Mr. Speaker, it is a difficult thing to talk about at times because many of the stories that I was told with regard to what happened to our family in Uganda were pretty severe.
I was fortunate as I was only a toddler at the time, only nine months old, when we came to Canada as refugees. As I have said before, the reason I think I ended up in this place at such a young age was because of the value of democracy and freedom that my father always spoke to me about when I was growing up. At the time we left Uganda it was under pretty much life and death circumstances. We lost everything during that process. We were forced to leave. If we had not left we would have paid with our lives. From what I understand, that radical dictator, Idi Amin, killed about half a million of his own people.
There was enough justification to act at the time but the UN was not able to do so. Canada did its part, and I commend it for that. It played its part by accepting a large number of refugees. As a matter of fact I think it accepted one of the largest number of refugees at that time of any other country. I commend the government of the time for doing that.
However the only government that actually acted, which everyone basically endorsed it to go ahead, was the Tanzanian government which moved in and ousted Idi Amin who went into exile in Saudi Arabia.
I am torn. As we have heard, no one wants to endorse war but clearly where there are violations of human rights, where potentially millions of people can be killed senselessly by dictators such as, in the case of my family, Idi Amin, why can this country and other countries not stand together and do what is right? I know in my heart I am torn but in this case I cannot give in to a radical dictator like Saddam Hussein, the same way I can never endorse what happened to my family. I believe I have a moral obligation because of my experiences to try to bring that sort of opportunity of freedom to others who are facing those same circumstances.