Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to speak in the House for the first time. More than 700,000 people of Chinese ancestry live in Canada today, but that was not always so.
In 1902 a royal commission decided that Asians were “unfit for full citizenship—obnoxious to a free community and dangerous to the state”.
In 1923 Mackenzie King's Liberal government passed the exclusion act which suspended Chinese immigration. Canadian Chinese call July 1, 1923, the day the exclusion act came into effect, humiliation day.
In 1947 the exclusion act was repealed and Canadians of Chinese ancestry won their right to be reunited with their families. I would not be standing here today if that act had not been repealed.
1997 marks the 50th anniversary of the repeal. Justice will be served only if Canada has learned a lesson from this bleak moment in history.