Mr. Speaker, I would like to join all members in recognizing the presence in the galleries of our fellow Chinese-Canadians who have come here to join us today on this solemn occasion. We welcome them.
Last fall the member for LaSalle—Émard, as the prime minister of our country at that time, apologized to the Chinese community for the head tax and the Chinese Exclusion Act, which was repealed late, but repealed nonetheless, by the then Liberal government of Prime Minister Mackenzie King in 1947.
That apology expressed, on behalf of Canadians, our regret for the hardship and difficulties inflicted on those victims and their families directly affected by the Chinese Head Tax and the Chinese Exclusion Act. Liberals want to ensure that there is an appropriate plan to educate Canadians on this chapter of our history, so we can learn from our past.
We understand that apologizing is just part of the healing process for communities that have been the victims of measures taken in the past and which today we can recognize as injustices.
Liberals want to ensure that there is an appropriate plan to educate Canadians on this chapter of our history, so we can learn from our past and ensure that similar injustices are not repeated.
That is why we signed an agreement in principle with several communities to provide funding for education and commemoration initiatives. We hope that the government will honour these agreements, and deliver in full the funds that were committed and permit those communities to tell their stories in a way that will shed a new perspective on their past while educating all Canadians so that we may be better citizens and work to ensure that similar injustices are not committed in future times, as the Prime Minister said.
Our Chinese community has already achieved that in its literature and in such moving and modern expressions as the opera Iron Road, which some may have seen here in Ottawa, allowing us all to share the anguish and pain, the courage and determination that was shown when building the railway that was so essential to establish our country and to which the Prime Minister has paid tribute in his remarks.
It is critical, when we address historical injustices, that we ensure we are equal in our treatment of all communities that faced immigration restrictions or wartime measures. While in government, we initiated an ambitious program to commemorate those historical inequities. The Liberal Party is committed to supporting the Charter of Rights and promoting equality for all Canadians. We belive that only through promoting healthy multiculturalism and education programs can Canadians ensure the mistakes of our past are never repeated.
Today we rejoice with other Canadians in the extraordinary success that Canadians of Chinese origin have achieved. We recognize their talents and energy have contributed to our success as a country, whether in business, the professions, the arts or, indeed, in politics, as is represented by several members of the House on both sides of the aisle of this democratic institution which we share so proudly.
We share thus with our Chinese colleagues and citizens their pride in their individual and community successes, none better perhaps than that incarnated in our former Governor General who is a woman and an immigrant of Chinese origin who came to represent our Canadian face, both to ourselves and to the world.
[Member spoke in Chinese as follows:]
Wah Yan Bu Hui Choi Bai Ke Si