Mr. Speaker, I join my colleague in commending the member for Mount Royal. I think that he is a model member of this place in his passion, intellectual honesty and commitment to issues of conscience.
I should like to ask him two questions. First, will he join with me in encouraging the Prime Minister and ministers who will be travelling to China this month to raise as a top priority Canada's very grave concern about the continued atrocious human rights record of the People's Republic of China?
Will he join with me in raising concerns about the labour camps, not just the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners but minority Christians, Catholics, evangelical Protestants, Muslims and other religious minorities, and the people of Tibet?
My second question touches on what the member passionately said at the outset of his remarks in terms of the need for greater sensitivity about hate speech and hate crimes. Will he agree with me that it is very potent language, that it must be used with great care, and that we must use the most potent language in our rhetorical arsenal against those who are guilty of such crimes?
Will he therefore join with me in regretting the remarks during the recent campaign of his colleague from the riding of Thornhill? Although my party, according to the Globe and Mail , had the distinction of having the highest number of ethnic minority candidates of any party, the member for Thornhill ascribed to it the inclusion of many “bigots, racists and Holocaust deniers”.