Thank you, Madam Chair.
I think this is the first time that I've been at a panel where I have actually read books by both panellists.
Professor Luciuk, I've read Operation Payback and a series of articles you've written on the subject.
Mr. Marceau, I've also read your book, Juif: une histoire québécoise, which recounts your conversion to Judaism and your story as a former Bloc Québécois MP.
Thank you both for being here.
Obviously, you bring very different perspectives to the issue. I bring a different perspective as well. The whole incident that happened in September, I'm sure, was as difficult for your families as it was for mine. I had a lot of explaining to do to my family about exactly what I knew, when I knew it and how I knew it. We're not here to relitigate World War II and what happened to different communities that were given very few choices. Larger forces were at play and people were deciding for our communities what was to happen and what wasn't to happen. I'm sure you and your families.... I have family who didn't survive the war. I have family members who spent time in camps.
What I want to understand is how we can reconcile the communities here. President Zelenskyy and President Duda have, for years, been doing reconciliation work on war crimes committed in what Poland calls the “borderlands”, which would be the regions around Lviv, Volhynia and Galicia in Ukraine.
What can we do now, going forward, to reconcile three diaspora communities in Canada? That's so, one, we never embarrass one of our allies again and, most importantly, we never provide the Russian Federation a propaganda win, which they can keep using against our ally Ukraine and against the diaspora communities in Canada. It's so this “operation payback” doesn't continue.
Perhaps Professor Luciuk could go first.
Mr. Marceau, you can go second.