All in all, Mr. Speaker, this resolution is not an attempt to limit free speech; rather, I am using my right of free speech to express my views and those of my constituents on this important issue. It is not an attempt to address the complex history of political situation in the Middle East. My concerns with Israeli Apartheid Week are much closer to home. I fear for the safety and the well-being of Jewish students, staff, visitors and other supporters of Israel who are marginalized by this event and made the target of fear, distrust and anti-Semitism. I oppose the use of the word "apartheid" in the context of Israel, which is an open and democratic state, where people of all backgrounds vote and hold office and where the rule of law is respected. I oppose the propaganda campaign associated with Israeli Apartheid Week. It is not a campaign that will ever lead to peace.

My hope is that through this resolution, this House can send a message that it does not condone divisiveness, intolerance and fear. This House does not tolerate harassment and intimidation of any group. This House does not support unbalanced and inflammatory propaganda and this House does not support anti-Semitism.

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Rather, this House supports balanced, reasonable and respectful debate. This House supports the fostering of an environment on our university campuses that promotes learning and mutual respects. This House supports a vision of our university campuses as places for spirited and informed discussion of many issues, above all, as safe and inclusive institutions where students from all backgrounds, Mr. Speaker, can feel safe.

I hope that all members of this House, today, will stand and join with us in denouncing Israeli Apartheid Week, and stand in support of efforts to work with people from all backgrounds towards safety, inclusivity and tolerance on our university campuses and, indeed, a safer and inclusive and more tolerant world, Mr. Speaker.

So I hope that all members will join with our members on this side of the House, today, to denounce Israeli Apartheid Week, support this resolution and make sure that it passes today.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I would like to remind our guests in the gallery that our rules state that there is to be no participation by our guests in the gallery, and that includes applauding. Just a friendly reminder to our guests, please.

Hon. Dave Chomiak (Minister of Innovation, Energy and Mines): Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for bringing the resolution. I welcome the opportunity to speak in this Chamber.

I'm proud to be a Manitoban and to have grown up in the '50s and gone to a North End school where we were all called DPs–even us who weren't DPs. Every week on the school playground yard, a bunch of new DPs would come in. We'd have the DPs playing the Americans on the soccer field. My point is Manitoba is a province of immigration, tolerance, understanding.

I'm blessed to have been to Israel twice. I'm honoured that I used to sit and watch the documentaries with my mother, my very learned mother, about the Holocaust. And I believe the Holocaust is the single-most pivotal, historical event of the 20th century, and they'll look back many centuries from now and say, how could such a civilized people be involved in something like that? It's a tradition that we, in the last century, should never forget, and ought to be ashamed of.

I believe this resolution was brought forward with the best of intentions, but I think the resolution is an error and a tactical error on the part of the member. And I'm not criticizing anyone's sincerity, but let me outline the two reasons why I believe this resolution is a mistake in tactics.

Firstly, the A-word, which I won't even use in this Legislature, to talk about Israel is inaccurate. Notwithstanding the–in fact, Jimmy, when Jimmy Carter used that A-word I was disgusted. It's the wrong word. It applies inaccurately. It does not apply to Israel in no shape or form. It diminishes what happened in South Africa and all the efforts the Canadian and other governments did to get rid of the A-process. And the problem with the A-word is it's inflammatory, and it causes difficulty. So I won't even state that word in this Chamber.

But my second reason relates to that. My second reason why I believe this resolution is a tactical mistake relates to that, and that is the process that the member talked about failed. It didn't get off the ground. It wasn't a major issue here, Mr. Speaker. I'm not questioning the member's right or any of our rights to speak, but the process failed. It failed because of the place Manitoba is. It did not become a big issue. By us raising this as an issue, and voting on this in the Legislature, we give a platform. Now, the member should–we give a platform for those who failed, for those who put in process a process that was a non-event, was bad publicity. We give them a forum.

By–[interjection] Unbelievable, the member may say, but think about it. We've taken the event that blew in and blew out, caused some controversy but was a non-event. But now standing up and giving those people the right to put out more press releases, put out more news information about an event that failed, we have given a failure a platform. And that's why I think, tactically, this resolution is a mistake. It's a mistake to bring this resolution forward to the Legislature. The tactic did not work.

And we in Manitoba, Mr. Speaker, are a strong enough province and a strong enough community to ensure that that kind–[interjection]

I allowed the member to speak. The member talked about how important this is to herself, and this is important to me and my community, as well. So I beg the member to allow me to speak my opinion on an issue that I, too, have lost sleep on.

And I've thought a lot about this. And you don't reward failure. And you don't give a group that wants to rise up and wants to cause controversy and wants to use the A-word in connection over and over and over again with Israel. You don't give them a forum to say, wow, the Manitoba Legislature, now vote on this. There's going to be a press release. There's going to be a controversy. There's going to be probably some people out there with protest signs saying, the Manitoba Legislature is against free speech. That's not what we're saying, but that's what they're going to say.

And that's why I think this resolution, as well intentioned as it is, and I'm not disregarding the intention, I think can be used as a point of divisiveness, not as a point of unity, which is what we've done very well in this Chamber. We've done Yad Vashem collectively and as a group. I've–we've attended regularly for over a decade. But, I think, by making this a resolution or an issue in this Chamber, we do more harm than good.

First, do no harm. On this very sensitive issue, someone who's read widely, travelled widely and is a strong supporter, historically and otherwise, of the most oppressed race in the history of human civilization, be it in England, be it in Spain, be it in the–Poland, be it in Ukraine where my parents come–my father won't even go back to Ukraine. You know why he said he wouldn't go back to Ukraine? Because the whole place was wiped out and the people he knew and dealt with were all gone. And he wasn't talking just about Ukrainians.

So I come to this issue saying I think it's a tactical error in this Chamber for us to make this a resolution, to give a platform for a group that failed, for a group that keeps trying to use the A-word, which it had no association whatsoever with Israel. And so it's my view that we ought not to pass a resolution of this kind. It's my view that the purpose of this Legislature is well known, that our support for the people of Israel, for the Canadian, the Manitoba, the universal position of a two-nation state, at some hopeful future point and peace can prevail.

But, by taking elements of discord and divisiveness that try to make publicity issues, we only magnify the issue. And we're doing that on the floor at the Legislature and I, unfortunately, think that that is a mistake for us to do that. And I think it's–reckless is not the word, because I don't think the member brought this about recklessly. I think it was thought as deeply as we thought about it, but I think it's an error. And I don't think we ought to do more than discuss the merits and not give credence to a cause that failed in fact. It was seen as failure in fact. That we don't allow it to come out of here, that we can–they–someone can spin out another press release or another press conference based on this.

And I want to close–you know, members opposite, I want to close with a saying from Sufi mysticism, and Sufi is a form of Islamic mysticism. It's a word that I've used very much in my life. What do you do with a whirling dervish? You let it whirl.

And, in this case, we had a group and an organization that used the A-word. It didn't get it off the ground, and we ought not to use this Chamber and this floor in any means to give them any credibility. And we're giving them credibility by virtue of talking about this, by virtue of providing a platform.

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And, as well-intentioned as the resolution is and as much as people may disagree, I think that is the right position. And, on that basis, I think we ought not to support this resolution. I think we should just accept the resolution, discuss the issues of peace, discuss the issues of our support, discuss the issues of free speech, but not give a platform for people to go out of here–not people out of here, but people from outside of here, to use this as an opportunity to make the issue more than it was. It was a publicity stunt aimed at garnering more publicity and we ought not to support that. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Ron Schuler (Springfield): I wish to briefly put some comments on the record. I was fortunate in my youth to be able to attend the University of Manitoba where a lot of issues were debated. At the time I was going to university, free trade was a very big issue, and as a student activist, I participated in that debate.

And we travelled along the campuses in Manitoba and put forward our side of the issue, but it was always staying on the issue. We debated the issue of free trade. What troubles me about this debate–and I'm a university graduate and participated in a lot of these–is the fact that the argument is already placed as a biased argument. You start with denouncing. How do you start a debate, a fair debate, an equitable debate, when automatically it's called denouncing? Already, you've predicated where the debate is going to go.

The second term used right after that is Israel and then it goes "apartheid", and I will use the word because it's used denouncing Israeli Apartheid Week, Mr. Speaker, and I would like to talk about apartheid. What does apartheid come up with? It conjures up racist hate and oppression, and it sets a debate that–that's so negative–negatively loads the debate against Israel that you can't really have a fair and open debate.

Israel is basically guilty until proven guilty when you get into this debate. It's one-sided and it basically leads to an uninformed negative and passionate debate against another group on campus. It's negatively loaded, and I would suggest that when you have a debate where you're denouncing Israel, where you've got apartheid as part of it, that you can't have fair and open debate on it because you've already set where the debate is going.

I would suggest to the students there is nothing wrong–nothing wrong with debating, for instance, you could call it the issue of Israel and Palestine in the Middle East–great, great place to debate on. You have people on different sides of the debate. You have a healthy debate. It doesn't load anything negatively. It doesn't take a position automatically with its title against one group or the other, and it doesn't rise up a lot of passions immediately before you even get into the debate.

You can have those debates, but the fact that you've already started this with calling a nation as being an apartheid nation is very unfortunate, and I would suggest to all those students who e-mailed us–and a lot of us got those e-mails–that actually this is part of that debate. And we should have this debate.

Folks, to stick your head in the sand and say that we are not going to debate these issues is not where I would like to be as a legislator. I would like to join in on this and say, this is not where we should be going as a modern and civilized nation, where we attack another nation with the word "apartheid" as the title of our debate.

And I would suggest to members of this Chamber: Anybody who's a student of history knows full well that we must never be the Neville Chamberlains of the year 2010. We should take a stand and we should do it in this Chamber. This is where healthy debate should be. This is exactly where we should be talking about this.

And I would suggest to the students who e-mailed us–and I fully intend on responding to them–yes, this is part of the debate and this is healthy, but I would suggest to them that the fact that they start their debate by already calling Israel apartheid basically says to them: You are guilty until proven guilty. That is not a fair debate, and that we have students that go into our campuses and are uncomfortable, physically uncomfortable, with being on the campus, then already there's something wrong with that debate.

We should be doing something a little bit differently on the campus, and this Chamber should be encouraging our students to be careful with the way they choose their words. They should be careful with the way that the debate is predicated. And folks, we as legislators have a duty, have an obligation, to step in and have a free debate here, and say to our students and those on our campuses, whether it took off this year, whether they were successful this year, we know that this is something that's being driven and being driven across North America 

We should stand up, not be Neville Chamberlains, and say, this is not appropriate. It actually does drive up negative feelings towards our Jewish students, and we know the kind of dangers when we get into that kind of a realm. And I would suggest to members of this Chamber, let's pass this, let's move it forward. It's the right resolution, and Israel Apartheid Week is not what we should be encouraging on our campuses. That's not the right kind of debate. I would suggest to all those students that they look within themselves and perhaps take to heart what's being said in this Chamber and look at framing the debate in a much different manner. Thank you, Mr. Speaker