Mr. Speaker, today marks Yom HaShoah, the day we commemorate the Jewish victims of the Holocaust. We honour the more than six million Jewish children, women and men and so many others murdered by the Nazis, and those who survived.
The generation of Holocaust survivors is slowly leaving this world, and it is even more important now that we never forget what happened. They are warning us that history is repeating itself and now we must fight back against growing anti-Semitism, xenophobia and racism. Canada is not immune. B'nai Brith reports a record number of anti-Semitic incidents here in 2018 and a rise of anti-Semitism for the fifth consecutive year, fuelled by online hate.
It takes love and courage to move from hate to understanding, to stop being a bystander and to become an ally instead. It takes extraordinary courage and resilience to learn from past mistakes.
Let us uphold a stronger framework of human rights that will allow us all to say, “Never again”.