Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank colleagues for their participation. Even when we disagree, I hope we are still civil with each other. I think we are still civil with each other.
I want to particularly commend Ms. McPherson for the ideas that she has put forward. In other circumstances, I certainly would be very supportive of many of those ideas, and I rather hope that we can see the government move forward with legislation such as has been described.
I hope, by this time, that colleagues, particularly those who voted against this bill, understand the rationale that I put forward.
I just want to end with a story I mentioned to my colleagues on the Liberal side earlier today. Those of you who know me know that I am a big fan of William Wilberforce. He is probably the greatest legislator in the British Westminster system ever, and he is the principal person responsible for the abolition of slavery in the British Empire. Slavery was the basis for the wealth of the British Empire for years, and he tried to get slavery abolished literally for over 20 years. He tried many times directly. The way in which that came about was that he got the slave trade abolished, therefore devaluing the entire wealth on which slavery was built, on which the British Empire was built. Because he succeeded in abolishing the slave trade, slavery itself was ultimately abolished in the British Empire.
In some respects—a very tiny little bit—this is what we're doing today. Today it's tactics to move towards the larger goal of expunging slavery from the supply chain of our nation. It is a scourge on our nation that we use the products of slaves. It is a scourge on each one of us that we use the products of slaves. I'm rather hoping, in the course of this Parliament, that this committee in particular, but also colleagues generally, will see to it that we move further forward so that our wealth is not based upon the work and product of slaves.
I realize, Mr. Chair, that I'm not overly prone to giving philosophical and political rationales for what we're doing here today, but sometimes we forget that sometimes you have to do indirectly what you can't get done directly. So, today, we did somewhat indirectly what we would ultimately get to directly.
Thank you for that moment.