44th Parl. 1st Sess.
September 19, 2023 10:00AM
- Sep/19/23 2:09:08 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I rise proudly today as the newest member for Calgary Heritage. My deepest thanks go to my family, friends and volunteers whose shoulders I stand on. Most importantly, my gratitude is with the great people of Calgary, for whom I will never forget the core mission, which is to serve them, to fight for them and to restore the promise of Canada for them.
The carbon tax is an attack on our way of life. It is an attack on the many Calgarians I have met who are wondering how they are going to put food on the table. The prosperity they need rests with our energy sector, yet the very tax crushing them comes from right across the aisle.
To all my friends back home, I have a message: Hope is on the way. We will axe the tax, get our resources and ingenuity to market and replace woke nonsense with common sense. We will restore the promise of Canada by firing the Prime Minister and hiring our Conservative leader to bring it home.
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- Sep/19/23 2:31:51 p.m.
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The hon. member for Calgary Forest Lawn.
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- Sep/19/23 2:33:10 p.m.
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The hon. member for Calgary Forest Lawn.
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- Sep/19/23 7:46:37 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, I certainly appreciate the depth that the members bring, both for Edmonton Strathcona and Edmonton Griesbach. They have spoken numerous times through the course of this debate so far this evening.
We know about the mosques and gurdwaras across Alberta in Lethbridge, Edmonton, Calgary, Red Deer, Fort McMurray and throughout Alberta. This is an important issue. We have had two members speaking up repeatedly during the debate, but there has not been a single Conservative MP from Alberta who has spoken even one word in this debate this evening.
To my colleague from Edmonton Strathcona, why are Alberta Conservatives completely silent in this important debate?
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- Sep/19/23 7:47:20 p.m.
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Honestly, Mr. Chair, I wish I could answer that question. The people of Edmonton, the people of Calgary, the people of Alberta deserve to have their representatives engage in this debate, and that is not happening. I expect that it has to do with the fact that, as I mentioned earlier, Stephen Harper has said that Modi is a great leader. He is a good friend of Stephen Harper, and he was the prime minister who was in power when the current leader of the official opposition was part of his cabinet.
The leader of the official opposition has said publicly that we should not be critical of India. I am sorry, but when we hear what is happening in India, there is no other option but to criticize those attacks on human rights by the Modi government.
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- 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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