Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the Liberal Party of Canada, I would like to put this into a context.
During the early 1880s, about 15,000 labourers were brought from China. They were used to build the Canadian Pacific Railway. In 1878, the B.C. government passed a law that attempted to prevent Chinese people from immigrating. It was ruled illegal. However, a few years later, our first Prime Minister, John A. Macdonald, passed the Chinese Immigration Act of 1885. That was the law that created the Chinese head tax, which almost accomplished what the B.C. government and many labour leaders at the time were wanting to see happen, which was to prevent Chinese people from immigrating to Canada. This all led to the Government of Canada, back in 1923, passing in Parliament what is best known as the Chinese Exclusion Act. The new law replaced the head tax and stayed in place until the Mackenzie King government repealed the law on May 14, 1947.
The head tax of 1885 was wrong. The Chinese Exclusion Act was wrong. We all need to reflect on how those decisions made back then hurt us as a people and as a nation today.
Here, in celebration of the 65th anniversary, we need to recognize that Canada's Chinese community has contributed in every way to our social and economic development. From coast to coast to coast and from urban settings to rural, we see that the Chinese community is second to no other community in terms of the way of life and the lifestyle that we have and celebrate today. It is with those comments we stand in recognition of the 65th anniversary.