Mr. Speaker, tashi delek. The year 2018 is being celebrated worldwide by Tibetans as the year of gratitude.
Dr. Lobsang Sangay, Sikyong of the Central Tibetan Administration, along with Tibetan community members from across the country, are here with us today to thank Canada. They thank the government for making Tibetans the first non-European group of government-assisted refugees to be welcomed to Canada in 1971, and they thank Canada for our continued support of the Tibetan people and for bestowing honorary Canadian citizenship on His Holiness the Dalai Lama in 2006. Today, I wear with pride in this chamber the khatak, or scarf, given to me by His Holiness.
As the MP for Parkdale—High Park, the home to the largest Tibetan diaspora in North America, I actually say that the thanks are all ours. To Tibetan Canadians, I say a heartfelt thuk-je-che. I thank them for teaching us about the Middle Way, for strengthening our understanding of Tibetan Buddhism, and most of all for contributing so much to the multicultural fabric of our diverse country.