I am proud to rise this morning to celebrate the second annual Hungarian Heritage Month in Ontario.

On Hungarian Republic Day, I was proud to join the Minister of Finance and many of our colleagues to help raise the Hungarian flag here at Queen’s Park, and then at Toronto city hall, together with my friends Máté from the Hungarian consulate and Sándor Balla, president of the Hungarian Canadian Business Association, and some of the Fifty-Sixes, veterans of the revolution in 1956. I also attended a gala dinner and concert at the Hungarian Canadian Cultural Centre in North York with the Associate Minister of Mental Health and Addictions and the ambassador of Hungary to Canada, Mária Vass-Salazar.

Speaker, I was honoured to receive the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary, joining my friend Tamás Buday, the great Hungarian Canadian sprint canoe coach at the Mississauga Canoe Club, and I want to thank him again for helping decorate my office for Hungarian Heritage Month.

I want to thank all members again for supporting my private member’s bill to recognize this month, the first of its kind in Canada to celebrate a community that has contributed so much to Ontario. Thank you.