Mr. Speaker, it is a special privilege for me to add my comments to the debate on Motion No. 469. The motion calls for Canada to formally apologize for the Komagata Maru incident which took place many years ago.
The proposed apology is of great importance to many of my constituents in Abbotsford. As you know, Mr. Speaker, Abbotsford is home to some 26,000 residents of Indian origin, the majority of them from the province of Punjab in India. Most of them are recent immigrants or are the children and grandchildren of immigrants from India. They are hard-working, creative and entrepreneurial, and place a high value on caring for their extended families.
Canada has a well deserved reputation as being one of the world's most inclusive societies. We value our multicultural fabric and vigorously defend our personal freedoms, democratic traditions, basic human rights and, of course, the rule of law. However, this was not always so.
Today, our government is called upon to acknowledge and apologize for a grievous wrong inflicted on a group of would be immigrants, whose only desire was to build a better life for themselves and their families. I speak, of course, of the Komagata Maru incident. That tragic event represents one of the few dark chapters in Canada's otherwise illustrious history.
The Komagata Maru was a Japanese steamship that, in 1914, sailed from Hong Kong to Vancouver carrying 376 passengers from the Punjab in India. When the ship arrived in Canada, only 24 of the passengers were allowed to disembark. The remainder, although they were all British subjects, were not allowed to land because of Canada's racist exclusion laws and rules intended to keep Asians from entering Canada.
Although the decision to turn away this group of immigrants may have been technically legal at the time, in hindsight, most of us would agree that the decision was discriminatory. It was common knowledge that these exclusion laws were only applied to Indian immigrants.
However, that is not the end of the story. The refusal by Canadian authorities to allow the passengers of that ship to land had tragic consequences for the passengers. In fact, 20 of the passengers were killed and 9 injured during a riot that followed the ship's return to India.
Despite this tragic affair, what is remarkable is that hundreds of thousands of people from the Indian subcontinent have continued to make Canada their adoptive home. Today, Canada's Indo-Canadian community has grown to about three-quarters of a million people. They have been instrumental in helping us build a vibrant economy and an immensely tolerant society. They have become an important part of the multicultural mosaic that we as Canadians are so proud of today.
It has been said that those who ignore the lessons of history are bound to repeat them. Let this not be the experience of our great country. It is for that reason that I am pleased to say that our government is taking action to address this stain upon our national history. Last week, the hon. Jason Kenney, Secretary of State for Multiculturalism and Canadian Identity--