Mr. Speaker, Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada, president of Cuba's National Assembly since 1993, is visiting Canada.
His resumé is impressive. He earned a doctorate in philosophy and was professor emeritus at the University of Havana before becoming Cuba's representative at the UN, where he was vice-president of the General Assembly, president of the Council of Administration to the United Nations Development Programme, and vice-president of the United Nations Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People. He was also Cuba's Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Mr. Alarcón dedicated his life as a public servant to denouncing the embargo against Cuba and to forging close ties with other states while expressing the hopes of the Cuban people and defending the inalienable right of peoples to govern themselves.
It is an honour for me, on behalf of my Bloc Québécois colleagues, to wish Mr. Alarcón, one of the great men of this world, an excellent visit to Parliament Hill.