Mr. Speaker, I wish to tell the members of the Trudeau family that they are in our hearts and in our prayers, and to extend our condolences to them.
I also want to express our thanks to Mr. Trudeau's family for sharing a father and a husband with us and with the nation during his lifetime and now as we mourn his death.
Through you Mr. Speaker, to the Prime Minister, I recognize the friendship and the long years in which you have spent with your colleague.
I could stand and attempt to give a list of the historical achievements of Mr. Trudeau but there are historians who will do that far better than I could. I could stand and attempt to give a list of his policies but there are policy makers who will do far better than I could. Of those policies there were many with which I agreed and many which the record will show I did not. I could stand and attempt to do comparisons between Mr. Trudeau and other elected people but he is a man who defies comparison, and I will not try to do that.
I would like to give a simple reflection on the impact he had on my life, and I think on the life of a generation. I was 17 years old and involved in my first federal political election as a volunteer, but not with the party represented by our present Prime Minister, I say with great respect. The strategists were saying many things. I looked at this person on the political scene, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, and I said to the older strategists “We are not going to beat this guy”. There was something that shone through, that grabbed a generation of which I was a part.
In that generation there were many of us who were protesting the things that were. I think at times, and being honest, we protested because we enjoyed the protest more than the hope of actually achieving a goal. We were searching for truth and yet at times I think we were enjoying the search more than the thought of finding the truth itself.
In those days, when Pierre Elliott Trudeau was embarking upon the scene, there were many in my generation who were flirting with the thought of totally disbanding hope for the institutions of the day and possibly democracy itself. We saw that manifested throughout a continent and around the world. Many of us were flirting with dangerous approaches to the very things that had built strength in our country.
It was at that moment for us in our generation of greatest danger, a time of crisis in our country, in which we saw for the first time as Canadians turmoil and crisis like we had never seen before. It was Pierre Elliott Trudeau who stood and faced that. In a way, in his standing and in his facing that, as he did on so many issues, he grabbed a generation of us and brought us to the precipice. In his way he invited us to look into the abyss of anarchy. We stared into the face of the results of anarchy and we did not like what we saw. In his way he was saying to us, to that generation, “join me now in standing against what is wrong and standing for what is right”.
Many of us were profoundly influenced by that and realized that the institutions of our society were in fact the very institutions that would bring the peace, the hope and the truth that we were looking for. Imperfect as those institutions are, as Winston Churchill and others have commented, they are far better than any alternative.
Through his life he continued to challenge us to be people who would stand and speak with courage on the things in which we believed. He did that. He went through his winters, he went through his summertimes and he went through his springtimes.
We all know what a winter of unpopularity can be and even in those times he stood firmly knowing what was right. He let the seasons pass and he let them come. We need to thank him for his courage, for his love for this country which no one can debate, for his commitment and service and for his love for his family.
I close my remarks as I opened them, with thoughts to his family today. To those of us who have children—I have three sons—we know that the life of politics can be important to us, but when it all comes down to it, it is about the ones we love and the ones who love us. Our thoughts are with them today.
I honour those who wear the rose today as a sign of respect and a trademark. I never knew him and I do not feel that closeness. However, please allow me a slight breach of protocol as I present a rose to a page to take and place before the portrait of Mr. Trudeau. His family members have seen the seasons, and this is a time of sadness. I will quote the words of a song: “Just remember in the winter far beneath those bitter snows lies the seed that with the sun's love in the spring becomes the rose”.
Mr. Trudeau has brought the rose to us and Mr. Trudeau makes us realize that this country is worth loving, is worth fighting for and is worth standing for. We present this to his family members today. Our hearts are with them.
