Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his question because it allows me to talk about my own immigration experience. Hold on, because it is not the same as the other stories we have heard here today.
My ancestors came from Ireland, as my grandmother liked to say, “before the famine”. They were prescient and saw that something was coming and said, “We have to get out of here” and they came to Canada. Luckily for us, they survived and were welcomed with open arms on the shores of Quebec by Quebeckers, despite not speaking the same language. There was an openness and generosity of all the different cultures and religious groups. We know of political leaders who went down to the docks to help the Irish who were dying of typhoid and cholera at the time.
This was the kind of generosity that my ancestors found, and this is the kind of generosity that we have here today.