Mr. Speaker, I think it would be appropriate to note, as we have already today, that today is the commemoration of the 17th anniversary of the massacre at École Polytechnique where 14 women were killed by a misogynist, someone who hated women.
It would be most appropriate if the House could come together on this issue.
I will repeat what the member for Vancouver Centre said when she talked about how we fight hatred and exclusion with the weapons of mass inclusion. That is very important, and it is a very significant statement. I hope her statement gets written in the lexicon of Canada and we keep it in mind.
I grew up during the desegregation fight in the United States of America. Politicians in the states made a political career out of fighting against desegregation. They were governors of various southern states and they stayed in office for a long time. I am talking about people like Lester Maddox and George Wallace. Black children were killed trying to desegregate schools.
I bring this up because there was a time when it was okay to discriminate against someone because of their colour or their race. I look to the states in that respect because the most dramatic pictures were presented to me as one growing up in the late fifties and the sixties. We saw dogs going after blacks. We saw police and horses trample blacks. It was okay at that time. There was a long struggle. Civil rights leaders aroused a lot of emotion, Martin Luther King being just one. He paid for his struggles with his life. His speech “I Have a Dream” is very famous.
There was an incredible amount of discrimination in Canada. First nations are an example. It was not until the sixties and seventies that they were allowed to even vote, to have the franchise. We know what happened to Canadians of Chinese and Asian origin. We know about the people from the Ukraine, people who were interned. We know what happened to the Jews and the policy of none was too many. We had a blatant racist immigration policy.
It was all these things put together that resulted in Canada's recognition of the fact that we are a collection of minorities. There is no majority in our country. It was at that time when there was the realization that if one minority's right could be attacked one day, another minority's right could be attacked some other day.
April 17, 1982, was a very historic day, when Canada got its Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It is an important guiding document for us. It acknowledges and it is an answer to the injustices that happened to many people in the past. It gives us guidance for the future.
Fundamental rights are spelled out in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This is a living, breathing document. One of the sections in the charter is the equality section. For members who are having trouble understanding the charter, it is the job of the courts to interpret it. The reason for that is very simple. When it comes to basic human rights, we do not want to trust that to the whims of the capriciously elected politicians who will at times exploit it for all the wrong reasons.
I am very disconcerted as to why we are having the debate. We have dealt with this issue. Why are we debating it again?
I will provide a bit of my interpretation, and I alert whatever viewers there are to visit a website, which is dawn.thot.net/harperstiestousa/american_right_report.pdf. It talks about a Conservative movement in the United States and how it wants to control the political process.
We all know that George Bush got elected in the last presidential election because he was able to exploit the whole issue of same sex marriage by trying to pass wrong constitutional amendments on that issue. Lo and behold, he happened to win the state of Ohio without which he would not have been President.
There is also a very good book that I would recommend to my colleagues in the House, particularly on the other side, but mostly to the viewers of this debate. In particular, I want to draw attention to a person who was an employee in the Bush White House. His name was David Kuo. He was working with religious based organizations that were very much assisting the Republicans in the United States to get the vote out.
He wrote a book called Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction. It talks about the way the Bush administration referred to the Christian organizations working within the White House as nuts, goofy and people who are to be exploited for political gain. I recommend that book to all members of the House.
There is no question that the reason we are debating this issue today is not because the Conservative Party thinks it can change history or overturn the legislation. It is not going to happen. It might come as a surprise to the party that most members in the House happen to believe in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and that human rights and civil liberties should not be left to the capriciously elected.
We have a free vote in the Liberal caucus. If members of the House at any time feel strongly that in their conscience they cannot support a vote, even if they are whipped, they have the right to stand in the House to vote against it and vote their conscience. I need no lectures from the members of the Conservative Party on having the right to vote my conscience. On issues I strongly believe in, I do.
I have another piece of news for members of the Conservative Party. I supported this when I was in the minority, but the majority of Canadians support the legislation and, further, are proud of the legislation. If the Conservatives ever talk about following the wishes of their constituents, which they always bring up, they should understand that their position now is a minority one. Just like the leader who walked with dinosaurs, that is where those folks are going.
