1995 Legislative Session: 4th Session, 35th Parliament
HANSARD

The following electronic version is for informational purposes only.
The printed version remains the official version.

Official Report of

DEBATES OF THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY

(Hansard)

MONDAY, MAY 8, 1995

Afternoon Sitting

Volume 19, Number 18

[ Page 14037 ]

The House met at 2:06 p.m.

The Speaker: Hon. members, we will be led in prayer this afternoon by the Rev. Henry Silvester, CD. Rev. Silvester served with the Royal Canadian Navy during World War II and joined the clergy following his extensive military career. His presence today will help us to mark the fiftieth anniversary of VE-Day, the end of the war in Europe. To commemorate this anniversary, time has been set aside after question period for members to share their remembrances and experiences of the war years.

I now ask Rev. Silvester to begin the prayer. Will members please rise.

Prayers.

Hon. J. Pement: I have the pleasure today to introduce a constituent from Bulkley Valley-Stikine, a person who is very involved with the environmental movement and with the Rivers Defence Coalition. I'd like to introduce Miss Pat Moss.

V. Anderson: I ask the House to join me in making welcome 70 students who are here in two separate groups today from Churchill Secondary School in the Vancouver-Langara riding, along with their teacher, Dick Williams. Would the House make the students from Churchill Secondary School very welcome today.

T. Perry: With us in the gallery is Mr. Franklin Tieu of Vancouver and guests visiting him from Japan: Miss Chieko Iizuka -- I'm going to try to get these right -- Mrs. Imako Iizuka, Mr. Katsuo Murase and Mrs. Yoshiko Murase. Mrs. Iizuka's husband is the chairman of the Tokyo Rotary Club in Japan. For those Rotarians here, she's sitting in the gallery and would be glad to take wishes back to the Rotary Clubs of Japan. Would members please join me in making them welcome.

L. Hanson: We have in the gallery today two good friends and constituents of mine from the great village of Lumby: Sylvia Fiset and Muriel Forslund. Would the House please make them welcome.

L. Fox: In the gallery this afternoon I also am very pleased to have a constituent. Not only that but this individual works very hard on behalf of my constituency, particularly the Prince George region. Would the House please make welcome my constituency assistant from Prince George, Barb Unruh.

Hon. M. Harcourt: Today I rise to inform the House that British Columbia and indeed all of Canada has lost a dedicated public servant, Mark Krasnick, who passed away this weekend.

As many of you know, Mark worked in my ministry and elsewhere in the provincial government as well as at the federal level. While I think most of us knew him best as one of the principal architects of the B.C. treaty process, this was only the most recent of his many outstanding accomplishments. He was, for example, one of Canada's leading constitutional practitioners. In the formative years of the Law Reform Commission of Canada, he served as its research coordinator. A decade later, he served as a research coordinator to the Macdonald royal commission, editing four research volumes on federalism and the many recommendations that came out of the Macdonald royal commission. In light of his acknowledged expertise on aboriginal issues, he led British Columbia's negotiations on self-government during the Charlottetown round of constitutional talks.

His distinguished career of public service began in Ottawa, as I said earlier, with the newly formed federal Law Reform Commission. I am proud to say that his talents were recognized not just by a British Columbia New Democratic government that asked him to join the provincial public service but through changes in government. He spent seven years as an assistant deputy minister in the Ministry of Attorney General. I remember him working on the Justice Development Commission and many innovations in the 1970s. He was also ADM in the Ministry of Intergovernmental Relations and the executive secretary of the cabinet secretariat. During this extended period, he served our current Lieutenant-Governor, the Hon. Garde Gardom, in these very senior roles.

Successive Liberal and NDP governments in Ontario have also recognized Mark's prodigious abilities -- his ability to work with people and to work long and hard. As he assumed responsibility for that province's dealings with first nations, his responsibilities in Ontario culminated with his appointment as deputy minister of aboriginal affairs in 1990.

[2:15]

But in March 1992, with the siren call of his adopted home on the west coast of Canada, he decided to come back to British Columbia. He served initially, as I said, as British Columbia's chief negotiator for the provincial team that secured the pivotal arrangements with the federal government, which has allowed the land claims negotiations to proceed.

His abilities and the respect that so many British Columbians had for him -- from all parties -- are best demonstrated by one of his last services to the people of British Columbia when, well after a month of very intense and demanding negotiations with first nations, Mark succeeded in negotiating the historic interim measures agreement on Clayoquot Sound. If you speak with Nelson Keitlah, Chief Francis Frank and many of the other Nuu-chah-nulth leaders who remember him...they have often spoken to me about the deep respect they had not just for Mark's integrity, but for his perseverance and, to leaven some very difficult moments, the great dry wit that he had.

He loved this country passionately. He fought to ensure that all British Columbians could feel that they were fully part of this great land. He had a unique appreciation of the breadth and scope of the Canadian constitution, and he saw that the inclusion of aboriginal people through the treaty process was a natural part of the evolution of our constitution.

I would like all members of the House to join with me in expressing to his family, particularly Arlene and their young son, Jared, our deep sympathy and our deep appreciation for this one man's unique contribution to this great country of ours.

G. Farrell-Collins: I too want to rise and say a few words and offer the support of my colleagues to Arlene and Jared. 

[ Page 14038 ]

Mark Krasnick was born and raised in Montreal, never forgot his home, and I know that his mother was very special to him, as were other friends there. He is renowned across Canada as one of the foremost experts in constitutional affairs, particularly aboriginal issues, land claims and treaty negotiations. He spent many years in British Columbia; that's where I got to know him, and where my wife's family got to know him quite well. He also offered his services, talents and great skills to other provinces and the federal government for a number of years.

It's rare when there's someone who's universally respected by all the people that he or she has served, and Mark was certainly one of those people. He was unique, as the Premier said, in that he had very much a long-range view of B.C. and Canada, not just trying to solve problems for today or tomorrow, but 50 and 100 years down the road. His dry sense of humour was always there at the appropriate times.

For myself, I have a special debt to pay to Mark. He gave my wife her first job after university. It was really a leg up, an opportunity forward and a very generous gesture, which she has always remembered. She has always held Mark in high esteem because of that. So I just want to offer our condolences to Arlene and Jared, also. All of Canada, not just British Columbia, has lost a great public servant.

Hon. J. Cashore: I want to add that I know all the personnel in the Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs and several other ministries will be very sad with regard to this loss. I know I speak for them in saying that their hearts go out to his wife, Arlene, and son, Jared. I also want to state on behalf of our colleague the Minister of Forests, who is a very good friend of his brother, Allan, that he also would want to have his condolences recorded at this time.

Oral Questions

RESIGNATION OF ENVIRONMENT MINISTER

W. Hurd: A question to the Premier. The Premier stated that before appointing the member for Esquimalt-Metchosin to a position of trust, he ordered an independent legal investigation into his activities while he was a member of the Law Society. Will the Premier today table this independent legal investigation, which he said was completed prior to the appointment of the member for Esquimalt-Metchosin to cabinet?

Hon. M. Harcourt: The member whom the member for Surrey-White Rock is speaking about has tendered his resignation as minister. That resignation has been accepted by me. The matter has passed, and the answer to the query from the member is no.

The Speaker: Supplemental, hon. member.

W. Hurd: Again to the Premier. The story being spun this week by the former Minister of Environment has changed considerably since 1993. In 1993, the then minister stated that one of his former clients came to him about investing in California, but we see from the Law Society documents that the member has now admitted that just the opposite occurred. Will the Premier tell us which version of the truth the minister told this independent legal investigation? And will he ensure that Ted Hughes, the conflict-of-interest commissioner, has access to that independent legal investigation with respect to any debts that might be owed by the hon. member?

Hon. M. Harcourt: It really is unfortunate that on a day like today the Liberal opposition can't stay away from the terrible habit of smearing that they have gotten into. I think it is very unfortunate that they choose to take this line of questioning. There are other very important issues that British Columbians are more concerned about: that we have the best job creation record in this country, bar none, and that we are here to defend medicare against Liberals. They should be ashamed of the position they're taking on medicare.

The matters that the member is trying to blend together are not the same. When I was forming the cabinet, I asked members.... I had some other due diligence done on the members in October-November 1991. I can tell the member that the matter that has been before the Law Society was not known to me or anybody else in 1991. The area that I had a lawyer investigate had nothing to do with the matter that has been before the Law Society and that was decided last Thursday. It had to do with a series of allegations that were made by a previous member of the Social Credit government in this Legislature.

M. de Jong: The resignation of the former minister has led to questions about the Premier's judgment. In 1993, the Premier said there had been a pre-election internal investigation into the legal and financial dealings of the minister. Can the Premier tell the House if that investigation included the fact that the member, the now former minister, had a number of unsatisfied registered judgments against him between '84 and '88, which we now know were not disclosed to the Law Society?

Hon. M. Harcourt: Again, the member is no longer the minister. This matter is concluded. I made it very clear that the matters that were investigated were looked into by a lawyer and dealt with some allegations that were made here in the Legislature by John Reynolds. As a result of that investigation, I appointed Mr. Sihota into the cabinet.

The Speaker: Supplemental, hon. member.

M. de Jong: When he was questioned about the removal of the member for Victoria-Hillside from his cabinet, the Premier said that the minister had lost the Premier's confidence and was therefore removed from cabinet. The former Environment minister said that he recognized in February that he had violated the Law Society conflict guidelines. Presumably, hon. Speaker, that information was provided to the Premier at that time. That being the case, how does the Premier account for the three-month delay, during which time we have to assume that the minister did not enjoy the Premier's confidence? Why didn't he act immediately to demand the minister's resignation?

Hon. M. Harcourt: Again, the question is based on a presumption that's inaccurate -- which is not unusual for the questions we get from the Liberal opposition. I do note a certain hypocrisy. I was criticized when I asked the previous Minister of Government Services to resign when he lost my confidence. They criticized me then for not allowing the pro-

[ Page 14039 ]

cess to conclude. Now they're criticizing me for allowing the Law Society process to conclude. I wish the Liberals would make up their minds, or at least be consistent in their smear tactics.

GAMBLING INDUSTRY LOBBY

L. Fox: My question this afternoon is to the Premier. As the Premier knows, casino companies are currently lobbying the government for increased gambling hours, higher betting limits, more games and more betting tables. Can the Premier give us the assurance that no such liberalization of the gaming policies is presently being considered by this government?

Hon. M. Harcourt: I can say that some of these liberalized [laughter] reforms are being considered and that the Minister of Government Services will be reporting out shortly. I will take the question on notice for the Minister of Government Services.

GUIDELINES FOR MINISTRY PLANNING "RETREATS"

G. Farrell-Collins: Last year the Minister of Social Services and ministry staff spent a weekend retreat at Tigh-Na-Mara Resort Hotel, at a total cost of $3,400. When informed of this, the Premier made the minister pay the money back to the taxpayers, and issued a directive that states: "Retreats and planning sessions will not be held in resort-like settings, or at locations a significant distance from the normal workplace." Does the Premier still stand by these guidelines?

Hon. M. Harcourt: The answer is yes, and I await the real crunch in the question coming next.

The Speaker: Supplemental, hon. member.

Interjection.

The Speaker: Order, please. Please proceed.

G. Farrell-Collins: If the member for Nelson-Creston has complaints about the guidelines, I suggest he take them up with the Premier.

The Ministry of Skills, Training and Labour, we have discovered, has today begun a week-long planning session at the Qualicum College Inn. The inn is promoted as a full-service resort overlooking the ocean at beautiful Qualicum Beach and is Vancouver Island's most desirable destination resort. The inn promotes golf, fishing, horseback riding and an indoor pool as part of its attraction. Can the Minister of Skills, Training and Labour tell us why members of his staff are violating the Premier's guidelines?

Hon. D. Miller: Given the long list of amenities, I'm a bit disappointed that my staff didn't ask me to go.

INVESTIGATION OF GOVERNMENT INFORMATION LEAKS

J. Dalton: For the Premier. We understand that the government's personal gumshoe has finished his report on the continuing flood of government leaks and that it is now before cabinet. A document which illustrates a total lack of confidence in this government by its own civil service must be painful to read and even more painful to release. In the interest of saving himself and his government further humiliation, will the Premier commit to releasing that report before someone leaks it?

Hon. M. Harcourt: I'm glad the members are finally getting it clear that this is a retired RCMP official who was highly....

Interjection.

Hon. M. Harcourt: Well, I did. I told the members this a few months ago -- a retired RCMP official, who had extensive experience with CLEU and security work. He was not a gumshoe; he was a security expert. The members opposite have such fertile imaginations that they don't need leaked documents; they can make them up. As a matter of fact, they can even go to the Freedom of Information Act and get all the information they need. As I said, they don't have to get brown envelopes anymore; under the Freedom of Information Act, they can just go and xerox what they want.

[2:30]

The Speaker: Supplemental.

J. Dalton: Well, we're certainly getting some made-up answers from the other side.

In the summer of 1988, the former Social Credit government hired some Dick Tracy wannabes. The member for Esquimalt-Metchosin at that time said of that particular episode: "This is totally inappropriate. It's a gross misallocation of power and public funds." The then opposition leader -- who is now the Premier -- claimed that this represented a contempt for democracy, and that the government was "losing its moral and political authority." I ask the hon. Premier -- given the past sanctimony that we've just heard, as read from Hansard: can he tell us whether having spent $20,000 to investigate his own staff and coming up empty-handed fills him with a sense of pride and accomplishment?

Hon. M. Harcourt: This is the problem with the opposition: they're reading out questions that were prepared over the barbecue over the weekend without any thought to the context. I mean, to compare spying on citizens involved in the very difficult issues of abortion and choice to a Premier inviting a security expert in to make sure that cabinet documents are as secure as possible is really quite a jump of logic.

FRAUD CHARGES AGAINST SOCIAL SERVICES INVESTIGATOR

V. Anderson: I think it's fairly well known and obvious to the public that the NDP has difficulty investigating fraud within its own system. We learned on the weekend that a government fraud investigator has been charged with fraud herself. Shirley McLennan has been charged with the possession of $100,000 in phony U.S. bills. To the Minister of Social Services: did the ministry conduct a background check as it pertains to this individual's qualifications for this job as a fraud investigator in her ministry?

[ Page 14040 ]

Hon. J. MacPhail: It's kind of hard to know whether the opposition likes public servants or doesn't like public servants; I'm not quite sure what they like.

In this particular case, let me advise the House that the worker -- one of 4,500 in my ministry -- has been suspended. The 98 other workers in the investigation department have backgrounds in law enforcement and continue to do their jobs well.

The Speaker: A supplemental, hon. member.

V. Anderson: The BCGEU collective agreement, under the section entitled "Confidential Disclosures," states: "Within 20 days of a request by the employer, an employee shall provide the employer with authorization and information as the police may require in order to establish whether a record exists in areas of crime incompatible with such assignments." Was Mrs. McLennan requested to provide such information?

Hon. J. MacPhail: This matter is now before the courts, and our ministry is cooperating fully. In the fullness of time I'm sure that the hon. member will be able to get that information.

FERNIE GOVERNMENT AGENT VACANCY

C. Tanner: I've got a question for the Minister of Small Business, Tourism and Culture. He's been sitting doing nothing for so long I thought it was time we asked him a question.

Effective April 28, Fernie lost its government agent when Jo Buss resigned. In assessing the reasons for her resignation, Mrs. Buss stated: "There is nothing to do at the office. I've been reading the newspaper for three years, and it's mind-numbing." As well, Mrs. Buss indicated that the work at the Fernie government office could be handled by one person instead of two. In light of Mrs. Buss's frank assessment of the challenging nature of the work, will the minister save B.C. taxpayers $50,000 by not filling the position vacated by Ms. Buss?

Hon. B. Barlee: It's the second question I've had in two years, and I'm very pleased that this was submitted.

Interjections.

Hon. B. Barlee: Thank you very much; I accept that as a compliment.

We have 60 government agents, and they bring in about $1.6 billion. In Fernie, which is one of our smaller government agencies -- by the way, I get around to about 12 or 14 every year -- they did about 30,000 transactions last year. Now, I admit that 30,000 transactions is only one transaction every three minutes, eight hours a day, five days a week, and I should expect more. We have done due diligence on that. We actually knocked a million dollars off the total funding that 60 government agencies receive around the province, and I must say I that think our help was exceptionally good -- they're very efficient anyway. We have also done due diligence on all the government agents around the province. We find that 1.75 people should have operated that Fernie office, but we're having difficulty dividing that into 1.75 people.

The Speaker: The bell terminates question period.

D. Mitchell: I rise on a brief point of order with respect to oral question period. Standing order 47A says very clearly that questions should be permitted if they are urgent and important. I don't know if the Liberal opposition realizes it, but all of their questions were out of order today, hon. Speaker. I wonder if you could give some guidance to them.

G. Farrell-Collins: Having worked under that member's leadership for the first session of the House, I know that all those questions were out of order too.

The Speaker: Thank you, hon. member, for your submission. The point of order has been duly noted.

Hon. G. Clark: Actually, Mr. Speaker, I agree with both of them.

Before we move on to the motion which is to be debated, I would first like to call third reading of Bill 12, Arts Council Act.

ARTS COUNCIL ACT

Bill 12 read a third time and passed.

Hon. G. Clark: I call third reading of Bill 7, Columbia Basin Trust Act.

COLUMBIA BASIN TRUST ACT

Bill 7 read a third time and passed on the following division:

[2:45]

[ Page 14041 ]

Orders of the Day

Motions on Notice

Hon. G. Clark: I now call Motion 85 standing in the name of the Premier on the order paper, and I will read it.

"Be it resolved that this House, in celebration of the 50th anniversary of VE Day, express on behalf of all British Columbians our deepest thanks for the sacrifices of those Canadians who joined the forces as well as those who supported the war effort in the home, factory and school and further, this House calls on the present generation to honour the example of those who sacrificed by finding ways of becoming more involved in the ongoing struggle for world peace and social justice."

FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF VE-DAY

Hon. M. Harcourt: As I attended the remembrance ceremonies that have taken place over the last few days and watched the very moving television presentations of the celebrations and remembrances taking place in Great Britain, Holland, other areas of Europe and other parts of Canada, I've been struck by two central themes that have run through my head and, I think, the heads of many of us. They are: remembering and never forgetting, and secondly, recognizing that even with the terrible tragedy of the Second World War, a positive legacy came out of that for our great country.

When I say remembering, I think it is particularly important for young British Columbians and Canadians to remember the terrible sacrifice of so many young women and men who suffered during the Second World War, when one in ten Canadians were enlisted in the Armed Forces. There were over 100,000 casualties and 45,000 deaths. In the merchant navy, of the approximately 12,000 who served, 1,465 were killed.

On the home front, we were all touched -- families of the war generation; families who were serving on farms, in the industries, in defence production and in the Red Cross; and many others who were involved in that war effort. Women took jobs that had previously been available only to men, and they were a major factor in supplying forces with munitions, ships and aircraft, as well as in keeping the civilian economy going.

I don't remember a great deal of it. The first year and a half of my life was in Digby, Nova Scotia. Canadians travelled back and forth in unprecedented numbers. My father was a lieutenant in the Canadian navy, off in the North Atlantic, and was in charge of discharge just after VE-Day, at HMCS Discovery. I think all of us have heard from our parents and relatives about the tremendous sacrifice the generation of the Second World War made.

But we should also recognize the growth of Canada that came out of that tragedy and, thank God, the victory over fascism. We were able to bring freedom back to many countries, in Europe in particular. Out of that effort that showed Canadians what we could accomplish, there were some great changes to our social fabric. For example, there were the educational programs for war vets. Some of the old army huts, I think, are still standing at my university, the University of British Columbia. Thousands of war vets had an opportunity to become world-leading consulting engineers, lawyers and doctors, or to enter into trades. That was part of the legacy and of the change in our country -- opening up training, skills and opportunities for the war vets.

Tremendous, close personal friendships developed not just among those who served but also in many other countries. You could see the depth of the affection and respect the Dutch people, for example, hold for the Canadians who liberated Holland. I attended a ceremony at Queen Elizabeth Park to commemorate that. The Dutch Canadian community was there and dedicated a sculpture that was done by a very fine Dutch Canadian sculptor living in Kelowna, who was able to present this memento: "Joy of Freedom." It is a joy to enjoy freedom.

But we have great friendships with the French, the Belgians, the Poles and the Norwegians. Fortunately for me, they led to my wife Beckie's family coming from Norway, where her father was in the Norwegian Free Air Force out of Great Britain, and they chose Canada because of contacts and other relatives who had decided to come to Canada. I think many of us have similar stories of how our lives have been affected because of the respect and affection of other countries who benefited from the sacrifice of young Canadians going to their countries and fighting for the freedom, the dignity and the democracy that is fundamental to being Canadians. Whatever our differences are, they are very small compared to the differences that exist in so many other countries.

I think the legacy we should recognize is the stature with which Canada is now regarded anywhere in the world and the tremendous abilities that we gained during the Second World War, which we are now putting into continuing our peaceful efforts. Canadian international peace-keeping activities are recognized worldwide so that Canadians are called on first in most of the tragic conflicts that are still taking place. Again, that is a legacy we should remember -- a positive legacy out of the tragedy of the Second World War.

I'd like to close my remarks by looking at the ceremony I attended this morning where Rev. Silvester was in attendance. As we looked around, we saw the young people who were in the choir that sang. A number of parents who took their children out of school, whom I talked to, said: "I want my son and daughter to understand why this war memorial is outside the Legislature, and what sacrifice went into them being able to live in peace in a prosperous, free democracy like Canada." There were so many who had done that with very young children and who felt that it was absolutely essential that the present generation of young Canadians understand, 50 years later, what VE-Day is all about. We must never forget the sacrifice. We must always remember that our country grew into the great country that it is out of that bloodshed and tragedy. We must recognize that we did grow into one of the great countries of the world and that many positive benefits did come out of this terrible tragedy.

As we remember here in the Legislature, I'm very pleased that there are so many who are going to speak on the fiftieth anniversary of remembrance of VE-Day and who feel the tremendous emotion that I think a number of us do. I felt it this morning when I was watching the 95-year-old Queen Mother on the balcony with Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret, as they were many, many years ago. I thought of the impact that the royal family and that great wartime leader -- one individual -- had had in maintaining the morale of the forces of freedom. To hear Vera Lynn singing once again the songs that inspired and maintained the morale that we needed to fight for freedom....

[ Page 14042 ]

I think it's very important that this Legislature be participating, as we are with this motion. I have no doubt that it will be unanimously approved. With the speeches that are going to come in tribute to the vets who marched so proudly today here in Victoria and across the country, and who are in Europe now being received by the people of the Netherlands and many other countries, we must remember that freedom has a price. So many paid that price, and we will never forget.

G. Campbell: Like the Premier, I am pleased that we have an opportunity today to pause from our ongoing activities to reflect back 50 years ago to the day when the flags of freedom flew once again over all of Europe. This is a day for celebration around the world. It's a day on which each of us gets to pause to think about the incredible personal and human commitment made by literally thousands and thousands of people to assure that we could have the kind of open and public debate that we enjoy in this House and this country. It is a day to reflect on the courage and commitment of Canadians and of people from around the world as they fought for freedom, hope and opportunity and for the dignity of all people.

VE-Day is one of the most significant days, I believe, in the history of the modern world. It's a day that was unfortunately written in the blood of millions of those who lost their lives through that war. I think it's important for us to think back and remind all our friends and the next generation following us that those lives were not lost in vain. Indeed, that sacrifice gave us the opportunities, not just in Canada but around the world, to celebrate freedom and pursue our own individual goals and objectives in an open and honest way.

When we bow our heads today, and when we did so yesterday during the celebrations some of us attended, I think it's clear that when we're doing this, we are given an opportunity to think back through generations of commitment. My own birth followed the war, so I am one of those who did not have to go through the Second World War and who was not asked at that time to sacrifice. But members of my family did serve, as did members of many people's families in the Legislature today, and they were able to make a contribution to the effort that set the world on the road to peace. It's a road that unfortunately still eludes us. The final destination has still eluded us, but the commitment from those people who sacrificed themselves for freedom is one that we all must reflect on and must remember as we move into the future.

In elected public office, I've had the opportunity on a number of occasions to work with members of our armed forces, and to celebrate and remember with them the sacrifice of so many citizens and with veterans who come back with stories and with scars that are too deep to ever erase but also with tales of tribute, which I believe we should use as examples for the future.

We gather here in this chamber today to remember that our unfettered deliberations are a direct result of the sacrifices of literally thousands of Canadians. We will try to be worthy of the legacy that they have left us; we will remember them. We will remember their sacrifice, and we will remember their legacy of freedom and of hope.

G. Wilson: I also rise to put forward my remarks with respect to this fiftieth anniversary, and I hope the House will allow me a brief indulgence to issue a personal thank-you to a veteran who members of our family don't often consider a veteran. That is my father, who served with the RAF in radar command. His brother also served in the RAF as a bomb-aimer. They were the lucky ones, because they came back. I'm obviously most grateful, because without their service and without the service of millions as we have looked at the defence of democracy, I clearly would not be able to stand in my place and have the freedom to say what I say on a basis of democratic procedure within this Legislature today.

[3:00]

There can be no more profound time of reflection and compassion than now. This anniversary clearly marks a turning point in the history of western civilization, and it is a time when we reflect on those who were not so fortunate -- those families that now have only memories of those who gave their lives in the defence of freedom.

I think it's time also that we look ahead. It is my belief that perhaps the shortest journey an individual can make is the journey between freedom and fascism, because it is a journey that happens from within. It is a process that happens in one's mind and in one's heart and soul. Fascism is not some disease that's contracted like a virus. It's not something that one comes in conflict with. It is something that sane, intelligent people embrace; so it was in Germany. Clearly it was in the development of the war in Japan. People often embrace that thinking, those philosophical directions, for the best of intentions.

I'm of a generation that didn't go to war, and I'm fortunate for not having done so. But I have seen war firsthand in my time in Africa. I can tell you that people who are often sensible, sane, intelligent people will embrace those theories, thinking that somehow the solutions they embark on -- those solutions which do not have as their fundamental component a compassion for one's fellow human, but have in place an imposed or government-placed restriction on human freedoms -- are where we'll find our salvation.

What comes of that thinking, and what comes of those people who will take that direction, is the rise of what is now called the radical Right or the radical Left. If we look at those philosophical directions in a circle and if we study our history -- something that we should reflect upon at this time, on this fiftieth anniversary -- we can see that the radical Left and the radical Right would fit together at the bottom. There is very little difference between the totalitarian states of the communists and the fascist states of the fascists.

I do believe that the shortest journey one can make is the transition between our freedom to stand and speak, and our ability to extract it -- to take it forever from those within our society. We must be eternally vigilant if we are to protect the democracy that so many have died for. That's why, on this fiftieth anniversary, I do want to thank my father; I want to thank my mother. I want to thank all of those who stood to fight so that I can stand and speak today.

We must be vigilant in this country. I am enormously fearful of the trends that we see now within the body politic not only in Canada but in North America generally. There is a rise of the radical Right; there is a re-creation of Nazi-like tactics, the Nazi-like solutions to human and social problems. There is a rising intolerance in our society right now of people who, for reasons beyond their own, cannot look after themselves. There is a scapegoating now taking place where fingers are being pointed at groups within our society who carry the 

[ Page 14043 ]

blame for what are seen to be the wrongs within our society. There are oversimplistic solutions being put forward to very complex human problems, which are coming out of the radical Right. Where is the compassion? Where is this kinder, gentler society we were trying to build? If we don't stand and defend it in this hall, it can be defended nowhere, because this is the hall of our democracy. This is the shrine that now stands as a result of those who died in that tragic war in Europe.

Let me say in closing that I am mindful today, on this fiftieth anniversary, that we have not put an end to war. War continues to rage in Europe; war continues to rage in Africa. There are countless thousands who die at the hands of the aggression by those who would wage war in Southeast Asia. War has not come to an end. The great war to end all wars did not end all wars. While we give thanks to those who died to protect our freedoms, we must also stand and be vigilant in our defence of all humankind so that they may enjoy the freedoms which we take for granted in this country. I thank you.

G. Janssen: On this, the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War -- a war I fortunately did not have to endure, as I was born a year later, in 1946 -- I want to speak of my mother's and father's experiences in that war. I want to speak of the people of my home town of Tegelen and of my family and friends there. Their experiences through this man-made hell has influenced me greatly and has a lot to do with my being in this place today.

Nick Janssen and Maria Sloesen were 27 and 23 years old when the war started. They were planning to start a life and a family together; at the same time, Hitler was planning a war that would change their lives. In the spring of 1940, Hitler announced that he would never invade his brothers in Holland. Three days later the attack began, and Holland was at war.

After the bombing of Rotterdam, Holland surrendered. The royal family fled to Canada, where Princess Margriet was born, and a little piece of Canada was declared Dutch territory for the occasion. My mother was in Tegelen, in the southeast corner of Holland, two kilometres from the German border and approximately 30 kilometres from Cologne, Germany. My father was in Arnhem.

The original invasion was exciting to my mother. The flares dropped by the German planes reminded her of Halloween. However, a few days later, walking along the Maas River, she saw a boot with a foot and leg still attached. This, along with dozens of graves of soldiers, brought the reality of war home. Just 23 years old and with a brother in the Dutch army, she realized the danger and the horror of the war that was just beginning.

The people of Holland started to buy everything in sight: food, drugs, clothes, household items. Overnight the stores were empty and rationing began. Coupons were necessary for everyday household items that were once taken for granted.

My father Nickolas -- engaged to my mother -- was enlisted by the Germans within 30 days. A watchmaker, he was sent to Berlin to repair the clocks at the train stations. With the Germans in the army, the Dutch were forced to run the German economy. After three months, after being on leave, he refused to go back. He married my mother a year later.

After more bombings by the English forces, the Germans started looking for my father again. Hiding in cellars and moving from one family and friend to another, he was discovered in February 1943 and sent to the concentration camp at Bietigheim for one week.

I can still remember my father talking of his stay there. Although he was not Jewish, he and others were held there awaiting transit. They were given food, and when they tried to share it with the Jewish prisoners, guards and dogs prevented them from doing so. At this time, my father could not imagine how one human could treat another in this manner. One day there were thousands; the next, only hundreds. The effect was startling on this young Dutchman.

He was sent to Stuttgart to work in an instruments factory on aircraft and tanks for the German war effort. Working with mainly French workers, language was initially a problem. However, a camaraderie soon developed, not just with his co-workers but with the other thousands of Europeans from many lands that were placed into forced labour in Germany.

An infection on his arm, contracted in Bietigheim, soon flared into an infection that engulfed his entire arm from hand to shoulder. Although the factory doctor prescribed medicine for its treatment, the druggist refused, with a curt, "Nicht fur Auslanders" -- not for foreigners.

When Hitler or Himmler came to speak, he and his co-workers were forced into the square to listen to propaganda about the great war Germany was waging in defence of the fatherland. Many of you recall the crowded squares in newsreels. Little did we know, the audience was not entirely German people but also forced labourers who despised the man and his ideals.

The bombing raids of the allies now reached Stuttgart, and factories and cities burned almost nightly. I recall my father telling me of those times of hiding in cellars and bomb shelters. Food was scarce. For sustenance, the French would fry snails that they found in the fields. When cooking fuel was unavailable, a quick rinse under the tap and down they went. Although hungry, my father was never quite convinced to try this delicacy.

The infection in his arm raged on, and he was unable to continue work. With Rommel the Desert Fox -- the unbeatable field marshal -- now back in his home town of Stuttgart, along with the Seventh Army and their equipment, the German people lost some of their spirit. Nick Janssen was able to threaten his boss that if he lost his arm to the infection, when the war was over -- many Germans could see the beginning of the end -- he would be sent back to seek his revenge. Ironically, the train that brought him home was the last train to make that trip. During this time, my mother, Maria, moved back to care for her father and two brothers. Her mother and hundreds more had died of the flu due to the lack of even the basic medicines.

My grandfather and uncles had to fend for themselves. Almost nightly bombing raids by the allies left Tegelen devastated. A large German airfield at Venlo, two kilometres away, made the town a prime target. No family was without loss, and food was scarce. On the street my mother lived on, five young boys, 16 to 17 years old, sat playing cards in midafternoon, and despite the windows and doors being nailed shut, a bomb found its way to them. Three brothers from the Van Liepsig family and their two friends could not be identified by their families.

[ Page 14044 ]

Death and mayhem were a common occurrence that did not, or could not, become accepted. This was not normal, nor could one become accustomed to the misery, the fear, the uncertainty of life. The crying mothers, the bereaved families -- everyone lost someone, but hope was eternal that one day the liberation would come.

Still on coupons and rations, my then pregnant mother or her friend stood in line for three hours for half a loaf of bread per family per week -- providing you weren't too far back in the line and the bread supply ran out before your turn. If the sirens went or the bombs fell, the line ran to the cellars, and those in the back would sometimes become those in the front when the all clear came.

With no soap to wash with or even water if you had soap, clothes and people became filthier and filthier. Scabies was commonplace; lice were everywhere. Perhaps the Dutch people's renown for cleanliness and a need to wash everything in sight comes from this period in their history.

Without a taste of meat for months on end, my mother and Tante Mien devised a clever plan to catch some rather skinny wrens that had not had much more to eat than they did. A coal sieve, a stick to prop it up, a piece of string and a few crumbs of bread that were sacrificed, and the plan was ready. The hungry birds, spying their first meal in days on the white blanket of snow, rushed to their doom. Seven were caught, but three managed to escape. The remaining four were quickly plucked and boiled in a little water. There was no bread or lard or butter. The feast, which consisted of little more than a mouthful, is still spoken of fondly when we sit down and gorge ourselves at Christmas or Thanksgiving. It is then that my children -- her grandchildren -- realize what the prayer at dinner thanking the Lord for the meal really means.

The Germans continued to look for my father. Although he worked on a permit for the nearby airfield at Venlo, repairing damaged instruments, he was to be sent back to Germany. His slowly healing arm made the trip imminent. How to not go back to work and maybe to his grave was the question. Throwing boiling water on one's feet was a common practice, but in the end my mother scraped his arm until the new flesh broke open. My mother could not look when she did this.

The following day, the Dutch nurse -- a member of the underground movement, working for the German doctor -- arranged for my father to stay home. This nurse helped dozens of young Dutch men avoid the work camps. Sadly, a bomb struck her house one Saturday night. Sitting with her family against the wall in the cellar, a steel beam fell across her legs. The nurse, Ank Smeets, her two sisters and the future bride of her brother died. Her mother lost her arm, and two other sisters lost both legs. They are still alive today and can be seen bicycling with their artificial limbs. I wonder how this hero had become a victim.

[3:15]

With my mother in hospital, or what was left of it -- the cellar -- with my older brother, my mother suffering from mastitis and my brother from a kidney infection.... There was no medicine, no soap and a daily parade of wounded soldiers and blood-covered doctors. She wonders what the fuss about today's medicare system is all about. After three months, my mother was sent home by the Red Cross while the baby stayed in hospital. Although she was not better, the bed was needed. The ambulance of the day was a converted bicycle with a wheelbarrow-type contraption attached to the front. It was known as a bakfiets. With my mother in the bak with a black tarp over her, and Frans Schreurs the Red Cross worker on the fiets part, she was taken home.

My father hid from the Germans, who were still looking for him to work -- this time to dig tank traps to stop the advancing Canadian troops. The Dutch wanted to help the Canadians, not the Germans. He mostly hid in a pit dug under the railway tracks in back of the field behind the house. If a towel was on the line, stay inside; if it was off, the coast was clear. Once, nine men had to occupy a space meant for four, for a day and a night without food or water.

In the fall of 1944, with the Canadian troops on one side of the Maas and my parents and the Germans on the other, the war reached a stalemate for the winter. The bombing had stopped, but the skies were black with thousand-plane raids that were aimed at Germany every day and night. Cannons and mortars replaced the planes, and raids across the river resulted in street fighting. The Germans held on through the winter, and with no Dutch to work for them, Russians were brought in. It was then that my parents made the most daring move of the war. They rescued two young Russian girls from the camps -- Nina Finshenka and Natcha Fiderenko -- two nieces, aged 16. They were picked up at their school in the Ukraine at age 14, forced onto a truck and put to work in Germany. They were dressed in rags as thin as paper, smelly, with only a blanket between them. Nina was hidden in a hole in the basement, along with my uncles and father, when the German came looking. Natcha was taken by neighbours.

The last seven months of the war were a nightmare. There were continuous searches, anxiety was high, and discovery meant being shot instantly. What little there was had to be shared even more.

Nina stayed in Holland, married and raised five children. Nina never found her family, but years later a sister was discovered, and a relationship by mail ensued. Her family was lost forever -- probably dead, like 30 million others.

The Canadian troops never did make it across the Maas, but in early April 1945 my father and uncle were walking when a young Dutch boy came running with American cigarettes -- North State cigarettes. When questioned, he said there were black soldiers in Germany and they were handing out cigarettes. These were, of course, American troops, who always sent their bravest and toughest in first -- the black Americans.

Nick Janssen and his brother-in-law, Will Sloesen and Nina, the Russian girl, scurried toward Kolder Kerchen, where the Americans had a huge fire, fuelled by German furniture, in the town square. German troops were lined up and souvenirs were being collected -- leather officers' coats were first, then good shoes, buttons, pants and shirts, until some were in only their underwear. German cellars were liberated of their food, and hungry Dutch people feasted. Ironically, many Dutch became ill from this bountiful harvest after years of little or no solid food. They were placed on a diet of crackers to adjust their digestive tracts. Every family received a jerry can full of these crackers, and if you went to visit friends you were offered crackers and coffee made from tulip bulbs -- a feast at the time.

Despite the misery inflicted upon them by their German oppressors, a lone German soldier about 60 years old was left 

[ Page 14045 ]

guarding the factory in Tegelen. The citizens of Tegelen took his uniform, gave him coveralls, and told him to go home to his family. The old soldier cried. The war was finally over.

I'd just like to say a thanks in my home language: Vandaag is een speciale dag. Het is de herdenking van de bevryding van Nederland in 1945. Voor alle Nederlanders in Canada dank ik de Canadese soldaten die hun leven hebben gegeven, zodat Nederland vrij was.

B. Simpson: Fifty years ago today, the Allied forces liberated Europe from Nazi tyranny. Several weeks before, the Allied forces entered the death camps of Auschwitz, Birkenau, Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, and Dachau. They were the sites of the destruction of six million innocent men, women and children. Their only sin was that they were Jewish. What was witnessed by the Allied forces and the world was an act of brutality that will go down in the annals of world history as the most barbaric act ever carried out by humankind. The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic annihilation of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and their collaborators. In 1933 approximately nine million Jews lived in 21 countries in Europe. By 1945 two out of every three European Jews had been slaughtered.

Hon. Speaker, although the Jews were the primary victims, they were not the only ones. Hundreds of thousands of Gypsies, 250,000 mentally and physically infirm, homosexuals, thousands of political or religious dissidents such as communists, socialists, trade unionists and Jehovah's Witnesses -- all were persecuted and annihilated for their beliefs. Millions of Soviet prisoners of war perished from starvation, disease and forced labour. There was a deliberate and well-planned extermination of more than fifteen million persons in what we know today as the Holocaust. This genocide of staggering proportions was carried out with scrupulous efficiency by a well-coordinated German bureaucracy, with the collaboration of the legislators in Germany, the educational system, churches, the judiciary, the medical profession, industry, business and other professions.

What did the Allied troops see when they entered those camps? A 21-year-old medical technician with the RCAF, John Doerksen, who now lives in Abbotsford, entered Bergen-Belsen. He stated: "It was horrendous to see that many people die. They were so emaciated; people were just skin and bones. Whether you are a survivor or liberator, it is an experience you will never forget." These words were echoed by Gen. Vasily Petrenko, who liberated Auschwitz. He stated: "I was totally unprepared for Auschwitz. What astonished me were the children, some mere infants who had been left behind in hasty evacuation. They were the survivors of the medical experiments perpetuated by Auschwitz camp doctor, Josef Mengele." Several victims of this doctor now live in Vancouver.

Capt. Timothy Brennan, writing to his wife and child, said: "You cannot imagine that such things exist in a civilized world." Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, Allied Supreme Commander, stated: "The things I saw beggared description." He ordered aides to ensure that as many GIs as possible saw the camps. The Supreme Commander urged lawmakers and editors to come immediately, to bear witness. In an editorial, "Gazing Into the Pit," the Christian Century stated that the atrocities showed "...the horror of humanity itself when it surrendered to its capacity for evil."

The most eloquent voice at the time was Edward R. Murrow, the CBS radio broadcaster. While he was walking through the camps, little children clung to his hands. Walking through the barracks, he was applauded by men so weak it sounded like the hand clapping of babies. He said at the time: "I reported what I saw and I heard but only a part of it. For most of it, I have no words."

Hon. Speaker, the Nazis butchered, the Jews were slaughtered, and the world watched on. How did this happen? Let there be no doubt about it: the United States, Great Britain, Canada and the other nations outside of Nazi Europe received numerous press reports that these camps existed before the Allied troops entered the camps in 1945. It is not correct to say there was liberation of the camps. Liberation would signify intent, and the questions arise: had, in fact, the camps been wilfully targeted for liberation? Had the Soviet and Western armies been directed to liberate these individual camps? It is a distortion of history to suggest there was an actual intention to liberate the death camps. Historians, after examining the available records, are influenced by the absolute surprise and shock of the officers and men who came upon the camps. As John Doerksen said, he and the others were utterly unprepared for Auschwitz. A thorough examination of British and American maps shows absolutely no mention of concentration camps. Nowhere can one find the concentration camps as part of military assignments. The so-called liberation was, at best, a by-product of military success -- a never-intended result of strategic military planning. The actual liberation of the concentration camps was never once a priority of field commanders, let alone of the strategic planners in London, Washington and Moscow. American planes flew over Auschwitz to bomb military targets such as the giant I.G. Farben plant that converted coal to synthetic fuel, just a few miles away from Auschwitz. No bombs ever fell on Auschwitz, on Birkenau or on the rail lines leading up to the camps. No, the American War Department stuck to a policy of not mixing military and humanitarian objectives.

A partial proof of this unpreparedness of the military forces as they approached each camp is that they arrived with no provisions, let alone the emergency equipment that the tragic crisis of mass human suffering called for. The lack of supplies is testimony to the absence of intention on the part of the Allied forces. There's no doubt that all those who entered responded compassionately to the human catastrophe facing them, but each witness will attest that all this effort was strictly unrehearsed -- the result of no original preparation. Most of those camps had been abandoned by the SS prior to the arrival of the Allied forces. Hygiene, food and medical help came later, on an improvised basis.

So let us do away with the myth of Allied liberation. Let us be critical of the lethal prewar immigration policies of Canada, the United States and other countries that denied entry to these desperately wretched people trying to flee Nazi Germany. By 1942 the governments of the United States and Great Britain knew and had confirmed reports of the Final Solution -- Germany's intent to kill all the Jews of Europe. Great Britain, the United States and Canada, influenced by anti-Semitism rampant throughout their countries, feared a massive influx of refugees and turned their back on them, resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths. Historians, working with newly declassified British and Canadian cabinet papers, have uncovered the sad truth that our country -- yes, our country of Canada, hon. Speaker and hon. members -- together with other countries, could have done far more. For example, there was a plan in 1943 to buy the freedom of 70,000 

[ Page 14046 ]

Romanian Jews. In response, the U.K. Foreign Office minutes, which were declassified last year, said: "Once we open the door to adult male Jews to be taken out of the enemy territory, a quite unmanageable flood may result." Because of this policy, close to 70,000 Romanian Jews were killed. On June 25, 1942, the Daily Telegraph reported that 700,000 Polish Jews had been killed, some by mobile gas vans. In September of that year, three months before the end of the year, the New York Herald Tribune stated: "Hitler has ordered four million Jews slain." Sir Anthony Eden, the British Foreign Secretary, told the House of Commons on September 17, 1942, that Germany was now carrying into effect Hitler's often-repeated intention to exterminate the Jewish people in Europe.

On July 19, 1944, it became clear that more than a half a million Hungarian Jews were about to be transported to their deaths. Chaim Weizmann, later the first president of the state of Israel, appealed to Eden to bomb the railways, and despite Eden's appeal to Churchill, nothing was done. Allied aircraft could have bombed the camps without difficulty, but the crematoria and railway yards were never targeted as Jewish leaders in North America and Britain had pleaded. Yes, anti-Semitism was rife not only in Nazi Germany but also throughout the world in the Second World War.

[3:30]

I am sure, hon. members, that this House will be shocked when I say that anti-Semitism was rife in this Legislature. In a book written by Irving Abella, None Is Too Many, he discloses, after reviewing recently released Department of External Affairs records, that Mackenzie King, Canada's Prime Minister during the war years, feared that allowing in Jews would disrupt unity. I'm ashamed to stand up here today and say that a former Premier of this province, T.D. Pattullo, then said to Prime Minister Mackenzie King that although the province was prepared to take some refugees, they did not want too many Jews. This is a matter of public record which has now been recently disclosed by our External Affairs department.

Anti-Semitism did not end in this Legislature after the Second World War. In the 1950s a prominent member of the Social Credit cabinet made a comment that the destruction of six million Jews was a fulfilment of the prophecy. There was a case of another member of the defunct Social Credit Party, who went on to become Speaker of this Legislature, who made a disparaging remark -- an anti-Semitic remark -- directed toward the Jewish MLA Norm Levi.

Jewish quotas existed until recently in various professions in this province -- in universities, medical schools and industries. Jews and other ethnic groups such as Chinese were restricted from buying property in the British Properties, and they were restricted from joining many private clubs. Some of you may be shocked to hear that the Vancouver Club and some of our esteemed golf clubs did not allow Jews.

In 1970 I started my law career with the law firm headed by one of British Columbia's most distinguished citizens, a man whom I have the highest regard for -- our former Lieutenant-Governor Walter Owen. When I joined the firm, Walter wanted to nominate me to become the first Jew to join the Vancouver Club, of which he was president. This was an invitation that I was quick to reject, but I appreciated that Walter was determined to break down the barriers of prejudice. It was several years later that the first Jew was allowed into that club -- Justice Nathan Nemetz. So when we think of anti-Semitism and racism toward other ethnic groups, and we think that it is a phenomenon of the past, let us wake up and look around us, as it is prevalent in every corner of this province.

The righteous gentiles. Not everyone was indifferent to the tragedy that was unfolding during the Second World War. Many were like John Doerksen, who, after the war, enrolled in a bible college to find answers. Last week in the Vancouver Sun, he stated: "I'm a Christian guy and I believe in God and I have a lot of faith. I'm a human guy; I get emotional. I cannot understand why God would permit something like this." During the war there were numerous righteous gentiles who saved tens of thousands of Jews and other persecuted persons.

A couple of years ago, when I, together with my young family, went to Israel, we visited Yad VeShem -- a memorial to the six million Jews who perished. As we got off the bus, we walked through a beautifully treed area that had plaques on it, and these plaques had names of gentiles who, at great personal risk, saved tens of thousand of Jews. One of these righteous gentiles, of course, was Schindler, whose heroic deeds have been perpetuated by the movie Schindler's List. I know that many of you have seen that movie and were moved by it. I recall speaking to the leader of the Reform Party in this House, who had just seen the movie, and he described what an impact it had on him.

In this House, the former member for the Abbotsford riding, Harry De Jong, came up to me after one of my speeches on this subject and told me passionately how his family had saved Jews in Holland. Yes, there were righteous gentiles. These righteous gentiles will be forever remembered in the annals of history as standing up against Nazi tyranny. However, on the whole, the world's political leaders and the world stood by with indifference.

A couple of weeks ago, a memorial took place at the Beth Israel Synagogue, of which I'm a member. Although I have attended many of these memorials, this was the most moving one. It was attended by over 400 people, including the hon. member for Vancouver-Langara. I'm sure he would agree with me that the testimony given by the survivors of the death camps and their children was most moving. One of those survivors was a prominent philanthropist and leader in the Jewish community, Mr. Leon Kahn. In his book, No Time to Mourn -- a true story of a Jewish partisan fighter -- Mr. Kahn talked about how he lost his entire family when he was 17 years old. The book starts off by listing over 30 members of his family who were slaughtered, including his father, Shel, his mother, Miriam, his brother Benjamin and his sister Frieda. I quote how he witnessed the death of his beloved sister: "I saw her fall as her pursuer posed his blade over her, and as the bayonet entered my poor sister's defenceless body."

Leon, in his book, talked about his dying father and what he said to him, while he held his father in his arms:

"Remember I loved you dearly, just as your mother, brother and sister loved you. Even though we are all gone, you are not alone, and someday you will have a family of your own. Tell them about your murdered family and what became of us. Tell your children that they had grandparents who would have loved them if they had allowed them to."

His father went on and said:

"I know you'll survive and begin a new life. Never forget who you are, and be proud of your Jewish heritage. Teach your children to keep their faith and to practise it as part of their daily lives."

[ Page 14047 ]

I urge all members to attend these memorials every year, to speak to the survivors and the children of the survivors, and to visit the Vancouver Holocaust Centre and the Jewish Community Centre. The centre has been established to break down the walls of prejudice and intolerance through education and remembrance of the Holocaust. Meet for yourself the many survivors who are now living in Vancouver and learn firsthand what it was like to go through this infamous period in our history.

I remember when I was five years old my single-parent mother took some of those survivors into our house, shortly after the war ended, and how I would hear the screams in the middle of the night as they would awaken from their nightmares. I remember only too well the discipline that one of those survivors meted out to me when he saw that I was disrespectful to my mother, and the anger in his eyes and the intensity. It probably was meant to be a well-meaning spanking. Whenever that particular survivor sees me, he approaches me and apologizes profusely, and tears come to his eyes.

Could this genocide happen again? One would have thought that the world would have learned a lesson after witnessing such unspeakable brutality. No, the answer is an obvious no. History is repeating itself before us. Mass murders continue and continue. And the world watches, just like the world watched the destruction of European Jewry. Genocidal bloodletting and mass slaughters have taken place in Cambodia, Biafra, Bosnia, Rwanda and elsewhere. They do not approach the Holocaust in scale, but they vividly show humankind's inhumanity to our fellow human beings.

One need not go any further than to your corner news-stand and pick up this week's edition of Maclean's magazine. Look at the cover, hon. members; look at the Nazi flag. Read the article "The Enemy Within." I'm sure the hon. member for Chilliwack will be appalled to read about one of his constituents, Charles Scott, the colonel of the white supremacist Aryan Nations. Listen to him talk about the evil Jews who are the literal line to Satan on Earth. Scott will be recognized for his efforts by being named, in July at the Aryan Congress in the United States, as the Aryan of the year.

Let us not forget the Scotts, the Keegstras, the Zundels, the McAleers and what they stand for. Frankly, I didn't find too much sympathy for Mr. Zundel last night, when he got on television proclaiming that he was a law-abiding citizen and bemoaning the fact that he lost his home to fire. Mr. Zundel is a Holocaust-denier who glorifies Adolf Hitler.

Hon. Speaker and hon. members, last night a survivor of Auschwitz, Mrs. Bronia Sonnenschein, came over to our house and spoke of her experiences. Bronia has spoken to thousands of school children in B.C. throughout the years. I urge hon. members to encourage their school districts to have Bronia and other speakers speak to the students in their ridings. These arrangements can be made through the Vancouver Holocaust Centre.

She was a prisoner of Auschwitz; that was the largest of the death camps. More than one million people lost their lives at this camp. Nine out or ten were Jewish. At one time, the four largest gas chambers could each hold two thousand people. Bronia related how they were transported to the camp in cattle cars. For five days they travelled, 50 in a car with no food and little water; many died on the way. When the survivors arrived, they saw the smokestacks belching the remnants of European Jewry. A sign at the entrance read: "Work makes one free." They were greeted by SS physician Dr. Josef Mengele, who decided who was to be exterminated immediately. Those were the old, the sick and the children.

Bronia is a very dignified woman. She related how those who were spared immediate death were dehumanized. They immediately had all their hair shaved off and a registration number tattooed on their left forearm. They were then ordered to strip naked and stand in the courtyard, often in freezing rain and snow. The men were forced to wear ragged striped pants and jackets, and the women workdresses. They had no change of clothing, and they slept in the same clothes they worked in. They were always hungry. Food was a watered soup made with rotten vegetables and a few ounces of bread. Each day was a struggle for survival under unbearable conditions. They were housed in primitive barracks with no windows and no bathroom, only a bucket. Each barrack held 36 wooden bunkbeds, and inmates were squeezed five or six across a wooden plank. As many as 500 inmates were in a single barrack. Most of these prisoners survived but a few months.

I asked Bronia what we as legislators could do. I told her that I was going to be speaking on the Holocaust today, and she said we must educate about the Holocaust. We must support educational institutions such as the Holocaust Centre, and we must be forever diligent on what is going on in our ridings and root out racism whenever and wherever it arises.

Let us value human life throughout the world and recognize the fact that we are responsible for the well-being not only of our family but of our neighbours and all humankind.

I wish to dedicate this reading from one of the survivors of Auschwitz, which is found in the prayer book of the synagogue I belong to. This reading is dedicated to the Bronia Sonnenscheins, the Leon Kahns and the 15 million martyrs who perished in the Holocaust:

"Not far from us, flames were leaping up from a ditch, gigantic flames. They were burning something. A lorry drew up at the pit and delivered its load: little children, babies. Around us everyone was weeping. Someone began to cite the kaddish. I do not know if it has ever happened before in the long history of the Jews that people recited the prayer for the dead for themselves. Never shall I forget the first night in the camp. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a sun and sky."

The Speaker: Before recognizing the next speaker, the hon. member for Richmond Centre has a matter.

D. Symons: I ask leave to make an introduction.

Leave granted.

D. Symons: Seated in the gallery today are 55 grade 10 students from J.N. Burnett Junior Secondary School in my riding of Richmond Centre. Considering the debate that's going on this afternoon, I think it is much more appropriate for them, possibly, than what usually goes on in the House at this time. They are accompanied by several parents as well as their teachers, Mr. Lambert, Ms. Morgan and Ms. Meier. Would the House please make them welcome.

[3:45]

R. Chisholm: The first thing I'd like to do is to thank the member for Vancouver-Fraserview for his words and thoughts.

[ Page 14048 ]

VE-Day, the fiftieth anniversary: just what does that mean? There's a wall outside this chamber on which hangs 24 pictures, all of them of Victoria Cross winners from British Columbia. Fourteen are from the First World War, and eight are from the Second World War. The immense personal sacrifices of these British Columbian heroes can best be described by these dispatches, which were sent to the Canadian Defence Department, and I'll quote from them. From the Admiralty, May 18, 1943:

"The King has been graciously pleased to approve the award of the Victoria Cross to the late Acting Capt. Frederick Thornton Peters, DSO, DSC, Royal Navy, for valour in taking HMS Walney, in an enterprise of desperate hazard, into the harbour of Oran on the 8th November, 1942. Captain Peters led his force through the boom towards the jetty in the face of point-blank fire from shore batteries, a destroyer and a cruiser. Blinded in one eye, he alone of the 17 officers and men on the bridge survived. The Walney reached the jetty, disabled and ablaze, and went down with her colours flying."

"Lt. Robert Hampton Gray, VC, DSC, RCN VR. He swept in, oblivious of the concentrated fire, and made straight for his target. His aircraft was hit, and hit again, but he kept on. As he came close to the destroyer, his plane caught fire, but he pressed on to within 50 feet of the ship and let go his bombs. He scored at least one direct hit, probably more. The destroyer sank almost immediately. Lieutenant Gray did not return. He had given of his life at the very end of his fearless run in to bomb."

Those are just two stories for us to contemplate.

It is a great honour for me to address this Legislature on this, the fiftieth anniversary of VE-Day. During this past week, as the world has reflected on the days preceding the end of World War II in Europe, it has become very apparent to me that the memories of the war have remained strong in the minds of the Canadian people. This past week has been a time of remembrance, regret, pride, honour, joy, celebration, peace and reconciliation for many Canadians.

As some of you know, I served in the Canadian forces for 27 years. My father fought in the Second World War, and my uncles died in the Second World War, so though VE-Day means different things to different people, it holds special meaning for me. World War II took a tremendous toll in human lives and material destruction. Due to World War II, the world developed better and more efficient and more effective ways of killing people -- goals hardly worth the pursuit. The use of human and economic resources in their commitment to fight was greater than in any other war in human history.

On this, the fiftieth anniversary of VE-Day, we must also take time to thank those women who, through their tireless devotion to Canada, kept the country going while their loved ones went to Europe to fight the war. Without the women of Canada, there would have been no one left to work in the factories and businesses. Canada owes the women of the war a great debt of gratitude for single-handedly keeping the Canadian economy and wartime industry going in a time of world crisis.

The Second World War began in 1939 and ended in 1945, leaving the world with the terror of the atomic bomb and the long-range rocket, which so epitomize the latter half of this century. The cost of the war was staggering. In all, 61 countries with 1.7 billion people -- approximately three-quarters of the world's population of the time -- took part. A total of 110 million people were mobilized for military service. At one time, the British Empire -- Canada and the rest of the Commonwealth -- had 8.72 million people mobilized for fighting. The financial costs of the war were estimated at roughly one trillion 1940 U.S. dollars. The United States spent $341 billion; Germany spent $272 billion; the Soviet Union, $192 billion; and the Commonwealth, $120 billion.

These figures, however, do not come close to the actual cost of World War II. The Soviet Union estimated that it lost 30 percent of its national wealth. The cost to Japan was estimated at $562 billion. The bombing and shelling of Germany produced four billion cubic metres of rubble. The cost to industry in lost manpower was staggering. Canada's contribution to the war effort was remarkable for a country of only 11 million people. Canada's contribution to the war effort won it the respect and admiration of other nations, which has lasted to this day.

But perhaps more devastating than the economic costs of World War II was the cost to the world in human lives. Not including the more than six million Jews killed in the Holocaust, the human cost of World War II is estimated to have been approximately 55 million people. Twenty-five million of those were military personnel, and 30 million were civilians. Add to that the Holocaust victims and we're up to 61 million people -- that's approximately double the population of Canada today. I don't know if the English language has the words to accurately describe the sheer horror of that reality. The U.S.S.R. lost the most people, with 20 million soldiers and civilians killed. In total, the Allies lost 44 million soldiers and civilians, and the Axis lost 11 million. More than 45,000 Canadians gave their lives in the cause of peace and freedom.

The scars of this human tragedy are still visible today in the people who have been hospitalized since the war, in the people who were disabled in the war and in those who still suffer the mental torment that the war's witnesses have to bear. Unexploded war munitions, which have remained dormant for 50 years, are still being stumbled on by innocent European civilians who are being killed or maimed when they go off. There are still thousands of unexploded mines and bombs scattered throughout the forests and fields of Europe.

During my 27 years with the Canadian military, I was stationed across Canada and Europe. I've been in the war zones and on missions of mercy. I have witnessed firsthand the horrors of war, the rewards of peace and what little value some cultures place on life. Though I believe General Patton said it best when he stated that war is hell, as a former soldier I can tell you that I believe the men who died so that we could live free would not want us to feel as if we owed them anything. No, I believe that those brave men would want us to respect and honour the ideals they were willing to lay down their lives for: democracy, honesty, merit, fairness, equality, tolerance, integrity and freedom -- freedom from persecution, freedom of thought, freedom of religion and freedom from prejudice, those very ideals that make our country the best country in the world. As the Good Book states: "Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." May they rest in peace.

[D. Lovick in the chair.]

When I was stationed in Europe, I had the honour of dedicating memorials to our soldiers in France -- in Normandy, St. Aubin and Cannes -- in Holland and throughout Europe. The price Canadians paid to liberate Europe has not gone unnoticed by Europeans. There are many streets, buildings and prominent landmarks named after Canadian heroes 

[ Page 14049 ]

of World War II. Yet here in Canada there are very few landmarks named after our war heroes. It seems that Canadian politicians would rather name their monuments after themselves rather than after those who died fighting for the freedom of our country and the world.

I felt the horror and sadness of war as I walked along the dirt lanes of Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz. The sheer lunacy of war and its effects on the innocent can be witnessed as one explores the madness of the Holocaust. The Final Solution, as it was called, began in 1941, when the Jews of Germany were marked by a yellow star and tens of thousands were deported to ghettos in Poland, where camps equipped with facilities for gassing people were being erected. I have seen the gas chambers; I have stood in them and tried to feel what those who stood in the rooms during the war must have felt. I saw the ovens used to dispose of the bodies so that the gruesome evidence of innocent human destruction could be concealed from the world. I viewed these things as a soldier, and as a soldier, a person and a Canadian I felt sickened by the sheer magnitude of the horror. As I speak to you today, I am reminded of a memorial I saw at Bergen-Belsen. The inscription on the memorial, which I have never forgotten, read: "The earth shall not conceal the blood that was shed upon thee."

As I walked through the camps, I noticed that there was no grass or even weeds growing, and no birds sang -- it was eerie. I found out that this was because the soil in the concentration camps could not support the growth of vegetation due to the excessive amount of lime that was used. We all know that was used to help decompose the bodies that were buried beneath the soil in the death camps. I also noticed hundreds of earthen mounds, some of them considerably bigger than others, spread throughout the concentration camps. When I approached them, I saw that each mound had a marker with a plaque on it. On these individual plaques were the inscriptions: "10,000 dead lie buried here"; "15,000 dead lie buried here"; "20,000 dead lie buried here"; and so on. I noticed hundreds of these very same earthen mounds stretching as far as the eye could see.

The first transports to these camps were usually filled with women, children and older men who could not work. The arrival points in Poland were Klumhof, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Lublin and Auschwitz. One hundred and fifty thousand Jewish people died in Klumhof; 600,000 in Belzec; 250,000 in Sobibor; and 800,000 in Treblinka. In Auschwitz the Jewish dead totalled more than a million. The victims of Auschwitz came from all over Europe -- from Norway, France, Italy, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Poland and Germany. To keep the evidence of this horror from the world, the Nazis built large crematoriums. The Nazis so fooled the world that in 1944 the Auschwitz death camp was photographed by allied reconnaissance aircraft in search of industrial targets. Its factories were bombed, but the gas chambers were not.

The free world only began to discover the horror after the liberation of Europe and the end of the war. VE-Day is also about making sure that the world never forgets, but we must advance peace and reconciliation now. In 1945 there rose a flower of hope out of the madness of war. One and a half months after VE-Day, the official charter of the United Nations was signed by delegates representing 50 nations, to "make a peace which will...banish the scourge and terror of war." The hope was that the world would learn from war's heavy lessons; however, it seems as if we have not learned as much as we should have.

In recent years the world has again witnessed a rise in hate groups that want to emulate the horrific policies of the Nazis in the Second World War. The most recent terrorist bombing in the United States of the federal building in Oklahoma City has been linked to right-wing extremist groups that advocate hatred and intolerance of people. The sickening spectre of genocide reared its head in Rwanda, it is occurring in Bosnia and Croatia, and it threatens to resurface again in Burundi.

The United Nations has been kept very busy since its inception in 1945. The first United Nations peacekeeping force was organized in the Middle East in response to the Suez crisis of 1956. Since 1974 the Middle East has been an annual item on the UN agenda. In 1960 Canadian peacekeepers were sent to help the UN resolve hostilities in the Congo, now known as Zaire. In 1961 heavy losses were incurred by the United Nations peacekeeping forces when Secretary General Hammarskjold was killed in an aircraft crash while trying to bring about a ceasefire in hostilities. The UN presence undoubtedly helped the Congo emerge as a united country.

Since 1964 a United Nations peacekeeping force has been stationed in Cyprus to serve as a deterrent to open fighting between the Greek and the Turkish communities. Canadian peacekeepers have been part of the Cyprus peacekeeping force since 1978. In 1978 to help stabilize the situation in southern Lebanon, after Israeli forces crossed the border to retaliate against a Palestinian raid, a UN interim force was established, and Canadian peacekeepers were part of that force. In 1990 Iraq's invasion of Kuwait rallied the world, through the United Nations, to use all necessary means to expel Iraq from Kuwait. Canadian troops played an integral part in the Persian Gulf War, which brought peace back to Kuwait. More recently, Canadian peacekeepers have risked their lives in Ethiopia, Rwanda, Croatia and Bosnia.

It is apparent that the Canadian government and the Canadian people have committed themselves to the establishment of world peace through their consistent commitment to the United Nations of both troops and money. Like any organization, the United Nations needs money to run. As a commitment to world peace, the member countries of the United Nations agreed to pay a levy when they first signed the UN charter. The UN's 185 member states were supposed to pay their agreed-upon levies in January, but only 25 to 30 of them paid on time, and some have not paid at all. This month, the United States -- which pays one-quarter of the UN's regular budget -- was in arrears for $527 million. The UN Secretary General, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, citing the persistent failure of the United Nations members to pay their levies as one of the main frustrations, has recently stated that the United Nations is bankrupt.

[4:00]

Hon. Speaker, this evidence does not support the belief that the world has learned its lessons. Canada has always paid its contribution promptly. Canada must apply more pressure to ensure that other United Nations member states pay their fair share toward the peace of the world. War and confrontation seem to be everywhere -- even in Canada, where we're best known for peace. Twenty-five percent of the country is seriously considering leaving the federation to go it alone.

[ Page 14050 ]

Hitler was able to steer Europe down the road to war and destruction in 1939. But he could not have accomplished this had it not been for the tacit approval of Hitler and his policies by the people of Germany. As individuals in society, we must all take responsibility for ensuring that society is never again steered down the path of war by individuals like Hitler. After all, a dictator can only be effective when society allows him or her to be. Society must take responsibility for its wars and for its peace.

I am sure that I speak for all in this room when I say that we are for peace and reconciliation. Though parts of the world are still at war against each other, there is hope. Hope lies in the eyes of the innocent children. It lies in every decent, caring human being that wants to see an end to war and conflict. It lies in education. It lies in the United Nations. And, most of all, it lies in each politician, including those in this chamber. The Cold War is over. The Berlin wall has been torn down. The world's nuclear arsenal is being dismantled. The countries of the world are becoming more dependent upon one another to remain free from war while remaining open for peaceful business.

On this day, let us put aside our differences to remember all those who died so that we could be here. Let us honour their memories by remembering what they died for. Let us remember the lessons learned. Let us, each one, regardless of political affiliation, commit to supporting and practising the ideals so cherished by our soldiers past and present. Let us commit to supporting the United Nations in its effort to foster world peace. Let us hope that we never again have to go through a war as horrific as World War II to relearn lessons that were supposed to have been learned after World War I, the war that was to end all wars.

May the peace of our soldiers resting in the fields of Beny-sur-Mer, Sai Wan Bay, Holten, Bergen-op-Zoom, Runnymede, Moro River and Flanders never again be disturbed by the sounds of war. As veterans have said: "Those that died have given. We that live have the responsibility to remember and to learn." And still, 50 years later, people like Ernst Zundel state that it did not happen. Naziism and white supremacists, such as we see in Chilliwack, rise again. We must ensure that we educate our children so they understand and we remain ever vigilant for the future. It is time to forgive, but it is not time to forget.

M. de Jong: I have only participated in one war -- and participated with all members of this chamber and British Columbia -- and hailed the victory that we achieved in that war, one that was achieved for the most part without bloodshed and without firing a shot. That was the successful ending of the Cold War. We had an opportunity to fight and win that bloodless battle because of the achievements and accomplishments of others that went before us but who were not so fortunate in terms of avoiding actual conflict on the battlefield.

My family comes from Holland. We have been fortunate this afternoon to hear, in much detail, the privations suffered by people in that country during the five long war years. For many years, my parents wouldn't talk about the war. I suspect that that reluctance to discuss such very terrible events was not unique to them. It is an attitude shared by survivors of the war and of the concentration camps. Slowly, over a period of time, my mother and my father would relate snippets of what it was like, but only very slowly, and only with some reluctance and a great feeling of sadness.

That day, May 10, 1940, when the German armies invaded.... It only took four days for the proclamation from the Queen of Holland announcing that the government had left the country and relocated to England to avoid capitulating to the invading forces from Germany. It was only several years ago that my parents were able to explain to me the tremendous feeling of national sadness that overcame that country when on May 14, the national anthem was played for the last time on the radio, and no one knew if or when it would be heard again.

On that day, five years of occupation began. It's only been very recently that I've heard about the privation suffered by particularly those in the cities, where my mother was raised. My father resided on a farm; he at least could boast of having enough to eat. That was not something the majority of the residents of that country enjoyed, my mother included. We know the stories of how these people lined up for a little pail of coal and a bit of food. My mother tells stories about begging at the hospital for potato and carrot peelings to make a bit of soup.

What's always struck me is that my parents were both born in 1928. They would have been 12 years old when the war started. In the five years of occupation, they were 12 years old to 17 years old, which are formative years in anyone's life, certainly in my life and, I suspect, in the lives of everyone in this chamber and everyone who is listening. To have been denied their liberty during those five formative years.... About a year ago we heard from the former member for Abbotsford about how the war impacted on his life and his family's life; he would have been of a similar age. To think of the impact that must have had on a generation of people....

I have tried, during the course of my 30-odd years, to try to gain some appreciation of what it must have been like to live under occupation, to have one's freedom denied and, conversely, to fight on behalf of a liberating army to bring that freedom to people. I have visited the sites. I have gone to Dieppe; I have walked along the shores at night when fireworks were exploding in the sky, not bombs, and I thought to myself what it would have been like to be a young man landing on those beaches and looking at those towering cliffs, where the pillboxes still stand today, now rusting, providing shelter for the tourists that gather there. I looked at those towering cliffs and wondered what it must have been like to be charging up those beaches with artillery rounds and machine guns firing away and cutting down thousands upon thousands of colleagues, comrades, soldiers. What would it have been like?

I've gone up the road to Dunkirk and on the way stopped at Vimy, site of a battle in a previous conflict -- the first "war to end all wars." I've toured the trenches, seen the signs for undetonated bombs which someone mentioned earlier in this chamber. Now, 75 years later, to still read the signs, "Danger -- Unexploded Mines, Unexploded Bombs," and to hear the stories of why there are sheep marching around those sites and how every year or two one of them meets its demise by stumbling upon an undetonated bomb.... I've travelled up through Holland to try to gain some appreciation of what it was like for those living under occupation and for those trying to end it.

My mother tells of how, on one particular day in 1943, she was lined up for coal. There were 11 children in her family and they took turns, because they usually had to line up for 

[ Page 14051 ]

about 12 hours to bring enough coal home to generate a little bit of heat. And though it was forbidden to talk about matters relating to the Dutch administration, the Dutch government, she still says with a smile how the word spread very quickly that a princess -- Princess Margriet -- had been born in Ottawa on land that was granted to the Dutch government, and how the word spread through the line like wildfire. They all ran home to tell their parents that a princess had been born. The link between this country and the Netherlands, if it hadn't already existed, certainly formed in her mind the day that their princess was born in some foreign land called Canada.

But things got worse from '43 to '44. Conditions in occupied Holland steadily deteriorated as people and property were seized and transported to Germany to help the Nazi war effort. There was help on the way -- the D-Day landings, the Canadians. The First Canadian Army returned to Europe, fought its way up the coast, went back to Cannes, returned triumphantly to Dieppe -- site of a tragedy two years earlier -- and then into Holland: the cities in the Limburg province where they first entered, and then on the west, in Brabant, and in the towns Eindhoven, Tilburg, 's Hertogenbosch. All of these towns were liberated by Canadian servicemen -- the men and women that we saw and honoured yesterday and that I trust we will continue to honour in the years to come.

I've taken that route and tried to trace the steps of the First Canadian Army as they worked their way up the coast -- terrible fighting in the Beveland Islands. I visited the grave sites again to try to appreciate the significance -- the scale, the magnitude -- of what took place, now 50 years ago.

I searched in vain, though in the town of Veghel I stumbled upon where my own grandfather is buried. I didn't know him well, but he took his family through the war -- 11 young children and a wife. There's no grand military cemetery, but in the small churchyard cemetery where he is buried I attended his grave, and there beside him were six Canadian graves -- six young Canadian men in land now tended to by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

Like many people, I stood and looked, read the names, read the birthdates and saw that none of them had reached 25 years of age. Yet here they were, buried far from home in a little graveyard behind a little church in a little town called Veghel that no one in Canada will likely ever hear of and that I wouldn't have heard of but for a family connection. But those are the heroes of an era, of a terrible event that so profoundly affected my family.

[4:15]

I didn't realize until several years ago several things about the war and how it impacted upon my mother and father. I'll offer two anecdotes, because if I had any kind of appreciation for war.... I don't think I do, but if I had any kind of appreciation for what happened during that conflict, it relates to these two anecdotes. When wars are over, everyone was a member of the underground and no one was a collaborator. Of course, the truth is something different. My parents weren't members of the underground, but as young children they were occasionally utilized for underground purposes.

My father's job during the war, he tells me.... He was on a farm on the west coast, near a town called Haarlem. His job was to infrequently row downed allied servicemen across a river in an attempt to get them back to England. He didn't do it often; it didn't happen often. He wasn't privy to some great underground railroad; he didn't know where they came from, and he didn't know where they were going. His only job was to put these fellows in a boat, row them across to the other side and then go on his way. But the trade-off for him was that it gave him a certain amount of status, because as a 14-year-old he got a German pistol. That was just wonderful, because no one else had a German pistol.

On one particular occasion, he had a Canadian air serviceman, an air officer, who had been shot down and was trying to make his way back to England. It was during the night, and they were rowing across -- he was rowing the boat. They were about halfway across the river and all hell broke loose. Searchlights came on and the sirens began to wail. My father froze with panic because the airman, if he was captured, had the unfortunate prospect of spending another period of time in one of the stalags. My father's prospects would not have been so good, as a civilian. He was terrified; he soiled his pants -- and I can assure you, hon. Speaker, that he does not use those words when he describes the story to me. He was thrown in the bottom of the little rowboat. The serviceman grabbed the oars, took him over to the other side, grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and threw him in the hayloft, where they stayed for the rest of the night.

The serviceman went off the next day on his way back to England; my father never learned what became of him. My father was so frightened that he stayed in the hayloft for the next four days and four nights. He never did it again; he was that terrified. He had friends who had been captured, and he knew what became of them. That's the human side of being in a war and living under occupation.

My mother's story relates to that day that we are celebrating, specifically that day we are celebrating this weekend: victory in Europe and the liberation. She resided with her 11 brothers and sisters in a town in Holland, and they lived through what is referred to there as "the hungry winter." Canadian troops had been stalled in the southern part of the country. The attack was stalled until the spring, and all of the resources -- food, coal -- were being diverted to Germany. By April, starvation was causing the deaths of thousands of people in Holland.

On the day that Canadian troops arrived in her town.... There are pictures of her townsfolk out on the streets, laying tulips on the armoured vehicles and celebrating their arrival. There are no pictures of her or her family or many of her neighbours; they were inside, too weak to move. They had been surviving on a diet of less than 300 calories a day of ground tulip bulbs. We've all heard the stories.

My mother's memory of that day was not of climbing on board an armoured vehicle or going to a dance or jumping through the streets; she and her family weren't physically capable of those exertions. Her memory is perhaps even more profound. A Canadian soldier -- whose first name she knew; she never learned the second name -- came into the house with a packet of biscuits. He counted the number of people in the house, gave instructions to my mother's father -- my grandfather -- to provide these biscuits to members of the family: one every three hours, no more. He came back three days in a row to ensure that the family could be nursed back to health before turning them over to the Red Cross. In my mother's mind, and indeed in fact, that Canadian serviceman saved her life and the lives of her family.

[ Page 14052 ]

I knew that story many years ago. What I learned several years ago is the extent of the gratitude that my mother felt for that soldier and the Canadian troops that liberated her country of origin. I only learned of it when a letter arrived from a unit in Ontario to acknowledge that my mother had spent the better part of 25 years, following her arrival in this country, trying to locate that soldier. She never did, but she had located the regiment, and throughout those 25 years she had consistently sent a small donation. She was a mother in a family that struggled like most families, and it would not have been a great amount, but they were notifying her to thank her for her generosity. When I asked her, I said: "You never told me." She said: "I never could. There's a link between that regiment, that soldier and me: he saved my life."

So when she says thank you and my father says thank you, they're saying: "Thank you for giving us life, for giving us our freedom." And if I can ever claim to have an appreciation of the significance of that, it rests in the tears that flow from my mother's and father's eyes when they think about what the soldiers from their now-adopted country did to offer them a chance to live and prosper in their new country. So for them, our family and the countless families from across this province, I say thank you to those who provided the sacrifice -- in many cases, the ultimate sacrifice -- to allow us to be here.

L. Hanson: I listened with great interest to the previous speakers, particularly the MLA for Vancouver-Fraserview. Some of the horrors that war visited upon people are so terrible that they're hard to really comprehend.

Fifty years ago today, millions of people filled the streets of major cities. Servicemen and servicewomen embraced in the streets, and speechless crowds listened in awe to the victory speech of Winston Churchill. We vividly remember these images of the public celebrations, but there were other images far removed from the media's eye that we in Canada did not view.

At the start of the war I was ten years old, and I was 15 at the end of the war. I lived in a community in British Columbia. I think most of you know it; it's Vernon. The war was very close to our community because we had one of the major training centres for our troops who were sent overseas. As a matter of fact, I believe that at one time the city of Vernon had more service people in it than civilians. So you can see the impact of the service people and the war; their influence on the community was tremendous.

Another interesting factor was that an awful lot of our servicemen were shipped overseas from the training camp at Vernon. They would leave there and be sent overseas to various sectors of the war. A lot of those service people's families were left in the community, because that is where they came to be with their husbands as long as they possibly could. So they spent the war there, and it was almost a commonplace happening to learn of some husband or brother who was killed overseas. So we in Vernon had a very close view of the war and some of the things that happened, from people who experienced it directly.

I must say that communications then were not quite as sophisticated as they are today, and if we had today's communications technology in those days, we could probably have gained a lot more knowledge. But suffice it to say that I, as a young boy, started to recognize the horrors of war and the anguish and grief that it imposed on people I was very familiar with. It wasn't until later that we really started to learn of some of the atrocities that people were capable of doing to other people. Unfortunately, it strikes me that some of those things are still occurring today, to a lesser degree. It is a lesson to us in society that we must be ever vigilant. Every time there is an infringement on our rights to free speech or free thinking, we must be vigilant, because that's where that grew from.

I know that the troops in the front lines greeted victory with solemn relief. After the years of battle for such a noble cause, VE-Day could not be translated into instant personal gratification. The fight for freedom was for the greater good, not for the personal gain or reward of the individual. British Columbia had more than 90,000 people voluntarily join the three services, which, on a per capita basis, I believe is probably larger than any other province. While our province did not sustain physical damage from the war in Europe, many of our citizens still carry the memories of those vicious battles.

I have another personal note to add. During the war, when the soldiers were training in our area, there were a lot of shells, mortars, and so on used. Not all exploded. Since the war, we have had two or three very sad cases where young children have found them and been severely injured as a result of finding them.

We here today must pay tribute and honour those who fought for freedom and those who gave the ultimate sacrifice -- their lives. The citizens of the Netherlands -- whom many of the members have spoken about today -- have not forgotten. To this day they honour and remember with gratitude the many Canadians who pushed their way, against all odds, into their homeland in early 1945 and freed the citizens from an occupation of five long years. The people, and the battles they fought in war, must never be forgotten. As Canadians, and as those who value freedom for ourselves and for others who may live thousands of miles away, we must never forget.

Today in the Netherlands, both young and old celebrate VE-Day, as they recognize and pay tribute to those who fought for their country. Today in Canada, we must continue to build upon our memories and never let them wane with time. Our younger citizens must continue to learn of our wartime history and the contributions that previous generations of Canadians have made fighting for other countries and other citizens. The memories must be passed from generation to generation. We must never forget.

[4:30]

T. Perry: It goes without saying that in this debate and in the words of the motion we thank all of those veterans: those who survived the war, those who did not, those who worked on the home fronts, those in the merchant marine, and the women, who are seldom mentioned or even thought about, but who were also a critical component of the war effort in every country that the war affected. It goes without saying that we acknowledge and thank all of them.

I spent the weekend trying to think what I might say that would be more meaningful than mere platitudes of thanks. I've listened carefully to the moving speeches this afternoon, particularly those of the members for Alberni, Vancouver-Fraserview and Chilliwack, and the thoughtful comments of other members. On the weekend I read through some letters that my father, an American army medical corps veteran, had written to my mother. I thought hard about those letters and 

[ Page 14053 ]

what I might learn from them. I spoke with my father-in-law, a Canadian army veteran and a prisoner of war who barely survived the war, and asked him what he would say if he could speak here. I'm going to try and convey some of that in speaking to this resolution, which is a very thoughtfully worded resolution, one which should give all of us a great deal to think about not only today but on an ongoing basis.

I want to begin by quoting the German pastor Martin Niemoller -- a famous quotation, one you will know, Mr. Speaker, and one worth memorizing and repeating often, not so much for its particularity but for its generality. Pastor Niemoller wrote after the war:

"When Hitler attacked the Jews, I was not a Jew; therefore I was not concerned. And when Hitler attacked the Catholics, I was not a Catholic; and therefore I was not concerned. And when Hitler attacked the unions and the industrialists, I was not a member of the unions, and I was not concerned. Then Hitler attacked me and the Protestant Church, and there was nobody left to be concerned."

I'm not sure if that's the exact quotation -- that's from the library's Oxford dictionary, quoted from the Congressional Record of the United States -- but if it's not precise, it's got the drift. There's a very general message there, which I'll try to explore in my remarks.

Born in 1951, I grew up in the boom that followed the war. I saw only the prosperity, initially in Los Angeles and later here in British Columbia. I never suffered in any direct way from the war. Yet I grew up very much with the memories of the war, very different from those outlined by other members. My father was only a partial combatant; he was seldom exposed to direct danger. He saw a lot, and I think he learned a great deal. But what I heard growing up was not so much the direct account of the suffering as a thoughtful analysis of what might have been done to prevent it.

My father was born in North Carolina, and he was exposed to the injustice of Jim Crow in the American South. By the time he had won a Rhodes scholarship and studied at Oxford, he was exposed to the fascists in Britain and Sir Oswald Mosley. It stings me to use an honorific, but it's important to remember that Oswald Mosley -- the leader of the British fascist party -- was knighted. He was a man who commanded respect in his time from the British aristocracy and the power elite. Those who have forgotten that may remember the recent movie -- the name slips my mind -- about the butler in the mansion....

An Hon. Member: Remains of the Day.

T. Perry: Remains of the Day, which gives a rare literary insight into how respectable fascist ideology was in those days in certain circles.

He came back from Oxford toward the end of the Spanish Civil War, or more properly, the prewar of naziism and fascism against an elected government in Spain. He had learned from the relative proximity of England what was going on in Spain. Those in America also knew of Guernica. In Canada, a few knew of it from the firsthand testimony of Norman Bethune and others, from the firsthand testimony of the thousands of people who served in the Mackenzie-Papineau battalion -- people who were in the vanguard of the fight against international fascism and were never recognized by their own government. They are still not recognized, not allowed to parade in veterans' parades, given no pension and are hounded rather than honoured. There are very few of them left, but it's not too late for the federal government to pay them the respect they are due. One of the last survivors, I think, was even at the birthday celebration in honour of the member for Coquitlam-Maillardville. They could still be tracked down, as could the merchant marine members who were denied pensions and, until very recently, were even denied recognition for the exceptionally brave sacrifices they made in supplying Britain during the Battle of the Atlantic.

Well, my dad came back from England and he, along with my mother and my grandmother, did what they could to support the Spanish government and oppose Franco and the Germans who were behind him. I remember my dad telling me a story of foolishly shouting out an epithet -- somewhat the way we do in here on less dignified occasions -- at a rally of American fascists in New York City and being bloodied and knocked to the ground. Perhaps he might have been killed if he'd not been rescued by members of the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union -- trade unionists who were under left-wing influence, perhaps communist -- who saw what was happening, recognized it for what it really meant, were prepared to rescue a rather arrogant, foolish, naive young man like my dad, and were prepared to fight, both in the Abraham Lincoln Battalion at that time and later in World War II.

My dad and my mother ensured that as an adolescent I read a book that I don't think very many other people were reading at that time: Ted Allan's biography of Norman Bethune, The Scalpel, the Sword. In those days it was not fashionable to be friendly with China. In fact, Prime Minister Diefenbaker maintained trade relations but never dared to recognize China officially. He was scorned by President Kennedy and the American establishment for even maintaining trade. To get anything made in China one had to shop almost surreptitiously at the China arts and craft shop on Hastings Street in Vancouver. Although Bethune was known in those days to virtually everyone in China, both before and after the Cultural Revolution, there weren't many Canadians who knew about him -- there still aren't. But my parents ensured that I read that biography, and that I read other histories of the Spanish Civil War.

My dad told me something about his own experiences -- not a great deal; he never liked to talk about it a lot. He showed us pictures taken at Buchenwald after it was liberated, or as the member for Vancouver-Fraserview more accurately described it, after the occupying and liberating American armies stumbled upon it. Yesterday morning I reread my father's letter written a week or two after the camp was turned over to the prisoners, and even in reading that letter one can see that what the member for Vancouver-Fraserview told us was accurate.

I had always remembered that my father was a liberator of the camp. In fact, he visited it a week or two after it was liberated, on the recommendation of General Patton, the commanding general of the Third Army, who wanted all of his men to see it. What my father's letter describes.... It's a letter that's now in the archives of the holocaust museum in Vancouver, along with the original photographs.

What it describes is that the camp inmates were now running the camp. They had elected a committee to run it democratically. They had taken over a hospital used by the Germans to treat the SS guards, which was clean and had 

[ Page 14054 ]

laboratory facilities in "beautiful condition," as my father describes them in the letter. There they were trying to look after those few survivors who were desperately ill but had a chance to survive. Others were dying at the rate of 50 per day.

Evidently even then, judging from the letter, the primary American army effort was not to salvage the survivors. My father was a doctor, and he was working somewhere else -- presumably looking after medically sick American soldiers. I had never read that letter before. My father died four years ago, and his individual testimony will remain a mystery to me, but it confirms what the historians have told us more recently.

[4:45]

He told another story that people do not like to hear: how General Patton and General Eisenhower -- in particular, the Supreme Allied Commander -- had given orders at the end of the war for the complete de-Nazification of Germany. Not only were the troops to learn what had happened in the concentrations camps and see it with their own eyes, but they were to root out all traces of Naziism. My dad, on leave in Bavaria in the months immediately following the war, met a prominent Nazi woman running a hotel that he stayed in. She was still wearing her Iron Cross -- Nazi insignia -- and he reported her to his superiors. As he used to tell the story, he received a call from his commanding general, saying: "Dr. Perry, are you married?"

"Yes."

"Are you looking forward to seeing your wife again?"

"Yes, sir."

"Are you hoping to have children, and to get back to America?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then I suggest you drop this matter."

And my dad, impetuous as he was, and believing in the rightness of the American cause and in the orders of Supreme Allied Commander Eisenhower, made inquiries through his immediate superiors and satisfied himself that the prominent Nazi woman was the mistress of his general, and that the threat was not idle. He always believed he would have been murdered if he'd pursued that matter, and in the end, he didn't. As we know, subsequently many prominent Nazis were restored to positions of power. Some of them were even recruited specifically to serve in the United States military, like Wernher von Braun, the designer of the flying bombs and the V-1 rocket. That's a lesson which is sobering, because it's not only specific, it's also a general lesson. It's a frightening one, and it's a lesson which one would rather not confront.

My mother taught me a lot about the war also. She was a social worker assigned to work with the Red Cross in New York. She dropped out of her master's program in social work in order to assist families who had to be informed about tragedies affecting their boys. Perhaps partly because of that, and partly because of the disruption of the war, she never completed her master's degree. She was a wonderful social worker and an amazing human being. She still is; she is one of the real founders of the Walk for Peace in Vancouver. Yet she was never really welcome to work as a social worker in B.C., because she never completed her master's. All of her amazing talents didn't really amount to much because she hadn't finished her master's -- that can be traced back to the war -- but I and my siblings are the beneficiaries; we got that much more of her attention.

I spoke with my father-in-law, Hudson Chambers, who enlisted at age 17. Having been born just outside Woodstock, Ontario, he enlisted in the Canadian army. He was captured during the invasion of Normandy, and a few weeks after the invasion was transported to a German camp as a prisoner of war and made to work in mines in Czechoslovakia. When he entered the war, at 6 foot 3 he must have weighed something like 200 pounds. When he emerged from it, having undergone a forced march with the Germans in front of the advancing Russians -- he was liberated by the same army in which my father served, coincidentally; we discovered this at my wedding to my wife, when the two of them met -- Hudson weighed 90 pounds, and was within a few days, or at least a few weeks, of death. He required months to recuperate in a hospital in western France.

I asked him yesterday what he wishes young people would know. He thought for a while. He said he's not impressed with how much young Canadians do know about the war. More precisely, he said they don't seem to know anything about it when he meets them. That's also my experience. But his message, interestingly, as with every time I've spoken with him, is a message of remarkable tolerance, whereas my father, for much of his life, hated the Germans. Volkswagens were verboten in my family. Even to ride in them was considered a minor sin. Travel in Germany was discouraged. It wasn't until 1970, I think, or 1971 that my father reluctantly agreed to drive through Germany, but travelling between Norway and Italy or France.

In contrast, Hudson Chambers, my father-in-law, saw some kindness among Germans. Evidently, for every officer who stabbed through the Red Cross package that somehow made its way from Canada or an allied country into that camp in Czechoslovakia -- for every German officer who deliberately destroyed the food right in front of his eyes, made it unpalatable so that no one could eat it -- there were others who also treated him with some kindness. On the march back in front of the Russians, German civilians gave him bread in the fields, and German guards allowed him and his mates to forage for potatoes in the fields and roast them at night on a fire. As kids will do, my son asked him recently when he was visiting whether he had ever killed anyone, and he didn't want to answer that. But yesterday he did describe seeing a German soldier shot in front of him in Normandy and saying to his mate, a school teacher: "That's just some poor mother's son."

I asked him if there was any other message, and it's interesting what he came up with. He had fought with many famous Quebec regiments -- the Vandoos and others. He said he thought they were wonderful people, and he couldn't understand what all the fighting was about now. It doesn't make any sense to him at all: the disputes over the separation of Quebec.

There are some other things I wanted to say about matters which haven't been mentioned much yet in the debate and not much over the last few weeks on the television or in the newspapers. The Russians, first of all -- perhaps we'll hear more today, because of the ceremonies in Moscow and Red Square today.... There was a report on the CBC news last night, I think, or the night before -- an interview with old Russian veterans who were unhappy that they were being 

[ Page 14055 ]

squeezed out of the traditional parade in favour of international politicians and Russian politicians. The Russians lost more people than anybody else except, perhaps, the Chinese -- at least 20 million. They underwent probably the most severe hardships. They had, inherently, the most ravaged country at the end of World War I, the Russian Revolution and the civil war. They had the lowest industrial production, and yet they managed to beat the Germans.

My father always felt he owed his own life to the Russians. I was one of the very few American or Canadian kids growing up in my generation who ever heard that message. My dad felt he owed his life to the Russians, and, for that matter, probably so did my father-in-law. I was always taught that it was strange and not inherently right that people who had so recently been allies were suddenly our enemies within days of the end of the war. I was also one of the few people of my generation to be taught to question that assumption.

The Jews, of course, were sought out for particular savagery. The member for Vancouver-Fraserview has given such a moving testimony to that holocaust that I don't think I can add anything more.

But what about Asia? The Chinese people probably suffered even more. I hope we'll not be sitting here in August to commemorate the end of the war in Asia, so perhaps it's fitting to make a few remarks and acknowledge people who are yellow who were slaughtered with equal savagery, never before seen, by the Japanese invading armies in China. The situation was so bad that Norman Bethune left Spain, where he had set up the first mobile blood transfusion service in the world, specifically to go to China to try to help out.

How many of us have ever heard of Mao Zedong, Zhu De or Zhou Enlai in the favourable light that they led the Long March? They suffered millions and millions of casualties under unbelievably primitive conditions, as did the Vietnamese, the Indonesians, the Filipinos and all the other Southeast Asian countries in fighting the Japanese. Imagine what happened to those Japanese who resisted. Their story is almost unheard of here.

[The Speaker in the chair.]

At the end of the war in Germany, my father used to say he felt wonderfully grateful when the atomic bomb was exploded at Hiroshima. He felt he would soon see my mother again and resume a normal life. Afterward, the lesson he learned was one of intense guilt at having celebrated the instantaneous deaths by incineration of 200,000 people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

We now know that the same Supreme Allied Commander, General Eisenhower, who had shown so much humanity toward his own troops at the beginning of the invasion of Europe and throughout the war, had wanted to de-Nazify Germany at the end of the war. We now know that Eisenhower also opposed the dropping of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That's a lesson that was hidden even from me and from my father. My father died in 1991 unaware, I am sure, that Eisenhower and many of the other great generals, such as Omar Bradley, having seen what the war did to Germany, saw no need to emulate the Germans at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That's a lesson that's still too painful for the Smithsonian Institution and the American people really to come to grips with, but it's one we need to learn from.

I ask myself what lessons I've learned from the experience. I thought I could summarize them in four points, two negative and two positive. One is the lesson of Pastor Neimoller: to speak out against injustice anywhere it happens. There is no magical threshold below which it's all right to acquiesce to an injustice and above which one must suddenly resist. It's usually unpopular to speak out against injustice, and it's not usually easy. Second, do not compartmentalize injustice. If it's wrong to oppress and murder people, it's also wrong to turn a blind eye to suffering, especially when it's easily preventable.

As we speak, we occupy a world where more than a billion people live in what we would deem abject poverty. Every second of these debates, a child somewhere in the developing world has been permanently maimed or has died from a preventable illness like tetanus, polio or measles. When we wanted to eradicate smallpox, we declared a war on smallpox, and we won it in a remarkably short space of time. But we ignore injustice continuously. We're now gearing up to spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year of allied money practising low-level bombing in Labrador. For what? The letters pages in the Toronto Globe and Mail are full of debate now over whether or not there are people living in Labrador, whether or not there are animals there and whether they'll be harmed by the low-flying planes. But what are they practising for? What is that money to be spent on? Who are the low-level bombs going to be used against? Who's paying for it? What better purposes could that money be put to?

[5:00]

There are two other lessons I draw, which are lessons of hope -- more positive lessons. It's difficult to contemplate how much evil the Second World War represented, as well as how much bravery and heroism and struggle and sacrifice. But no matter how much evil, it turns out that it's impossible to permanently stamp out good; you just can't do it. That's the greatest lesson to me. It's the great lesson of the small and great religions, and of secular humanism. It's also a lesson of the concentration camps: that hope can survive even the greatest trials and even when rational thought suggests it should disappear.

The last lesson for me is internationalism, which is ultimately the only hope of the world. That was the message of Gandhi, Norman Bethune, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela, of the mothers and the grandmothers of los desaparecidos in Argentina, and of Aung San, the Nobel prize-winning leader of the opposition in Burma. That's a lesson I hope we convey to the young people. There is so much for them to do. There are positive lessons to be learned from the war -- not only suffering, not only the past, not only stories about plaques and monuments and old politicians and old soldiers, but hope.

A. Warnke: Hon. Speaker, victory, euphoria and relief describe this day 50 years ago across liberated Europe and Canada, and the celebrations over the weekend remind us of this time. But I believe we must be reminded of much more. Indeed, when I talked to people over the weekend, a number of them described to me a situation that describes my extended family.

Between 1939 and 1945, every male in my extended family at that time served in World War II in either the Canadian or the American armed forces. Some served in Europe, and 

[ Page 14056 ]

many served in the Pacific theatre. On this day 50 years ago, my great-aunt was still in fear that her sons might not survive and return to this continent. One was held prisoner by the Japanese, and it was later revealed that it was one of the most horrific human experiences imaginable. Some of the stories -- but these are not stories; these are real life -- were about how comrades were decapitated in front of you. And, I would say, were it not for the war in the Pacific ending as suddenly as it did -- and that is a very difficult question to face -- we of the next generation, my generation, would not have seen them.

No doubt every member of my extended family -- like my father, who served.... I know he was very proud to serve in the Canadian Armed Forces. His brothers, my mother and the extended family of brothers, sisters and cousins were all proud to serve their respective countries.

My father was a dedicated man who fought not only for Canada and its ideals but understood the need to combat human evil itself. And evil it was, as evidenced by the tyranny and terror of the Nazis -- the terror and massacre inflicted on millions of Jews, and the terror and massacre inflicted on millions of political dissidents against Hitler, including Germans and other Europeans.

One of my mentors in academic life was the late Allan Bloom, who also served in the American Armed Forces. I remember discussing the Second World War with him and he told me that it is a rare occasion in human history when the lines and causes are so clearly defined between good and evil that the waging of war in this situation -- against tyranny and terror -- is just and right. I remember that he was telling me that it was one of the few times in America when the Right and the Left were actually as one, in unison. They were in unison because they had some common ideals.

Americans, Canadians, English and people of western Europe believe in democracy, liberty, freedom, justice and human dignity. These are all virtues -- and there are more -- that are just and right for a generation such as the generation of the 1940s to wage war for. At the same time, I fully recognize and I think we all fully recognize the phrase "war is hell," because war is hell. For those who have experienced war -- and we've heard about it in my family -- war is hell.

He's not speaking here later, but I would like to make mention of the member for North Vancouver-Seymour. I hope I'm not incorrect, but I believe that during World War II he lost his father and certainly an uncle, who was well known as a hero in British Columbia. Those people who sacrificed their lives, but more than that, had been exposed to tremendous.... Even if they survived, many of them are casualties, physically and psychologically. Sometimes it's very hard for successive generations to remember or even to begin to comprehend that.

In my own case, I know of one man the same age as I who had all the promise and potential of excellence, accomplishment and of being a fine citizen, until his life was absolutely ruined by Vietnam -- forever -- without even an iota of the prospect for rehabilitation in any form. That's the closest I can come. I am sure that the generation of the 1940s could multiply that by hundreds and thousands, by tens of thousands -- comrades that they know. They have that same kind of experience. When you consider that, the tragedy sinks in very, very deeply.

Indeed, I didn't think about it till this past weekend. That man I was talking about -- my age.... I think it is ironic, nonetheless, that he was born and raised to be a young man in Tulsa, Oklahoma. So war is something that, even if its outcome is glorious -- and surely the war in 1945 was that.... To the more than 40,000 Canadians -- 7,000 in the Netherlands alone -- who died, their experience was hell. To the several tens of thousands of casualties among Canadians, war was hell. And we should not forget, ever, what they had to go through, what kind of sacrifices they had to go through.

To be sure, it was for a great cause because of the people who were casualties in Europe -- the millions of Jews. Indeed, I'm somewhat inspired when we take a look at history. Some of you know that I'm a very keen student of German history. One thing that, I suppose, did get Germany on the right track was the accomplishments, of course, of many men and women. Two I would single out today, just very briefly. Konrad Adenauer, the first Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, was a Gestapo prisoner at Brauweiler, near Cologne; Cologne was his favourite city. Another one I'm sure social democrats, or at least a few of them, are quite well aware of is Kurt Schumacher. Kurt Schumacher was imprisoned at Dachau, near Munich, and later at Neuengemme. Many years ago -- quite a few years ago now -- I visited Dachau, and I must admit it had a very profound effect on me personally. Yet Dachau could even be considered light compared to Mauthausen and Auschwitz and other places. It's interesting, too, that when I was travelling in Munich, after a horrific electrical storm -- one of the most terrible I've ever experienced in my life, and I've seen some dandies on the American and Canadian prairies -- the following day I went around Munich and came across the war museum. It was completely bombed out, and it has not been restored; ivy and trees were growing out of it. In paint alongside the war memorial museum is nie wieder Krieg -- never again war. That's a very simple phrase: we must never let this happen again.

So in the midst of the celebrations of VE-Day 50 years ago, and our celebrations today -- not only of that day 50 years ago but, I suppose, celebrating the peace we have kept, for the most part, in Europe; at least we've avoided another global war -- I would say let us remember this, too: today is a very solemn day. It's a day truly to remember not only those who have fallen in battle -- I certainly remember my father and his comrades -- but those who have been extremely hurt by the war, physically and psychologically. Those, too, are people who we must have in our thoughts today. Because those lives -- those fallen in battle, those who have been casualties -- are the lives so critically important to us today so that we and generations afterwards may live in liberty, freedom and justice, and live to preserve human dignity.

[5:15]

D. Mitchell: I'm pleased to rise and say a few words on the Premier's special resolution and this extraordinary exchange that is taking place in our House this afternoon on the fiftieth anniversary of VE-Day, a day marking victory in Europe. I wonder what it would have been like to have been alive 50 years ago today on that special day when the war ended in Europe. I was not born yet, but I wonder about the joy and the exhilaration and the relief that my parents' generation would have experienced on this very special day. Members of my generation and my children's generation can only 

[ Page 14057 ]

catch glimpses of that in the old black-and-white newsreel footage that we've seen on television over the last few days, or in the famous photographs of young couples kissing in the streets and celebrating the joy of the end of the terrible war, the Second World War. Oh, to have been alive 50 years ago today, and to have been a Canadian, because our country -- more so than any other nation participating in the war that was not directly involved in the theatre of war itself -- made a disproportionate contribution to the wartime effort.

At the time, our country was relatively small by any international standards: a population of less than 12 million. Yet one out of ten Canadians served in the military during the war. That's an extraordinary contribution to a war that was not directly affecting our national boundaries. Canada was a small country, yet gained an international reputation from that war as a peacemaker -- a reputation that we take pride in today and that was well earned at that time.

It's been interesting listening to the remarkable exchange in the House this afternoon, because each member who has risen to speak in this debate has talked about how the war has directly or sometimes indirectly touched their lives. I would hasten to say that all 75 members of this assembly have been affected directly or indirectly by the Second World War and so have some special memories or linkages with the celebration of VE-Day. In my case, I can tell you that my father served in our air force and my mother worked in a munitions factory -- they were both very young at the time. I have an uncle who served in the RCAF in Europe and saw active service, and my grandmother apparently spent every night during the years of the war knitting socks for the Red Cross -- apparently big boxes of these socks were sent overseas for the soldiers fighting in Europe. Everyone who serves in this House, whether they be of my generation -- I am part of the postwar baby-boom generation -- or have some more direct memories than I of the war, will know that our families and Canadian families were all touched. If only we could have done more, because no families were more touched than those of the more than 45,000 Canadians who did not return from the war. That, ultimately, is the measure -- if one can measure in statistics -- of the contribution of Canada to the attainment of peace and the achievement of freedom that came with the conclusion of hostilities in World War II. Hon. Speaker, if only we could have done more.

Earlier in the debate, the member for Vancouver-Fraserview commented about a book that was written by a historian whose name is Irving Abella. The title of the book is None Is Too Many. Unfortunately, this book doesn't allow us to celebrate the contribution of our government to the Second World War, because our government has some answers to provide, even though we're very proud of the contribution of individual Canadian men and women during the war effort. The Liberal government of the day, Mackenzie King's, when given an opportunity to accept refugees from the war -- in particular, Jews who were fleeing the death damps of the Nazis in Europe -- did not respond. Like some other western countries that did not respond, lives were lost as a result. The title of the book, None Is Too Many, comes from an official memo that was written by a very senior government official in response to the question of how many Jews Canada would be willing to accept. The Jews were fleeing from Hitler's death camps, and the answer was: none is too many. We don't have pride alone on this day but shame as well. If only we could have done more.

That's the same sentiment that comes forward in a symbol of that war that is perhaps best known to our generation and to our children's generation: a very famous and remarkable film that was made recently called Schindler's List, which was based upon a very fine piece of literature written by Thomas Keneally -- an Irishman, interestingly. This is a film about Oskar Schindler, who saved many Jews in Europe. Later in his life, before he died, when Oskar Schindler was asked about his memories of the war and his experiences, he said that he had only one regret: he wished that he could have done more. So too, we as Canadians can only wish that we could have done more to save more lives. Even one more life saved would have been a great accomplishment. That's not to denigrate the outstanding accomplishment of Canadians as peacemakers from that time forward.

The great British military historian John Keegan has talked about World War II not as an event in isolation but as part of a continuum. He warns us that we can't become complacent. As we celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of VE-Day, we have to also recognize that VE-Day did not symbolize the end of war. John Keegan points out that World War II is part of a process that started with World War I in 1914 and continued right through the Second World War and the Cold War almost to our present day. During that period of time, through most of the twentieth century -- a century of war -- he points out that more than 100 million individuals were killed as a direct result of military conflict. More than 100 million; it's a number that's difficult for me to contemplate. World War II was really a crucial part of that continuum, but it hasn't marked the end, and VE-Day in Europe did not mark the end of war. We've seen a continuation of regional and ethnic hostilities that continue to plague our planet and continue to result in the loss of life on a grand scale. So we can't be complacent as we celebrate VE-Day. We can celebrate the tremendous achievement of a previous generation, but we have to stand on guard. We have to stand on guard against war which continues to plague us, as human beings, and we have to worry about our children's generation as well.

During this exchange many have talked about peace, and over the last few days, as we've been preparing for the tremendous commemoration that is taking place for VE-Day, many have spoken about peace as the objective. But there's another crucial objective that I don't hear enough people speaking about, and that is freedom. World War II was not only about peace. Of course we wanted peace; we wanted an end to war. The end of hostilities really symbolized the achievement of freedom for so many who were being persecuted during the Second World War: freedom from tyranny; freedom from extremism, whether it be extremism of the left or the right; and freedom from the prejudices that too often give rise to military conflict in the first place. So we celebrate peace on VE-Day, but we also celebrate freedom that we too often take for granted, like the freedoms that we celebrate in this Legislature.

This Legislature itself is a symbol of that peace and freedom that a previous generation won for us by serving, by laying down their lives. When we serve in this Legislature, we fight with words, we fight with ideas, but we don't fight with bullets or military apparatus. This is a substitute for war in that sense, and we have to consider that the freedom we have allows us to fight in this kind of forum rather than on a battlefield where lives are lost.

[ Page 14058 ]

This afternoon we've had a very special and very reflective debate. Members who participated have shown more of themselves personally than we normally have an opportunity to in exchanges in this House. If only we could have these kinds of open exchanges more often. Unfortunately, too often we have partisan posturing in this House and sometimes mean-spirited debate, which doesn't really produce as much as we perhaps could or allow us to show as much as we could of ourselves as individuals in this legislative forum and as representatives for our constituents.

This kind of partisanship must make us feel very small, especially in light of the sacrifices of a previous generation that fought and died for peace, yes, but for freedom as well. Today, on the fiftieth anniversary of VE-Day -- victory in Europe -- we thank our parents' generation from the bottom of our hearts, and we pray for peace and freedom for our children's generation as well.

W. Hurd: It's an honour and a privilege for me to rise in this assembly today to offer what I can to the discussion about the end of war in Europe -- the celebration of VE-Day. As a member of the postwar generation, I can say that sometimes it's difficult for us to establish a meaning to that conflict that was so important to our fathers, grandfathers, aunts and uncles. On Remembrance Day I think we struggle to give meaning to the loss of life, to really appreciate the sacrifice that was so evident in Europe. In the end, we live the conflict through the lives of our fathers and mothers who served and who have passed on to the next generation the stories and the struggle that they went through during those difficult years. It is for that reason that it's a privilege for me to recount to the House some of the struggles that my father went through in that period from 1939 to 1945.

He was a product of the Great Depression -- I suppose the most cataclysmic upheaval the world economy has ever seen. It was a time of considerable hardship throughout the world. With the outbreak of war in 1939, by virtue of his involvement with the B.C. Electric Co. at that time and his knowledge of radios and transmitters, he was seconded by the RCAF to train as a radar operator, initially at UBC. He was instructed, among others, by the late Walter Gage, who was drafted by the military at that time to assist in the training of these specialized personnel. In 1939 he was shipped to Europe, and from there he was attached to the RAF and was in the Burmese theatre -- the Indian theatre of war -- from 1939 to 1945. The hardship of those men and that time was almost unimaginable, and their struggle did not end on VE-Day in Europe. As we know, the war in the Pacific theatre and Southeast Asia continued for some months thereafter.

As often happens with these kinds of debates, as I was preparing to give an address in the assembly this afternoon, I was approached in my office by a number of my father's former colleagues who had identified my name on the door. Since my father's name was the same, they assumed that we were, in fact, one and the same. They provided me with a great deal of information about the struggles the RCAF airmen went through in that theatre. I have pictures in the family album of the men my father served with, weighing in at about 100 pounds as the poor food and rations that arrived infrequently took their toll.

After the war I know my father spent at least two years in a VA hospital recovering from that experience of being involved in the Burmese jungle, of setting up radar installations -- dangerous work where one never knew from one day's end to the next whether the installation would be overrun, whether it would be strafed or bombed. Those were the forgotten Canadians who served in the Burmese theatre -- some 5,000 of them who, as I have indicated, endured almost unimaginable hardship and were there for many long years. Like most sons growing up, I can recall my father not being willing to talk too much about those years, about the suffering that he had witnessed or about the poverty, the destruction and the death that was part of that theatre of war.

I think we all realized -- at least I did, as a young man growing up -- the impact that this war had on so many individuals: Canadians, people of U.S. descent, of course, and Europeans. We understand that they went through considerable hardship and were able to overcome that in the postwar period. When they returned to Canada -- to Vancouver, Toronto and cities across the land -- they found that in the six years they were away, the world as they knew it had changed. The opportunities were different, and they had to try to put these horrific experiences behind them and build a postwar economy for generations like my own.

[5:30]

I thank them now for that kind of commitment -- that difficulty they must have faced after the turmoil of the Depression followed by the turmoil of war. To be able to come together in that postwar period and build a strong, prosperous economy took the kind of measure that makes one wonder how they really were able to pull it together.

I guess the other personal recollection that I can offer about the conflict was an opportunity I had to talk to a Russian immigrant who had come to Canada in the late 1980s, but whose relatives had grown up as Jewish citizens in the Ukraine. His descriptions to me of the actions of the enemies in that war-torn region are heartrending. As we know, as the Axis forces advanced through the Ukraine, there were mass killings in villages; villagers were rounded up, taken to the outskirts of town and shot. Clearly, millions died in that way in small villages throughout the Ukraine.

As I listened to my friend, who is about my age but who had sisters and brothers older than himself who had gone through that experience, I wondered how those villagers would have dealt with that kind of tragedy when they returned to find that there were no relatives remaining, as they did in so many cities, towns and villages throughout the Ukraine.

Again, I think of the forgotten victims of the Second World War: the people whose sacrifices are not in the history books and who died, I suppose, out of the glory and the high-profile battles that we know occurred in Europe. This is a time to reflect on those forgotten victims: men and women who were involved in this conflict beyond the European theatre, and those who made grave sacrifices, lived to tell and bore the scars as they went through the rest of their years.

I can honestly say that in the case of my own father, the years he spent in that environment in Southeast Asia probably robbed him of some of the years he might have had available to him. Certainly he experienced health problems, which never left, from the time he suffered and sacrificed in that theatre of war in Burma and India. As I talked with his colleagues in my office last week, I was given a list of names, to the best of their ability, of Canadians who served on radar 

[ Page 14059 ]

detail in Southeast Asia from 1941 to 1945. I'm gratified to know that there is an effort being made to contact those veterans and determine where they are and how they have fared. I'm encouraged, because I know it's something my father would have been proud to participate in, and he certainly would have been gratified to know that there are those who remember.

With the indulgence and with leave of the House, hon. Speaker, I'd like to table the names of the Canadians who served on radar detail in Southeast Asia from 1941 to 1945, compiled from the archives with the assistance of the Canadian military. It's a great honour for me to do that today as part of this debate.

Leave granted.

F. Garden: Hon. Speaker, I'd like to join my colleagues who have made reference to the sentiments that have been expressed in this House. There's no doubt in my mind that they come from deep within the hearts of each one of them who has spoken. At the beginning of my remarks, I also want to pay tribute to those people who did lay down their lives, left their homes and loved ones and went to Europe and fought for the cause of freedom and democracy. I'm sure all Canadians today are reflecting on that time, whether they were there, whether their fathers were there, whether their fathers were there and never came back or whether their children weren't born then but have heard the stories of the horror of that experience.

I guess I was fortunate to some degree, as I lived through this horrible experience. I wasn't old enough to be enlisted at that time; my time came along a little later during the Korean War, and by that time things were starting to settle down in Europe again. But I do recall the time when the lights went out in Europe. That's the experience I remember most vividly as a kid. The lights went out, literally. There was a blackout all over Britain. It wasn't uncommon to be hanging blankets on your windows to make sure no light shone out so that air raiders couldn't zero in on targets on the ground. The wardens of that day used to come along and make sure that that didn't happen. It was quite common to hear a rap on your window or a knock on the door to put out that light -- and you had to extinguish it.

I was a paper boy at that time, and I can recall driving through the streets delivering newspapers. Most of the cars and bicycles had black tape all over their headlights with just slits pointing downward so that you could at least see something. It was a tremendous experience to see the lights going out. The only lights we saw in the nighttime were searchlights waving backward and forward across the skies, as they looked for enemy bombers.

My own experience -- and I certainly didn't have to suffer the way many people had to during the war -- was, one day, sitting on the back steps of the tenement building that we lived in when a raid took place on our town because we had a naval air base just outside of town. Some German bombers came across, and as they were heading for this aerodrome, as we called it then, they were machine-gunning across town. About six of us kids were sitting on the back steps. And you could hear the bullets hitting the slates on the roofs and breaking them off. So we all made one dive down the stairs and headed for the air raid shelter. There wasn't even time to sound the sirens that day, warning of this attack. I landed at the bottom of this bunch of guys, and I got a bit of a bloody nose.

I often reflect on that time, because the house across the road, which was only about 50 feet away, was strafed. But for sheer distance, it could have been quite a calamity for me and the kids who were sitting there. As I say, all I got out of it was a bloody nose. I often think of how my life would have been different had it been moved over 50 feet and we'd suffered from that, and how in a war it's a matter of inches and luck as to where you are on a given day when somebody either shoots a gun at you or comes along with a truck, herds you into the back of it and takes you to some experience beyond any kind of imagination as far as horror is concerned. So a lot of us were lucky to live through that experience.

My heart goes out to those families who never did see their brothers and sisters or their cousins and uncles growing up and experiencing the beauty, the wonder and the freedom that we have in this wonderful land. We owe them a tremendous amount.

You'll have to excuse me just a bit; I get a wee bit choked up on this kind of stuff.

I also recall that my father worked just outside of town. There was a tar refinery there -- I'm watching my time because I want to give my colleague some time here -- and the German bombers mistook this tar refinery for some huge petrochemical base, I suppose. After they finished bombing the aerodrome, they flew out and dropped the last of those bombs on this tar refinery. The miracle of this was that the people working there got off work at 4:30 p.m., and they were on their bikes -- it was about two miles out of town -- so the whole workforce had just left. At 4:35 p.m. the bombs hit that place, and these people were only half a mile down the road from where they had been working just minutes ago. The great thing they did is that they turned around, went back on their bikes and started fighting the fire, in the midst of this smoking mess of bitumen, tar and everything that goes into a tar refinery. Just five minutes, and they would have been in the middle of that. My father and a couple of uncles were in that group. So as I was saying, it was just a matter of inches whether you suffered or didn't suffer, or how you came out of the experience.

I have a lot to be thankful for from all these people from places like Canada, who took the time, went over there and fought for the freedoms we enjoyed. I can remember when VE-Day came along and the lights went on again. That was a tremendous experience, because after six years of darkness, all of a sudden the street shutters of the shops were rolled up. I think everybody who had a light that day turned it on. The place looked so brilliant to me. People were in the streets laughing, cheering and dancing with joy. It was something I will never forget, because the lights did go on again. The rationing was over; the queues were finished. No more dried eggs. For a period of time.... I see my colleague Fred smiling, because there was a situation that developed where they took the rationing off candies, but the people were so eager to get candies once again that they rushed to the shops to get their share, and they had to put them back on rationing again. So for a couple of years there was a case where we had to endure a bit of rationing. Another thing that stays in my mind is that we went from black bread -- literally black -- to something that had white flour in it.

[ Page 14060 ]

Anyway, these are all memories, and I cherish them because I was able to survive them. As I said earlier, my heart goes out to those who didn't, but they didn't die in vain. Or did they? Can this happen again? Could what happened in Europe happen again? I say that if we're not vigilant as legislators, it can. It can happen right here. People say, "No, never in Canada," but it has happened here. We have aboriginal friends -- brothers and sisters -- who don't quite enjoy the freedoms we enjoy. We had native veterans who came back from that war and weren't allowed to go in and have a beer with their fellow Canadians. They weren't able to vote like the rest of us Canadians. There are people today who would say: "Wait a minute, don't give these people any kind of justice that they deserve; make them like all the rest of us." Well, if they could only get that, they'd be very glad.

So let's be vigilant. When we get rhetorical about aboriginal issues, let's remember that they are human beings. They've got rights that men and women fought and died for. Could it happen here? If we're not careful, it could. I want to use my words quite carefully when I say this. I know there are people who are legitimately saying that we should thumbprint people to get welfare or that we should do retina scans. How far removed is a fingerprint and a retina scan from a number tattooed on your wrist? Think carefully, brothers and sisters. That's what we're here for: to prevent what happened in Europe from happening again. If we don't stand up and speak out against the voices on the extreme Right, they will raise their voices. And they do it on the basis of conning people into thinking they are right in what they are doing. This is what happened in Germany. They were wonderful, warm-hearted people, yet they were conned by a fascist group. It could happen again, if we let it.

I want to finish by saying that I watched the parade this morning. I saw those old veterans proudly walking by, and I was proud. A lump rose in my throat. I saw the young Canadians at the back of the line -- the fresh-faced young soldiers, airmen and seamen. I just realized that that's what the older people looked like when they marched off to war, which so many of them didn't come back from. And I made a vow to myself that as long as I'm still alive, I would do all I can to prevent these young people from having to go through what the veterans had to go through. But it needs us to not get carried away with the rhetoric, and to recognize the evil that's out there circling in the midst of Canadians and Americans today. We've got to recognize it, and put it down.

That's about all I have to say, except that if we don't learn from the lessons of history, somebody has said, we're destined to repeat them.

[5:45]

A. Hagen: It's interesting, hon. Speaker, how our thoughts and feelings converge. I was going to begin my remarks today with these words: "Those who forget history are destined to relive it. Those who reflect on the past gather tools to mould our future." If we are to think about what we've heard today from so many people in this House, on what is an historic afternoon, I believe we have, indeed, heard much to reflect upon and much that can help us to mould our future.

I don't know what to make of the fact that I'm the only woman in the debate this afternoon. But I am going to note the fact that I am the only woman in this Legislature -- that has, I always forget the number, 18 or 19 women among our members -- who is speaking. So I am going to speak, perhaps from a perspective that I don't think is a woman's perspective, but is a part of what we should reflect upon today. There has been much said about the fact that three times the population of our country lost their lives in the world war of 1939 to 1945 -- a statistic that's almost too staggering for us to imagine, to take into our ken. But in that statistic are millions and millions of other people about whom we've heard in the stories that all of the members this afternoon have told us, reflecting either their direct personal experience -- and there aren't too many of us in this House that have a direct personal experience, and no veterans of the war -- or in the experiences of their families.

I think it is important for us -- as we think about what has been called a celebration and what has been called a reflection -- to think about all the factors that go into living through a modern war. Some of those factors have been described in the horrific terms of people's experience. But I want to speak for just a moment on the more mundane and everyday experiences that people have that we, perhaps, gloss over because they have an effect on our lives and on our perspective of the lives that we live, and perhaps to think about it from the point of view of Canadians -- Canadian women and children, mostly -- who were here while so many men and a few women went across the seas to fight the war on the other side of the Atlantic and in the Pacific.

For those people, there was a different kind of life as well. It was a life which meant that every time there was a knock on the door or every time there was a phone call or every time there was an accounting of where things were happening on the front, there was the terror that a loved one might in fact be injured, killed or captured. That was a part of our nations's life at that time and the lives of people in Britain, the United States and all over the world. There were children who grew up without the benefit of extended families or immediate parents. There were children who never knew their fathers or who came to know them only after they had been through their formative years.

I think it's important for us to remember, too, that in that period of time many people learned to survive in different ways and to do new things, whether it was to run the farms or the small businesses of the country or to take on some of the larger tasks. Many of those people were women, and many of those people came into a sense of their purpose and their role in life that was different from anything that they had experienced before.

I think it's important for us to reflect on that, because, just as my colleague spoke about our aboriginal veterans who at the end of the war were relegated to second-class citizenship again, to some extent that happened to women as well. Those women went back into the homes -- as I said, I think, on Friday, in response to the statement by the member for Delta South -- and went from being the munitions workers to being the cooks and the chauffeurs.

It's a mundane part of our story today, but it is, in fact, a story that -- if we are to reflect on the nature of war and the nature of the wars that still continue -- we need to remember -- the stories of children in Yugoslavia or Rwanda, the stories of women in Cambodia, the stories of those people who bear the brunt of war and often are unheralded. As we reflect on 

[ Page 14061 ]

what war means, I think they are people who we want to add to our reflection today. Their experiences didn't necessarily result in their death or bodily injury, but their experiences caused them to have to deal with a whole range of issues that are a part of what war does when it tears apart countries and nations.

Reflection is a part of memorials, and for me, it is the most important part. There is something about taking time in our busy lives to think about what has gone before, with all the ramifications of what has gone before, and to make some personal commitment to issues, tasks and goals that we believe are important and that make these anniversaries worthwhile.

It's not all the parades, not all the songs and celebration, but it's often what we do in the quiet of our own reflection that has been so well represented by so many people who have spoken today. It's that which helps take us down the course where, as we reflect on history, we may in fact remember that those reflections must help us mould a future. It is a future that I think has been described both in terms of the dangers and the challenges that exist. They have been described very well today.

I've been privileged to listen to colleagues today in a way that I don't often have an opportunity to listen to them, and I want to take this opportunity to thank each and every person who has helped me with my reflections and my rededication on this historic occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the war in Europe.

V. Anderson: As others have mentioned, this has been quite a different day in this Legislature. I would like to characterize it as a day of prayer, when people have spoken from their hearts about personal experiences of tragedy and joy, which have been mixed together in such impossible ways.

There are many things that might be said, but for a few moments, I would particularly like to pick up some of the threads that were mentioned about youth. I think of a German fellow I know who told me that at the end of the war.... I think about this because at the end of the war I was 16 and in high school. Like others, I'd been involved in the air cadets, aware that if things were different we would be next. This young lad was 12 years of age when the war ended. He and about 20 or 30 others younger than himself had been in the care of the Germans, and when the war was over the Germans left. These young people retreated to the bush. They looked after themselves and made themselves into their own army. They had their own weapons and their own guns, and he, as a 12-year-old, became one of the generals of this children's army.

When these strange people who turned out to be Americans came near them, they were an enemy, and they were set to fight them and defend themselves, because they did not know who they were. They did not speak this strange language, and it took a great deal of manoeuvring to get enough of their confidence, to be able to win that army of children over so that they would allow themselves to be touched again.

It went from there. He went from Germany into Holland and was placed in a home, and he commented that one of the uniquenesses of the Nazis, of the Germans, was their efficiency in keeping records. Every piece of clothing that they wore was marked with a number, so that when the war was over, the Red Cross, through those numbers, was able in due course to track down his mother and reunite them once again.

There was a Lutheran minister on the North Shore who came to be a graduate student. He was trying to work with the young people in North Vancouver. This was back in the seventies, when young people were a little wilder than they maybe had been in another generation. He failed to understand them; he couldn't understand this crowd at all, and it frustrated him no end.

I remember saying to him one day: "Well, maybe if you thought of yourself as a teenager and remembered what happened to you in that period of time, you could understand these young people," and he went away. He came back the following week, and he said: "You know, I thought about what you said, and I realized that I never was a teenager. When I was almost the age of sixteen, I was in the army, and I became an adult. I never experienced those teenage years that these young people are living through." He went back and talked to them, and through the young people of the North Shore, with whom he would serve, he learned to be a teenager again.

Today we've heard individual experiences about individual people: people who had names and places where they lived. We've also said: "Isn't it too bad that our young people may forget or not understand unless we share the message with them." It's important that we share the message with them. But one of the realities that I've learned from my wife, who is a school principal, is that in the schools each year, as we come toward November 11 and their November 11 services -- which are put on by the kids themselves -- year by year those services become more important, more vital and more real to the lives of those children. It's because they've heard some of the stories, but it's also because -- and sometimes we forget this -- some of those kids came from refugee or immigrant families. They came out of the war in Vietnam; they came out of the wars of the world. They don't have to be told what war is about; they were part of it. The families of some of our kids now in school were killed in front of their eyes, and they share that with their fellow students.

[6:00]

In many ways they have a more real understanding of war than I do. My father was in the First World War. He was at Vimy Ridge, like so many others, and was one of the few that survived, I've discovered. Never once in his life did he ever discuss it; it was just too personal and too deep to share.

This last week we've heard of many people who have gone back to Europe, and for the first time in their lives, they have shared with their families some of the things that they experienced.

One of the friends I've come to know stood up one day in the fellowship of the congregation. We have a practice there that you share a particular meaningful event or a birthday or an anniversary. He stood up one day, and he said: "Today I remember that some 45 years ago on this day and at this hour, I was parachuting into a churchyard in Germany." He had been shot down, and he spent the rest of the war in Stalag 13, I believe. I've never met a more thankful person in all my life, a person more appreciative of people than this man, except perhaps for my own father.

The poem I would read to bring this to a close is by Ryan Deacon, his grandson, written four years ago when he was 14:

[ Page 14062 ]

War

You battle to the death, Your inner feelings muffled by loyalty You are scared, Yet portrayed as a fighting machine Ready to sacrifice life for

Liberty

The sense of being free To be able to walk the street without fear, To have a feeling of joy, To be prepared to fight to keep your liberty. Once again, you are at

War

You must fight for freedom To live peacefully amongst all mankind. But in war there is

Death

You were once a soldier, You fought for liberty. Now you lie in silence, No longer a person, Just a statistic, a memory, A name etched in Stone.

Our young people see more than we ever did about the world in which we live. They watch it every day in their living room on that television screen. They see war; they see death. They don't always see a lot of hope; they don't always see a lot of promise. They know that the war to end war, as my father called it, was won, but not the peace. The war of 1939-1945 was won, but not the peace. The wars in Vietnam and in Korea were won, but not the peace. No doubt the wars in Europe and Asia and Africa, which go on this very day, in which children die and their parents with them, will be won. But when, I pray, will we win the peace? That to me is our prayer. Peace has yet to be won, and it's our task. I quote finally, then, from part of In Flanders Fields:

Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders Fields.

May God grant us that in our remembering we will give thanks that wars have been won, but dedicate ourselves that peace also will follow.

The Speaker: I'd like to thank all members for their contributions in this debate. And if I may depart just slightly from the usual role of the Speaker, it is simply to say to all members that after sitting in this Legislature for nearly 23 years, I want you to know that this debate has been one of the most profound that I have ever had the honour and privilege of hearing in this House.

I would like to say to all hon. members that we indeed are fortunate and have a great deal to be thankful for, and it has indeed been a day of prayer.

If I may just take one other liberty, I would like to suggest that for the next minute we wait in silence, before putting the question, in respect of this day.

[One minute of silence.]

The Speaker: The question, hon. members, is: "Be it resolved that this House, in celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of VE-Day, express on behalf of all British Columbians our deepest thanks for the sacrifices of those Canadians who joined the forces as well as those who supported the war effort in the home, factory and school, and further, this House calls on the present generation to honour the example of those who sacrificed by finding ways of becoming more involved in the ongoing struggle for world peace and social justice."

Motion approved.

Hon. G. Clark moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

The House adjourned at 6:10 p.m.

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