Mr. Speaker, when Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 crashed last week, Yusuf Abdullahi lost his sister, Amina Ibrahim Odowa, and her five-year-old daughter, Sofia Abdulkadir, both Edmontonians.
Yesterday, Abdullahi attended a candlelight vigil alongside dozens of Edmontonians to honour his family and the other 155 passengers aboard the Ethiopian Airlines flight. The same vigil commemorated the victims of Friday's mosque shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand. Fifty people were killed in the attacks and dozens more were injured.
Mr. Abdullahi remarked that “Every family is going through pain. The families of those people who were killed in the mosque, they are going through the same pain I went through, my family went through.”
Also lost in the crash was former Edmonton resident, Darcy Belanger, and other Canadians headed to the UN Environment Assembly in Nairobi, to aid projects or to go to family reunions.
On behalf of the NDP, I offer our deepest condolences to all those who have lost family, friends and loved ones as a result of this tragedy.