Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to and express profound respect for a young Albertan who has left Canada for the fourth time in his young life to serve needy people in other parts of the world.
While he was a student he spent a summer working as an unpaid volunteer in the refugee camps in Thailand. Upon graduation from university he worked for a year in southern Sudan, Kenya and Somalia at considerable personal danger to bring food and medical supplies to starving and suffering children and adults. Last year, he was in the war-torn former Yugoslavia working at a home for women who had undergone much suffering and violence.
Last Tuesday he left again, this time to serve the suffering people of Rwanda. Susie, his bride of 12 weeks, will be joining him there in July.
I salute this young man, his wife and the Christian relief agencies he has represented. I am especially touched by this young man's humanitarian effort because this man is Brent Epp, and my wife and I are his parents.