Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise in support of the hon. member for Oak Ridges and his bill. It is an excellent bill and one which is worthy of support by the House.
Canada is one of the world's oldest democracies. It was conceived in 1841 by LaFontaine and Baldwin in the context of some competing visions. Canada is a great idea and sustains itself as a great idea by virtue of its visionaries. It was conceived at the time when the competing visions were very strong indeed.
There was a competing vision of being closer to the British Empire which my ancestors frankly supported. People from British ancestry, British stock said that we needed a relationship that was closer to the British Empire.
On the other hand there was the emergent empire of the United States. It was quite a force in terms of its ability to attract people to populate the country and clearly was a force to be reckoned with and one of great attraction to many Canadians.
Then there was a third vision which was centred in Quebec. It wanted its relationship to be much closer to the mother country on a colonial tie basis.
In this maelstrom of visions emerged the vision of LaFontaine and Baldwin which led to the creation of Canada. Canada, being Upper Canada and Lower Canada, attracted in turn other provinces primarily from the Atlantic region and emerged from that in 1867 as a nation.
What has kept Canada together over these great number of years has been the visions of its leaders, particularly with Macdonald who brought the country together by virtue of a railway. The railway made absolutely no sense from an economic standpoint. It should have gone down through the United States and come back up into Canada. The point of the railway was not to make an economic livelihood for people but was to unite the country.
Similarly Laurier had visions such as that, visions which made for a country, nation building visions. One of the strongest ones was with respect to immigration to the west, the population of the west. It was an idea which allowed Canada to bring to its territory huge numbers of immigrants to populate the west, largely in response to the encroachments of people from the United States.
Around 1917 and 1918 over 400,000 people came to this country of six million at the time, something in the order of 7% or 8% of the population. It is an incredible thought when we think of it in the context of our own immigration policy which strives to do 1% of the population.
Similarly, Laurier resisted the encroachments of the British Empire, the attraction of being part of the trading agreement. He stuck out his political neck, shall we say, and tried to make distance between Canada and the British Empire.
I support the hon. member's bill. One of Laurier's speeches says “Although Caesar once said that he would rather be first in a village than second in Rome, I say that it is my ambition to be a citizen of a great country. I look forward to the day when Canada will have a population of 30 million to 40 million perhaps, and when its voice will weigh in the destinies of the world”.
That day has arrived. Therefore I support the recognition of that day.