Mr. Speaker, we are all, wherever we are, deeply saddened and profoundly pained at the passing of a great world historical figure, Nelson Mandela, a person who endured 27 years in a South African prison and emerged to not only preside over the dismantling of apartheid, but in fact to make possible, as president, the establishment of a democratic, multiracial, free South Africa.

It was a little over 13 years ago, precisely on June 12, 2001, that we gathered in the House on a motion unanimously adopted to make Nelson Mandela an honorary citizen of Canada. As we said at the time, this conferral of honorary citizenship will have enduring resonance not only for Canada but internationally.

Let me summarize those considerations that inspired that honorary citizenship and that today really amount to a great testament to his everlasting humanitarian legacy that he bequeathed to each one of us, wherever we are.

The first was that Nelson Mandela was really the metaphor and message for the struggle for human rights and human dignity in our time. If apartheid was the ultimate assault on human rights and human dignity, South Africa was the first post-World War II country to have institutionalized racism as a matter of law. We should not forget that apartheid was not just a racist philosophy; it was a legal racist regime, and it was Mandela who fought and gave full expression to that struggle for human rights and human dignity against this racist legal regime.

Second, Mandela was the embodiment of the three great struggles of the 20th century: the long march toward freedom, as he put it, the march for democracy, and the march for equality.

Third, Mandela was a role model for nation-building wherever we are. He was the one who inspired the notion of establishing a rainbow coalition, of taking diverse peoples, even antagonistic peoples, adversaries, races, and identities, and welding them into a united rainbow coalition for nation-building.

As one who served as a member of his international legal team, I was privileged to hear the testimonies of those who had worked with him throughout the years in prison and afterward and who said of him the incredible testimony that Mandela was a person without rancour, without any sense of revenge, without any anger at all, a person without any malice—a person, yes, of resilience, yes, of determination, of commitment, but a person open to and therefore capable of welding together those diverse peoples into one nation.

Finally, he was most of all a metaphor for hope, particularly for the young, in his speaking of the importance also of education as a linchpin of the future.

I will close by saying one thing. May his memory serve always as an inspiration for all of us, wherever we are, and may that memory serve as a blessing for this House and everyone in this universe.

Irwin Cotler

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