MP Garnett Genuis delivered speech at 2026 Falun Dafa Day

To introduce Member of Parliament Garnett Genovese, whose continued engagement, outspokenness, and understanding continues to uplift our community. Everyone, please welcome Garnett. Thank you very much. It's a great honor for me to be here with you today, along with two of my colleagues who you'll hear from next, Larry Brock and Dan Muse, who are strong champions within our conservative team for freedom, for justice here at home and around the world. It was an honor for me to work with your community to put forward the bill which, finally, after 15 long years of work, criminalized any involvement in forced organ harvesting and trafficking. There is continuing work that we need to do in this country and around the world to defend religious freedom, to defend the freedom of Falun Gong practitioners, and to stand up for these core values that we share, truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance. I am concerned that we now have an approach at the executive level in this country that is, again, naive about the threat posed by the CCP, that we have people who would like us to unlearn the things we have learned over previous years about the serious problem of transnational oppression, about human rights abuses, about genocide that the CCP are responsible for. And I want to thank you, in particular, for your leadership on defending our freedom here in Canada and combating the scourge of foreign interference. People here in Canada must be free to express themselves, to share their opinions, to make beautiful art and present it without foreign, state-backed interference. And yet, with the beautiful Shen Yen performance, we have seen continuous efforts to undermine what is a simple and yet beautiful artistic display celebrating traditional Chinese values and ideas. I've seen this show in a number of places. I've always appreciated the opportunity to see it. And yet, the CCP wants to deprive Canadians of the opportunity to see this beautiful show. And normally, you would have all parliamentarians, all sectors of society, outraged by the censorship of the art. I mean, can you imagine the response we would see if some organization or state interest in the United States was trying to shut down artwork here in Canada that they didn't like? And yet, the response from elites in this country has been tepid and insufficient to the clear effort of a foreign state to suppress artistic expression here in Canada. So, as concerns, we will stand with you for your freedom and human rights, calling for an end to persecution inside China, and also defending freedom of speech, freedom of expression, artistic expression, and otherwise within this country. This is our country. These are our freedoms. We must stand together to defend them. And I want to thank you for your leadership, being here, and fighting for the freedoms that matter to all Canadians. Thank you and God bless.