative Prime Minister who took the step of recognizing what had happened. He apologized directly to the community, said there were mistakes made, and on behalf of the Government of Canada he apologized for the mistakes made.
To say that this bill is not divisive, I simply can't agree with you. In my discussions with all the people I represent--and I represent a very large Italian community in Markham, Richmond Hill, and King--they're proud of the fact that our government recently provided funding through the community historical recognition program, I think it was $5 million, so we could educate people and recognize some of the history of what happened.
They recognize this bill for what it is, frankly--an attempt to divide the community and gain back some kind of support within the Italian community that the Liberal Party feels it has lost. It's a desperate attempt to divide Canadians along ethnic lines yet again. That's all this bill does. This bill doesn't address how Italian Canadians feel. It simply seeks to extract millions of dollars for someone else's pet project--perhaps your pet project--and continue the divisiveness.
I ask you, why did the Liberal prime ministers I mentioned--Mackenzie King, St. Laurent, Pearson, Trudeau, Chrétien, and Martin--turn their backs on Italians?
If it's true that the only way Italians can feel better in this country is if they get an apology in Parliament, and that the apology of the Prime Minister of Canada in 1988 isn't enough for them, why did the Liberal Party turn their back on Italians for so many years? You have been elected longer than I have, yet you chose a minority Parliament to bring forward a bill that you knew would be divisive. You had massive majorities for many years, yet for all those years you chose to ignore the Italian people. Now you bring this forward because you think you can do more damage in the minority Parliament and create more division in the community. That's what I find troubling about the bill.