Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to enter into this historic debate on behalf of my constituents in Calgary Southeast.
Tonight and yesterday, certain members of this place have questioned why Canadian troops, aid workers and diplomats are in Afghanistan. I would like to begin by offering 23 reasons. These are the names of the Canadians who were killed by terrorists in attacks planned from Afghanistan on September 11, 2001:
Michael Arczynski, a 45-year-old Canadian from Montreal; Garnet Bailey, a 53-year-old Canadian from Lloydminster, Saskatchewan who was aboard flight 175; David Barkway, a 34-year-old from Toronto; Ken Basnicki, a 47-year-old father from Toronto and many members of this House, myself included, know and are friends of his surviving wife, Maureen; Joseph Collison of Toronto; Cynthia Connolly of Montreal; Arron Dack, a 39-year-old Canadian from Toronto survived by his wife and two children; Michael Egan and his sister, Christine Egan who was visiting him from Winnipeg in the twin towers when they were struck; Albert William Elmarry, a Canadian of Egyptian origin, 30 years old from Toronto, who had recently married and was expecting his first child; Meredith Ewart and Peter Feidelberg, ages 29 and 34 respectively, a married couple who worked together on the 105th floor of the World Trade Center; Alexander Filipov, born in Regina, he is survived by three sons and his wife; Ralph Gerhardt, a 34-year-old Canadian from Toronto; Stuart Lee, a 31-year-old Canadian of Korean origin recently married; Mark Ludvigsen, a 32-year-old Canadian from New Brunswick; Bernard Mascarenhas from Newmarket, Ontario, survived by his wife Raynette, his son Sven, and his daughter Jaclyn; Colin McArthur of Montreal; Michel Pelletier survived by his three-month-old son and his two-year-old daughter; Donald Robson of Toronto; Roy Santos of British Columbia, a Canadian of Filipino origin; Vladimir Tomasevic, a 36-year-old Canadian of Croatian origin; Chantal Vincelli, a 38-year-old Canadian; and Deborah Lynn Williams, a 35-year-old Canadian young mother from Montreal.
These were the 23 Canadians that we know of whose lives were brutally and cowardly taken by vicious fanatics on September 11, 2001. I did not and cannot possibly include the many dozens of others who were murdered that day who had close affiliations with Canada; the spouses of Canadians, the sons and daughters of Canadians who may not have had citizenship, those with close connections to this country among the more than 2,000 human beings from all corners of the world, of all faiths, dozens of citizenships, who were massacred that day.
I begin with this precisely because it is too easy for us, particularly some of my friends in the New Democratic Party and Bloc Québécois to lose sight of the fundamental reasons why we are there.
We speak, as I will, of the importance of reconstruction, of defending basic rights, of women's rights, of children's rights, of creating security so that human and economic development may happen. But we need to go back from time to time and remind ourselves what it is that provoked the United Nations to authorize the use of force in Afghanistan.
Let there be no doubt. Of course, there might be some in this House who share some of the views of the so-called 9/11 truthers and the conspiracy theorists. Sometimes, if we listen really carefully, we tend to hear a little of that coming from some of my colleagues in the NDP. But let us recall that these 23 Canadians were massacred as a result of attacks that were planned over a series of years deliberately, viciously and cold-bloodedly by a network of terrorists whose principal leader was and is Osama bin Laden. These attacks were planned in the failed state of Afghanistan during the leadership of the Taliban regime, which not only tolerated the presence of Osama bin Laden and the network that planned and executed these murders of Canadians, but welcomed him and welcomed the money that came with him. They welcomed him because they saw in Osama bin Laden, what was known in Afghanistan at the time as an Arab Taliban fellow traveller with a common cause.
There is so much noise around this debate that we need to remember a few basic facts. I do not think we should listen to the conspiracy theorists of the loony left. We need to understand the motivations of Osama bin Laden and his Taliban hosts in Afghanistan in planning and executing these murders of Canadians and others. We simply need to listen to his own words, and those of Ayman al-Zawahiri, and the other leadership of al-Qaeda and their affiliated networks.