Mr. Speaker, it is a great pleasure for me to speak to Bill S-10 tonight, an act to amend the Parliament of Canada Act to add an officer of the Library of Parliament called the parliamentary poet laureate. I support the efforts of the member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine for her tireless efforts to push forward this important initiative.
I support each and every effort to enrich the quality of discourse, the quality of thought and the standard of debate of this place, the largest stage in Canada, the House of Commons.
I see the creation of a poet laureate as one way in which we may symbolize the importance of language, the importance of literature and culture in Canada. I see it as one small step in retrieving much of the beauty of debate which used to exist here and I see it as a symbolic gesture that we value language and culture in government.
As the critic for culture for the New Democratic Party, I have spent the last four years in the House of Commons fighting for increased support for Canadian culture. I have spoken out widely and often about cuts to our public broadcaster and the impact that has had on silencing the quirky, irreverent, provocative, passionate voices that used to spring daily from dozens of regional and local CBC programs.
I have spoken out in support of the Canada Council for strengthening support for book publishers and sellers who represent part of a delicate but vitally important environment that allows diverse and unique voices which reflect the Canadian reality to sprout out of our regions.
The poets, novelists, essayists and playwrights all depend on small publishers and bookstores that will take a chance on new work, nurture new writers, hold book launches and readings and hold the hands of new writers as they work through the hard hours of creation.
Maritime poets, such as Alden Nowlan, Dawn Fraser, Milton Acorn, Rita Joe, Don Domanski, Maxine Tynes, Sherree Fitch, Carole Glasser Langille, George Elliott Clarke and Lyn Davies, are all part of a creative flowering that has occurred in Canada because of our government's recognition of the importance of supporting the arts.
Last year during national poetry month, the New Democratic Party used its statements for one week to showcase poetry from across the country. It was a profoundly moving event and I believe that in that short time we reintroduced a sense of wonder in the House.
We read poetry by Patrick O'Connell from Winnipeg, Susan Goyette from Dartmouth, Herménégilde Chiasson from the Acadian peninsula, Bud Osborne from Vancouver's east side and Ila Bussidor, who is the chief of the Sayisi Dene.
Northrop Frye said that culture is regional and local in nature, but of course it is also universal, and so is this place. Here we have 301 parliamentarians who come from coast to coast to coast to join and to bring together the needs, desires and concerns of millions of people. It is both a universal place and a place of many varying and often conflicting interests. The challenge is always to fuse those interests, to make that stretch, that leap into the lives of others, into the hearts of others, to make them one. That is the challenge of the poet and the challenge of the representatives of the House. It is one and the same.
Charles Bruce, a poet and journalist born in Port Shoreham, Nova Scotia, said:
Poetry is the art of striking sparks from the common and the usual. It is the discovery of wonder and strangeness in the normal, and the skill to pass the news along.
We are all here to pass along the news from the communities we live in. We are here to strike sparks from the common and usual. We are here to build a fire that will warm everyone in the nation. Poetry teaches us and guides us toward that end. It helps us to celebrate together and remember.
In 1915 Canadian surgeon John McCrae wrote:
In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved, and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders fields.
It is a poem that continues to unite each and every Canadian in joint purpose around the memory of war and the valour of those who fell.
Where would we be without this poem In Flanders Fields ? It has so forged our collective understanding of war.
Poetry joins us together. It helps us to mourn together, to remember and to celebrate what is important to us all.
George Elliott Clarke, a black Nova Scotian poet and playwright, wrote a poem that speaks to thousands of black Canadians, past and present, but also to every other Canadian. It is called Revelation .
We turn to love before turning to dust so that the grave will not compress our lives entirely to insects, humus, ash Love is our single resistance against the dictatorship of death And for the moment of its incarnation we will worship God, we will make ourselves beautiful in the twinkling of an eye.
It is words such as this that ignite our sense of shared humanity.
I have just returned from Quebec City where I was taking part in the people's summit, marching along with my New Democratic colleagues and thousands of other Canadians to express our concern with the undemocratic nature of the FTAA. There was poetry everywhere in Quebec: on the placards, on walls, in songs and chants, and in the courageous actions people took to express their passion for democracy. It was so clear to me during that unforgettable march and the events surrounding it that it is past time for parliamentarians to begin listening to the poetry of the street and the voices of the people in our country.
We need our poets and our writers to guide us in this place. By creating this bill, by creating the position of poet laureate, we are taking one step toward recognizing that need. We are recognizing that it is artists who truly legislate the hearts of our nations. It is through efforts such as this that a feast of stories rises out of our earth to delight us, to lighten us and move us through the darkness toward the stars.
With this motion, with this small act, we are collectively thanking and saluting these creators and telling them that we need them. We do not want them to ever stop. They are our heritage and our hope.