Mr. Speaker, I rise this late afternoon to speak on this opposition day motion with many thoughts brewing.
The best way for me to think about what I wanted to say for these next eight or nine minutes was to first think about my riding. I am blessed to have a very vibrant, diverse Christian community from the Middle East, from the Chaldean community and the Assyrian community. They have been coming to Canada for the last 15 to 20 years. They are very hard-working and entrepreneurial. I go to the Church of the Good Shepherd every three or four weeks. I go to mass with parishioners there. I addressed the parishioners last Sunday morning at the nine o'clock mass. I spoke about the values that I was raised with, of hard work, tolerance, inclusivity and caring for family. Those are the same values this community has.
The one thing I had to say to them was that I had to admit I could never know what they went through in Iraq and in other places in the Middle East, or why they had to leave. For a millennia, the Christian community in the Middle East was vibrant, numbered very populous, and now things have changed. It is partially due to Daesh or ISIS. Many have resettled here in Canada, including in Windsor and London, my area of Vaughan, and in the area of the member for Humber River—Black Creek. In Michigan, I think they number almost 400,000 now. They have also gone to San Diego and to Australia. People have had to leave the land that they inhabited for a long time.
Thankfully, many have remained in Iraq, in the areas of the Nineveh Plains, as it is referred to. I salute them. I saluted them last Sunday at mass, with the bishop who I am very good friends with.
I read this opposition day motion. Many in the House know that I am not one to be overtly partisan. I do not like rhetoric; I like substance. I did not come into politics for the future of my two daughters to engage in rhetoric. I do not want them seeing daddy being rhetorical. I want them to see me on TV providing substantive answers to the issues at hand, making sure that their and all other children's futures are bright. I will leave it at that tangent there.
I am blessed in my riding of Vaughan—Woodbridge to have a very buoyant, dynamic Christian community from the Middle East, the Chaldean and Assyrian community. I like to see them at least once or twice a month. Unfortunately, many of them are refugees at this point. They have relatives who are refugees in Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon. Many are not in UNHCR camps; they are helped by informal networks. Many are being sponsored as refugees here in Canada. I look forward to working with the community.
At this time I would like to send a special shout out to the bishop and parishioners of the Church of the Good Shepherd. I will see them in November, and we will celebrate Christmas thereafter.
When I read this motion, which I support, I thought about the time I lived in New York City from 1996 or 1997 until 2002. I think about a terrorist attack that occurred in front of my eyes. That impacted me forever. It changed the destiny and lives of countless people in that beautiful city I was blessed to call home.
I think about a beautiful day when I was travelling downtown. I worked on Wall Street for a number of years. I was going to a training session in front of the World Trade Center towers. It was a beautiful September, still summer, day. I think about the events that transpired, the planes hitting the two buildings, the buildings coming down, me watching the buildings coming down right before me, and being buried in the dust. I thought I would die, simply because I did not know which direction the buildings would fall. Afterwards, I thought about the feelings I had.
I read this opposition day motion, and there is stuff in it that I agree with. For the Conservatives, this is politics. For me, this is serious business. I lived through it. I think about the emotions I had afterwards, of vengeance, of needing to get this or that person, needing to go after and find the perpetrators. Thankfully, President Obama did.
At the same time, we must always remember that we are a country of laws. We always need to keep that in mind. However, these folks leave our wonderful and blessed country of Canada, with all the values that we have, the freedoms we enjoy, and with that, the responsibilities we hold. We enjoy many freedoms, and I do not think there is a country in the world that people want to live in more than Canada at this moment in history. I do not think there is a country in the world that demonstrates its values to the extent that we do in Canada at this moment in history. However, we must remember that we are a country of laws, responsibilities and freedoms. Therefore, when these individuals go abroad and do what they do, as my brother, a 20-year veteran and sergeant in one of the police forces in Canada, reminds me, they must be held to account. He has done that for 20 years of his life. These people must be held to account and they will be held to account. Now, it is not the Code of Hammurabi, if we want to go back in history, but those are the laws we are based on.
The debate today is an important one, and I have no desire to politicize it, because I have experienced it. I have seen it, and it is a very serious issue. When I read what Nadia has written, I do not think any of us will ever know the pain and suffering that she and all the Yazidis went through. I do not think I will ever know what the parishioners at the Church of the Good Shepherd and their relatives went through. However, I do know that we will stand beside them. We will fight for them in the international courts. We will ensure that the refugees who have been sponsored to come to Canada have that opportunity. We will ensure that the funding that is required in that area, in the Nineveh Plains that I spoke about, gets there. However, we will also make sure that those folks blessed enough to either be born in this country as Canadian or who came to this country are held accountable.
I like the word “accountable”. It is what I was raised as. One needs to be accountable for one's actions. I am not going to use unfavourable language in this chamber that I am privileged to stand in, but they will be held accountable. We know that under this government, four individuals have been tried for terrorism-related offences since they returned to Canada. We know that two of them were successfully convicted and two cases remain before the courts. We know that the Conservatives in the prior 10 years, like it or not but it is a fact, introduced a lot of austerity measures so they could, with some accounting gimmicks, supposedly balance the books. We know that a lot of money was cut, for example, from the CRA, Statistics Canada and so forth. We also know that, unfortunately, from 2011 to 2015 there were cuts of approximately $1 billion made to a number of agencies and security services that we depend on. That was unfortunate.
I understand that times were tough, and Conservatives' times are usually tough times for Canadians. I get that, but our government is judicious, we are diligent, and we will hold these perpetrators to account. When they come back, there will be no free bus passes, there will be no free lunch, not in the world I was raised in, and these folks will be held to account and will be sent to jail.
I hope that the people who have suffered will have their day in court, that all the perpetrators will be held responsible, whether here, in The Hague, in Iraq, or whichever country, because that is the rule of law. We always must remember that this country is based on the rule of law.