I want to thank you both very much for your evidence today.
I will just make some observations on some of the evidence from my own experience. I grew up in York Mills, where half the community is Jewish, and very much in the shadow of World War II. My family were refugees from Estonia who had a parallel experience. Many of those in my family and my community, the Estonian community from the Soviet gulag, lost their lives there. I was surrounded by kids who had families with similar experiences of the Holocaust, so there was a lot of sharing going on, and a lot in common there.
I heard, with interest, the comments about Rosalie Abella. My grandmother, who largely raised me, was actually a lawyer back in the 1920s in Estonia. She didn't practise here, but her grandmother was a Rosenberg, up the maternal line, and a straight maternal line to me, so you know what that means, at least according to the Lubavitchers, who keep trying to persuade me to put my poor, suffering son into Hebrew school. I'm just trying to get him to learn a bit of French. If I could get that done, that would make me happy.
In any event I've seen great things happen. I had a student staffer formerly with me who was from Saskatoon, and you see another great community there. She was not Jewish at all, but she started a klezmer band in her high school, which continues to this day.
My observation about the value of what you're doing is this. I look back to that time when I was growing up and we were coping with events that were pretty immediate. I've seen a lot of anti-Semitism disappear in the community, and in the communities that I've known since then.
At the same time, in parallel, I've seen new anti-Semitism arise in other places. While some understanding has grown, I've seen things here when we were elected, when the south Lebanon war took place and I was on the foreign affairs committee. Things were said that I thought were unthinkable and that we would never hear after the events of the Holocaust and World War II.
The work needs to be done. It appears that it perhaps never, ever will be complete. That is the way and the fate of the Jewish people, sadly, but this is a positive step towards doing that. I commend you both on bringing this forward, and thank you.
I think that completes our business for today.
Yes, Mr. Vandal.