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House Hansard - 232

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
October 16, 2023 11:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 232 - Oct/16/23
Mr. Ben Carr (Winnipeg South Centre, Lib.)
  • Oct/16/23 8:59:30 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, I want to start by sharing a story. When I was a kid, my father would talk to me often about his life as a kid. Mostly they were positive stories filled with wisdom and great life lessons. However, one story he told took place at the Crescentwood Community Centre when he was about 12 years old. He and some other Jewish kids from the neighbourhood were attacked behind the building. They were beat up and bloodied because they were Jews. It really has not been until today that I have understood and felt the same fear that I suspect my father felt back then. It is with that in mind that I quote something Professor Irwin Cotler said earlier as we announced a new Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism. It was that the Jewish population in Canada represents 1%, but 67% of all hate crimes in Canada are levied against the Jewish community. This is not to say that we do not have an issue in diaspora communities across the world and across the country. I appreciate that emotions are running raw. I appreciate that when we are traumatized and conflicts such as this arise, we are pushed back into our most primitive state and that innately we respond in tribalistic ways where we feel that, for our own survival, we have to stick with our people. There is certainly danger in that as we seek peace, and I recognize that. I am able to stand on the floor of this House and say that the loss of every Palestinian child's life is tragic without adding the word “but”. The loss of every Palestinian life is tragic. It seems as though my colleagues in the NDP are not capable of speaking to what has occurred in Israel without the insertion of the word “but”, and I encourage them to reflect on the perspective that they have in the ways in which they are contributing to our national dialogue right now on this critically important issue. In the Jewish faith, we have a ceremony called the unveiling. It takes place roughly a year after the passing of someone. On Monday we had the unveiling of the tombstone for my father. As we were walking to the gravesite, we walked past the headstone of my grandmother. It reminded me of the importance of relationship. It reminded me of the importance of bridge building, and that despite the fact that our emotions are raw, we do not have to agree on everything. In fact, we are not going to solve the problems of the Middle East in this chamber or in our communities. What we can do is respect one another. We can show empathy. We can engage in dialogue. Most importantly, I want to come back to what I saw and was reminded of on my grandmother's headstone last week during my father's unveiling. It said, “Here lies Esther Carr. She made everybody feel like a somebody.” Right now, all of us in this chamber and all of us across the country must make one another feel like a somebody as we work through this incredibly difficult period.
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