Mr. Speaker, mine is more of a comment than a question.
This past summer, I had the occasion to attend a speech given by the ambassador from Egypt at the embassy. It was rather an uplifting speech, where the ambassador said that his country had quite a bit of work to do and would hope to inspire itself from some lessons learned in Canada, one being our democratic system. The other perhaps being how we handle diversity.
That got me to thinking. One of the aspects of diversity, of course, is diversity in religious beliefs and the pluralism that necessitates. We have, in the riding that I have the honour of representing, St. George and St. Anthony Coptic Orthodox Church. We have the St. Peter and Paul Melkite Catholic Church. We have Anglican churches and Presbyterian churches. We even have the East Gate Alliance Church, where the Prime Minister attends from time to time. We have Roman Catholic churches, mosques and synagogues.
We have another institution that I hope would be involved in some of the debates that will flow from tonight and that is the Global Centre for Pluralism which our government started and the current government completed, and I recognize that, and which is headed by the Aga Khan. I think there is a lot be learned there and a lot to be applied, not only in Canada but around the world, and certainly in Egypt.
The wealth of pluralism, whether it be a religious pluralism, linguistic pluralism or cultural pluralism, Canada has demonstrated that we are a beacon in that. I would hope that all of the factions in Egypt currently would inspire themselves from that kind of behaviour.