Madam Speaker, I am pleased and proud to take part in the debate in the Chamber this afternoon on third reading of Bill C-110, an act respecting constitutional amendments.
It will be very difficult for all of us in the short time allocated to each speech to capture the essence of how members feel about Canada and our shared future. However allow me to try nonetheless.
I listened carefully to the members opposite who told us what we cannot or should not do. I want to tell you about what we should do, can do and will do. With the support of all Canadians, we are going to unite Canada, and this is precisely what this debate will be all about.
I have listened to the ideologues of the Bloc Quebecois who would rather tear down than build. I have listened to Reformers who, despite all their loud noises, shouts and grunts, are really the couch potatoes of national unity. They would rather second guess. They would rather criticize than encourage. They would rather watch than participate as they did during the last referendum.
Participation is one of the two issues I should like to talk about for a moment. We have all heard the word participaction. Perhaps it is now time to talk about citizaction. Just as participaction is about exercising the body, citizaction should be about exercising our responsibilities and obligations as citizens of this great country. Good citizenship is not only about sitting on your hands and criticizing, like the third party, but it is also about getting out and doing something.
Good citizenship also means making a difference. At the end of the referendum we witnessed in a very moving and a very powerful way how average Canadians across this land answered that call and defined what citizenship is and should be all about.
I am talking about the unity rally in Montreal. I am talking about the candlelight vigils on the Pacific coast. I am talking about the march by tens of thousands of Canadians across the bridges between Hull and Ottawa. I am talking about the raising of the Canadian flag on Signal Hill in Newfoundland; all of these and many of the other demonstrations where people came together in the sense of collectivity, in the defence of a sense of community and demonstrated their affection not only for their country but for the kind of deep rooted commitment they have to good citizenship from coast to coast to coast.
This is a country of doers and not whiners. This is a nation of home builders and not home wreckers. The October 27 rally in Montreal for me and many others was a day like very few. We shall never forget that day for those who either watched it or participated in it. It was a day when the Canadian family showed what it was all about, considering the jammed buses and trains and planes that created that incredible movement to Montreal.
The Toronto caucus in metropolitan Toronto and area was able to facilitate on two days notice 100 buses of committed Canadians who wanted to do something about this country, about the inability to facilitate any other coach in the Ontario system because they were all gone.
We had to rent buses from Pennsylvania because of the lack of buses in the Ontario system. The Finch West Bakery in my riding, because people were getting up and lining up at 4.00 in the morning to get on one of these coaches, provided croissants and muffins and orange juice as its contribution to this movement.
We have to consider people like John Campion who said: "We cannot go but we would like to fundraise for those who want to go but may not be able to afford to go on their own". We had an outpouring of Canadians coming forward with financial contributions.
We had strangers who could not get on the bus and who car pooled with other strangers. All of a sudden, through that exercise we had instant friendship and instant family that tied us together quite naturally.
It sounds simple, and maybe it was, but it really was about ordinary Canadians doing extraordinary things. Farmers from Quebec shook hands with those farmers who travelled from western Canada. It was about a schoolgirl who sang the national anthem next to me, who was beside a gentleman who was born thousands of miles away in southeast Asia but who now proudly calls his home Canada.
It is the kind of thanks and appreciation, without being patronizing, we received from our fellow family Quebecers on the streets of Montreal who said thank you for coming down in solidarity, thank you for not abandoning the concept of community and of family, despite the attempts of some in the media to portray things clearly that were not the reality on that day.
One of the lessons that rally taught all of us, particularly the political class on both government and opposition benches, is that unity requires inclusion. That was the strong message of the rally. It showed Canadians also need to get involved and be part of the solution. Canadians must be able to sing the song and not only hold the song sheet in order for the country to continue to be the kind of society that is recognized not only by us but, more important, by those across the globe.
On that day in Montreal there were thousands of individual acts by ordinary Canadians that epitomized what good citizenship is all about. Sometimes as the minister of citizenship I am called to define citizenship, what active and engaged citizenship means. Sometimes we have these speeches that try to articulate that. Yet how powerful and eloquent instead of those speeches was the act on that day that gave expression to what active and engaged citizenship should be and is all about.
We have also heard from our friends in the Bloc mutter about the federalist plots and the discount fares which were the real reasons people came together in Montreal. Does the leader really think a cabal of schemers and plotters as well organized as it may be could have produced such spectacular events without the willing, enthusiastic participation of those Canadians? I think not.
Does he subscribe to the politics of exclusion, to the politics of marginalizing people on the sidelines of our country? That is the
second issue I would like to touch on this afternoon, the attempt by some to marginalize segments and people in Canadian society.
Canada cannot and will not survive in a climate of tribalism or of attempting to push certain groups to those dark corners, to those margins. This initiative today is not and cannot be only about history. It cannot be restricted or limited in debating only the English and French reality in the country.
This debate has also to be about our present and about our tomorrows. We must be inclusive and talk about today and a future that includes the French and the English facts that gave rise to the country. We must also embrace without reservation, without qualification the reality of the aboriginal people in Canada and the millions of Canadians whose origins span the globe.
It is only when we speak of these four pillars, the French, the English, the aboriginals and the Canadians who have adopted this country as theirs, does it give full expression to Canada. Only then will it be inclusive and only then can Canada be entirely whole.
Let me be very clear to those across the way who would want to dance neatly through the politics of exclusion by attempting to shrug off too many statements that were nothing more than veiled ethnic slurs, slurs that really try to appeal to people's darker sides and lowest instincts. It was not only a case of pure campaign gimmickry to alienate and marginalize individuals in the province of Quebec; it continues today, after the referendum was fought and won by Canada.
It continued this week when elements of that separatist movement suggested ethnic communities in Quebec were enemies of Quebec. It was articulated by Pierre Bourgault, who had the audacity and the courage to suggest that those Greeks, Italians and Jews were racist because they voted for Canada.
The separatists across the way and those beside them who participate in the politics of division would want to stratify our province of Quebec, our nation of Canada into different classes of people. They would want us to talk about them and us.
I find it exceedingly ironic that the separatists would try to chide, castigate and humiliate those communities which in large numbers have always supported the quest for the French Canadian identity in Quebec and across the country, those which largely have always supported the quest for that French Canadian language not only to be preserved and protected but to be enhanced, those which in the late sixties and early seventies supported the battle for bilingualism which Mr. Trudeau and the current Prime Minister fought tooth and nail for.
They did so willingly. They did so because they believed in that, because it defined what Quebec in Canada is and should be about. They also did so because they identified with that kind of quest for themselves, which is also part of Quebec and part of Canada.
We have the maturity and the foresight in this country such that when immigrants come through our airports we do not ask them to check their cultural baggage at Revenue Canada, Canada Customs and Immigration Canada. We say they are no less Canadian for believing in who they had been for the past 30 years or in the forces that shaped them in Europe, in Africa, in South America.
Now because those ethnic communities, as they are referred to, have the temerity to choose Canada, they are ridiculed. It is the separatists who are wrong because there does not have to be a choice. Those members in the Canadian family labelled ethnic want both and can have both because the two concepts are compatible. One can be fiercely loyal to Canada and our flag while at the same time aggressively promoting that which is the very essence of Quebec or our other provinces and territories.
That is their mistake, that they push for that either/or, when in fact those members of the Canadian family labelled as ethnic have always supported both, the search for the French Canadian identity and the eloquence of being a member of the Canadian family, the best membership the world knows.
When we cast our minds back to October 27 on the streets of Montreal, there were also immigrants at that rally. There were ethics at that rally. There were people whose skin tone was different from ours and there were people whose mother tongue was different from ours. However, we should never forget, let alone castigate them, that they were there because they too love Canada and Quebec, because they too helped build Canada and Quebec and because this is not just our home; this is also Quebec and Canada, their home.
The government will never play that ugly game of exclusion because that is a game that quite frankly breeds racism, hate and division. If we were to go down that dark ally which some want us to travel it truly would be the beginning of the end, without exaggerating.
All we have to do is notice on our television screens every night the kinds of wars and division this so-called world of ours is engaged in. If we think of the root causes which regrettably give life to the kinds of acts of one against the other, it is always found in the very divisions these statements would have us propelled into, the game of exclusion that does breed racism, hate and division between brothers and sisters.
We also know or should know in our souls that unity is certainly not exclusively built around constitutional amendments, constitutional discussions or constitutional conferences. I think Canadians know this very well. It is much more than that. Constitutions do not necessarily build countries. Constitutions do not necessarily give
countries greatness. Constitutions do not necessarily provide countries with momentum. People do.
Unity is bound by how we treat each other. On this score, Canadians and the very essence of Canada as I define it have always valued generosity, inclusion and a sense of compassion for one another. That is one of the reasons our country has been able to prosper over the years. This is not the time to abandon those values because those same values are needed the most at this time.
We must make these values part of our daily lives, perhaps even celebrate them in special events such as National Citizenship Week and Flag Day. This coming year, the two events will be combined into a week of celebrations around the theme Canada: take it to heart.
We have recently begun to note in Canadians throughout the country a growing desire to show their great love of Canada and their concern for the state of the nation in some concrete way.
It was with this in mind that the Canada take it to heart initiative was developed by the citizenship and immigration department working with the Canadian heritage department. Together we created a special week of activities where Canadians can come together to celebrate their commitments as fellow citizens and their pride in being Canadian and the remarkable heritage and future we all share.
This is just one very modest way of expressing that sense of Canadian community. For that concept of community to survive and indeed thrive, it will need the help and co-operation of the entire Canadian family, of all Canadians in all regions of all ages and of all backgrounds. We should never forget that it is only through the participation of Canadians and the inclusion of all of her people that we can make Canada grow, thrive and flower.
