44th Parl. 1st Sess.
September 19, 2023 10:00AM
- Sep/19/23 10:00:04 p.m.
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Madam Chair, Canada is home to the largest proportion of Sikhs on Planet Earth: more than in India, more than in the United States and more than in any other nation in the world.
We think of the many vibrant Sikh communities that now exist across Canada, in Vancouver, Surrey, Brampton, Calgary, Montreal and many more cities. With each passing day, more and more Sikh Canadians are calling my community of Windsor—Essex their home. They design and build cars at Stellantis and Ford. Sikhs care for seniors and residents at Windsor Regional Hospital and Hôtel-Dieu Grace hospital. They open businesses and restaurants, and share their culture and tradition with us.
On County Road 42, there sits a beautiful gurdwara where Sikhs in my community have gathered for more than two decades. It is a place of peaceful worship. It is a place of community, where families come together, where young Sikh Canadians go to Punjabi school and attend Khalsa Camp in the summers, where international students come to share in a meal and get a taste of home and where, in fact, the community prepares meals for each other, for the hungry and homeless in my community and for visitors like myself.
I have been to the gurdwara many times to celebrate Vaisakhi, to light a candle for Diwali, to share in the grief when three international students from St. Clair College lost their lives in a tragic car crash, and to speak with the incredible truck drivers who, day after day, deliver the food, medicines and car parts that make our community go.
More recently, this summer I visited with my friend, the hon. member for Brampton West, the Minister of Diversity, Inclusion and Persons with Disabilities, herself a Sikh, to meet with young Sikh Canadians attending Khalsa Camp. On another occasion, the Minister of Housing and the Minister of National Defence joined me at the gurdwara. There were three ministers, a Sikh, a Muslim and a Hindu, all welcomed warmly at the gurdwara. That is the best of what Canada is about.
To think for even one second that a member of my community could be killed just steps away from the gurdwara for their political beliefs, by a foreign agent working for a foreign country, is abhorrent to me. It is an offence to every single Canadian who believes in democracy, freedom of speech and the sovereignty of our laws and our country, Canada.
This is not new. For Sikh Canadians, such intimidation is not new. In the last 24 hours, I have had a chance to speak with members of my Sikh community, and they tell me the same thing. They worry that if they protest the treatment of farmers in Punjab, that they or their families could be targeted.
I see protests and rallies on Parliament Hill almost every single day, for all sorts of issues. Just today, I attended a union rally calling for the elimination of replacement workers. Peaceful protest is what Canada is all about. It is how we expand our freedoms. It is how we improve quality of life for all of our citizens. I cannot imagine someone fearing for their life because they are expressing their political view, but here we are.
My family knows this fear. In the old country, in Poland, my father was a local leader of the solidarity movement that fought for the rights of workers in communist Poland. Just after midnight on December 13, 1981, the police came to our door and arrested my father. Thousands of solidarity leaders were rounded up and imprisoned. For weeks, we did not know whether my father was alive or dead, all because he dared to speak up and stand up for justice and rights. Like so many immigrants, my family came to Canada to flee oppression and political persecution.
Canada accepted my family as political refugees and gave us safe harbour. That is the dream for millions of immigrants and new Canadians. That dream has been shattered with the news of the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar.
I had a chance tonight to speak with the family of Mr. Nijjar, who call my community home. To them, and to all Sikh Canadians, including those back home in Windsor-Tecumseh, we stand in solidarity. The Sikh faith compels us to speak out against injustice, and so we must and so we will. We will pursue the truth. We will bring justice, but let us do so together, united as Canadians.
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- Sep/19/23 10:06:03 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I want to thank my hon. colleague for his incredible work and for being the voice of immigrant communities and new Canadian communities from across the country, coast to coast.
Solidarity means that an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us as Canadians. It is up to all of us in this House to stand together and to stand firm against this type of assault. This is an attack on the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It is an attack on who we are as Canadians, and my hon. colleague is absolutely right.
The silence from the opposition members is absolutely deafening—
An hon. member: Just one party.
Mr. Irek Kusmierczyk: It is one party, and that is the Conservative Party. Its silence is absolutely deafening, and it is absolutely telling.
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- Sep/19/23 10:08:11 p.m.
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Madam Chair, when our ally, Ukraine, was attacked viciously by Russia, all of us rose in the House of Commons to speak, to show our solidarity. We were here for late night take-note debates and emergency debates. We were here; we stood up and we cheered on the Ukrainian allies when they were under assault. We said, slava Ukraini, yet here we are and one of ours, a Canadian citizen, was killed and there are serious significant allegations that it is tied to a foreign agent and a foreign country, and where is the official opposition? Where is the Conservative Party, in terms of its voice? They are not here. We have not heard from them. That is absolutely appalling, and it is something I hope my colleagues across the way will reflect upon. I am sure Canadians will reflect upon that as well.
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- Sep/19/23 10:10:25 p.m.
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Madam Chair, our national anthem says, “stand on guard for thee”, and I think it is important that we stand on guard for each other, that we protect each other and that when one of us is hurt or one of us killed, we stand up and we show up. That is the very basic thing that Canadians expect from us, that we rally together, show up, support each other and stand in solidarity.
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