Mr. Speaker, I was not really prepared to speak this evening. Actually I do not even have House duty, and I have been sitting here since early this afternoon listening.
When we listen to things like this we really firm up our own beliefs and become very aware of how nasty human beings can get, how obtuse human beings can get, how they can purposely change things to suit themselves, and how they have obviously lived a life not subject to prejudice.
When I was a little girl my mom took me to kindergarten and registered me. I am a Polish kid. We went up to the desk and people said to her: "What is the name of the child you are registering?" She said "Carolyn". She looked at me for a minute. My maiden name was Janozeski. Because she had been beaten up and told she was a smelly polack from the time she was a small child, she changed instantly my last name to Janis. For many years I was functioning under a pseudonym.
The profound effect of being told she was a smelly polack and there was nothing she could do to defend herself against that accusation except scrub herself, change her clothing, make sure
she was always clean, was that when she took me to school when I was five years old she changed my name.
The thing that really bothers me is people who fit into this category that everyone is objecting to so strongly. They cannot scrub themselves, they cannot change their clothing, they cannot change the colour of their skin. But we can protect them against people who do not understand what goes on inside that skin.
It is very important that we keep very clear that this is a sentencing bill. It is not condoning any acts that seem so offensive to the people on the other side of the floor. It is saying to them that if you do not like the colour of someone's skin or if they happen to have the outward appearance of a different sexual orientation from yours, you cannot walk up to them on the street and punch their head in. There is nothing they can do to protect themselves against those types of accusations. Therein lies the frustration.
In a country like Canada we protect those people. We protect each other. In fact, if anybody you are protecting hits anybody for any reason, why are you protecting them? You do not need the categories.
Anybody who attacks somebody else in this country should feel the full force of the law. Anybody who gets into a bar room brawl and chooses to get into an argument with a neighbour is walking into it with their eyes wide open. The cases we have heard described are of people walking along the street and simply because of the way they walk, the way they wear their hair or the fact that they may be different from us, you are condoning people leaping out of a car and beating them to a pulp.