Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak to the bill before us today, and to speak to the proud history of Arabs and Arab Canadians in Canada. I will try to contextualize how we can come to a moment at this time in 2025 when we have the prospect of an Arab heritage month but not yet an Arab heritage month for Canada.
My colleague for York South—Weston—Etobicoke described in some detail the history of the community in Canada, or more properly perhaps, the history of the communities in Canada. To our knowledge, the Arabs, or more specifically Syrian and Lebanese immigrants, began to arrive in Canada in small numbers beginning in the 1880s, but the real waves of immigration began in the 1950s and 1960s. As we know from the history of immigration in this country, there were certain groups in the pre-1960s era who were more welcome in Canada than others.
The case of Arab Canadians and Arabs in Canada is a special case. I self-identify as Arab and I know some members of the House on both sides of the aisle also do. Thinking of the Arab world requires a bit of a feat of imagination. The Arab world is a geographical area, but it is quite a sprawling geographical area that starts in the west part of north Africa and goes all the way through the Levant and the holy lands and a bit further east into what we sometimes call west Asia.
Arab Canadians and Arabs are often identified with the Arabic language, a very beautiful language that is spoken in a rich array of dialects. Some parts of the language are not necessarily mutually intelligible. As we know, in its classical form, it is the language of the holy Quran for Muslim and Islamic adherents, so we have people from around the world who have some capacity to speak Arabic, even if they are not Arabs themselves.
The Arab world is sometimes seen as a geographical construct. My family is originally from Egypt, which was actually in a political union with Syria for a period of time, a confederation that created something called the United Arab Republic. We are a geographical group. We are in part a linguistic group. We are in part an ethnic group, and we are a state of mind, Arabs and Arab Canadians. In the more modern sense, especially since the Second World War, it has been difficult for us not to think of Arabs and Arab Canadians in relation to geopolitical issues, especially in the Middle East.
With all this context, I think it is important to lift up Arabs and Arab Canadians with whatever self-conception they have of themselves. That is why this month is so important. It is important for people who have some background or connection to the Arab world to say, and to have Canadians say back to them, that we see them.
I remember growing up in northern New Brunswick in the 1970s and 1980s. I had a sense that I was maybe a bit different and I had some idea that there were other Arabs or Arab Canadians around. Anyone who was a Maritimer in the 1970s and in the 1980s would have had some awareness of Joe Ghiz, the former premier of Prince Edward Island. Later on, they was a connection to the Zed family in Saint John.
If someone dug a bit deeper, they would learn more of the very fascinating history of Arabs and Arab Canadians, not only in Saint John but in Nova Scotia, in particular in Cape Breton. There are very fascinating connections that happened decades past between Arabs, Jews and Christians in what might be considered unlikely corners of interfaith harmony in places like Sydney, Nova Scotia.
This history was not available to those of us who had some sort of connection to an Arab identity. It was even less available to someone if they had Arabic language in front of them. As we know, many new immigrant communities and many frontier immigrant groups who come to Canada do not have language instruction available to them. It is often the case, as it was in my family, that Arabic was not something that was going to be passed down from my father to his children.
I want to take a bit of a personal tour through this. As with so many immigrant groups, and there are so many immigrant groups represented here, whether it is more recently or more distantly, our relationship to our identity is complex and we only learn things in the telling or the retelling of that history.
In our family's case, my father, Makram Wissa Henein El-Bardeesy, was born in 1928. His family was from a region known as upper Egypt, which is the southern part of Egypt, the higher land mass along the Nile River. Again, just to the complexity of whether Arabs are an ethnic identity, a racial category, a state of mind or a nationality, we believe that his ancestors were some of the original peoples who were there in the Nile delta. In fact Egypt, in part, had an experience of colonization from people from the geographical area known as Arabia.
My father was one of four children. His father was a civil servant, and his mother was a housewife. They practised a Christian faith. Although Arabs are a majority in the Muslim world, there are of course Arab Christians, Jews of Arab background, and others. My father's family moved to Cairo, and as in so many immigrant stories and so many stories of the progress of economic wealth and societies after the Second World War, family members were able to get an education.
My father's brothers ended up in pharmacy, and my father became a physician. He went to a country that had a close association with Egypt in that era of the 1950s: Sudan. He served as a family doctor and was the only doctor in the community in Sudan where he was serving when Egypt and Sudan had a connection.
Circumstances around immigration and the political situation in Egypt at the time led my father to eventually go to Britain for further education, where he met my mother. After a series of moves they ended up in Egypt, where they remained until soon after the Yom Kippur War, the October War, of 1973, when, hopefully for the last time, happily, Egypt and Israel found themselves in armed conflict.
Like so many other immigrant groups, the Arab diaspora is a group whose members often are here because of the experience of war or the apprehension of war. That was definitely the case with my parents. They and my two older brothers left at an early age and were very fortunate to be able to settle in St. John's, Newfoundland, and eventually in Bathurst, New Brunswick.
The Arab identity and culture are strong, but they need to be lifted up, shown and showcased. We know that there are some historic prejudices and that popular media can help lift up the prejudices, especially against Arabs and Arab Canadians. We do not have to be too far away from the present to remember some of the especially damaging cultural portrayals of who an Arab was and was not that we saw in Hollywood movies in the 1980s, 1990s and especially in the 2000s after the grotesque September 11th attacks.
When I find another Arab or Arab Canadian, it takes a bit of an act of interpretation. I have to learn a bit more about the person, and then I eventually land on the fact that the person is an Arab or an Arab Canadian. There is that real finding of commonality. I know that in some communities in Canada it does not take much, because people are present in large enough numbers, whether it is Lebanese Canadians, Egyptian Canadians, Iraqis, Syrians or other Arab groups that have been able to come together and settle in sufficient numbers.
However, they too need to be lifted up and given affirmation that their culture, whatever they feel is their culture, is a strong one that deserves recognition. They need to be told that they are seen as Arab Canadian and that we see the rich history that, again, goes back to the 19th century and the passion with which they bring their culture to life in this country. That is why I am here to speak in favour of the legislation.
I want to thank my friend from York South—Weston—Etobicoke, who has his own very interesting family history of Arab connection, in his case to Yemen. I really want to thank him and thank all members for speaking to the issue in the House today.