Yes, Mr. Speaker. As you know Motion No. M-277 is my motion. I spoke earlier in the debate on November 26, 1996 when my colleague from the Bloc, the member for Bellechasse, brought forward the amendment.
If we could look at a snapshot of what is wrong with this country, it is somebody from a group who is going to add to the list rather than make the list smaller. That probably sums up so clearly the main reason I brought this motion forward in the first place. We need to be recognized as Canadians and Canadians period. Yet here is somebody in the Chamber who wants to make the list longer rather than shorter.
I know it has been quoted here several times today by my colleagues who have spoken on this but let me in disbelief read one more time what the actual amendment states:
That the motion be amended by replacing all the words after the word "should" with the following:
"include "Canadian", "Quebecker", "English-Canadian", "French-Canadian" and "Acadian" among the questions of ethnic origin on the Canadian Census."
This is not derogatory toward any of these groups. Every one of these groups is to be celebrated. In Beaver River I have an enormous francophone population and we celebrate that. It truly is a multicultural microcosm of this country. Not only do we have a huge francophone population, the second largest in Alberta, but we have an enormous Lebanese community up in the Lac La Biche area. There were fur traders there in the twenties. We have a large German population, a large Ukrainian population and on and on it goes.
There is one common denominator of those people in Beaver River. They would jump to their feet in a moment if they could be here today, if we could transport them, to say: "I am a Canadian, you bet". It is as simple as that. They would say: "I am a Canadian period". And they would leave off all this nonsense after all these commas.
I had a number of calls in my constituency office and here in Ottawa from people who were among the unlucky one out of five to fill out the long census form. It upset me more than anything that I got a short one. I was just waiting. When my husband phoned me from home to tell me we got our census form, I asked him to rip it open to find out if it was the short one or the long one. Mr. Speaker, you know Lew and you know he was just as anxious as I was to get the long form and he was pretty upset. I think he was ready to drive around the countryside to find a neighbour he could swap with, but it did not happen and we had to fill out the short one.
It is for this very reason that Lew, who just happens to be my husband and I think the greatest guy in the world, as a regular Canadian said: "Let me get my hands on this so I can tell this government exactly what I think about this kind of list making and categorization of people as if we were just a bunch of so many pigeons".
It is wrong. Mr. Speaker, you know it is wrong and I think many people in this Chamber feel it is wrong. I know how important it is for the people my colleagues have alluded to this afternoon to say wait a minute here, there is something wrong because there is an underlying motive, which is wrong, for asking these questions. That of course is: "We will attempt some social engineering. We know what is best for you".
The census people from Stats Canada did not dream up these questions. They were told, they were ordered, they were commanded by the people who are obsessed with employment equity and government grant giving because they think that will help unify the country. Nothing could be further from the truth. I am so sad that some colleagues across the way did not even stand up on behalf of this motion today.
When are we going to stand up in this Chamber and say: "I am a Canadian and I am proud to be a Canadian"? When am I going to be able to count on folks on the other side of the House who may disagree with me politically on all kinds of things, which I respect, but for goodness sake, it took us a year and a half to sing "O Canada" in this place after I tabled a motion on that. Is it too radical to sing our national anthem in the national Parliament? Is it going to be too much to ask people to say: "Let us say we are Canadians on the census"? I could understand it from the Bloc Quebecois. But for the life of me I cannot understand it from people on the other side of the House who are proud and passionate Canadians. We should be able to say "I am a Canadian" on question 19. By jingles, the next time that census comes around, I will put Canadian no matter what, because that it what should make us proud.
Let me just close by asking the Speaker to put the question now on the amendment by the Bloc Quebecois.