It was a very nice name. Seven members entered into the House of Commons. Yes, they were down at the end, and we can still hear the heckling and the unkind remarks that were directed toward those seven because they had radical ideas. They believed that when somebody was out of work, there should actually be unemployment insurance. They believed that there should be family allowances to help raise children, that the government should be providing some support so that people could raise their children.
Those seven were vilified. Then something happened. There were seven members and as we went through one of the greatest conflicts in the history of humanity, the Second World War, many of the men and women who served our country overseas started to understand the importance of the message that those seven members were delivering in this House of Commons.
There was a time in the early 1940s when Canadians started to understand the importance of the message those seven members were bringing forward, and they started listening. More and more Canadians talked to each other and said that these are the kinds of things they want to have in a free and democratic society.
Canadians started reacting. In the opinion polls, those seven members went from being in third place to second place, and then they were leading in the polls. The old parties that vilified them for their radical ideas like unemployment insurance suddenly shifted. They decided to put into place all of those things that those seven members were vilified for only months before. Those seven members also made a difference in this House of Commons and Canada is better as a result.
I have just a few minutes left, but I do want to make sure that this history lesson is heard.
In the 1950s there were a dozen members in the House of Commons who had the radical notion that all Canadians were created equal. Those dozen members campaigned for the right to vote, for Canadians of Asian origin and Canadians of aboriginal origin. At the age of 14, when I joined the NDP, I reacted to what I saw at that age. I recall seeing a Liberal Party headline that said that a vote for the CCF would give Japanese Canadians the vote. Those dozen members campaigned strenuously. They were sometimes vilified, but they campaigned for the civil rights of all Canadians. Those dozen Canadians succeeded in getting full civil rights given to all Canadians. There were a dozen members in the House of Commons and they made a difference.
In the 1960s, there were about 15 New Democratic Party members, and they believed strongly in human rights and civil rights. When the government invoked the War Measures Act, something I am sure members will remember, it put hundreds of people in prison just because they had spoken freely in a democratic society. At that time, the 15 New Democrat members said that no Canadian should be in prison, regardless of the War Measures Act, simply for expressing their opinion. Those members were often attacked by the other parties at the time. Today, four decades later, we know that Tommy Douglas and his caucus of 15 members were right: those people’s civil rights had to be respected, regardless of what they had freely said in society.