Mr. Speaker, my friends and many members have commented that I have really bad taste in clothing. Today of all days, Pink Shirt Day, here I am without a pink shirt. Many members also assume that I am colour-blind. In fact, that is true. I am colour-blind. However, most people, fortunately, are not.
In 2007, two teenagers in Cambridge, Nova Scotia, David Shepherd and Travis Price, talked 850 fellow students into wearing pink shirts to school. It was a wonderful, compassionate response to ninth-grader Charles McNeill, a new student at school, who had been bullied for wearing a pink shirt. They started a movement that is now celebrated around the world, a movement to stop bullying by celebrating diversity and promoting positive social relationships. It is a movement about creating a community where all people feel safe, valued, and respected, and helping people feel good about who they are. How wonderfully Canadian.
From Nova Scotia, Canada, to the world, they are modelling compassion and caring, and in full support, I am wearing this wonderful blue or pink or grey-coloured suit.