Thank you, Ms. Sgro.
First of all, it's hard for me to believe that you started in elected politics 29 years ago. I very much appreciate your support for BillC-305 and the previous iterations of the bill. I am not in any way naive in thinking that we're going to stop hate crime with this or any piece of legislation. I can tell you, however, that yes, there are bad people. These people should be punished and we should use every deterrent that we can.
Very generally speaking, Canadians are good people. We saw it when there was that horrible attack in Quebec City. The swell of support for our Muslim brothers and sisters in Canada was overwhelming and amazing to see. When we saw attacks on the Jewish community centre and synagogues here in Ottawa, everybody went on that Saturday to the synagogue Machzikei Hadas to support. We had local politicians there; municipal, federal, and provincial ones; and members of every community were there. When the United Church was vandalized a few months earlier, the following Saturday members of every denomination were there to support that church. There is lots of good in Canada. I'm finishing on that.
So let's build on this, and let's not forget that despite having to deal with ugly stuff, we have lots of good in this country.