Hon. Pierrette Ringuette: Honourable senators, I must admit that after hearing the excellent speech by Senator Audette, I’m a bit embarrassed to speak. However, I wanted to talk to you about what I consider to be a personal event that contributed to the discussion on the bill respecting Lebanese heritage month.

Indeed, in our small rural region of northwestern New Brunswick, we have a Lebanese family. They’re entrepreneurs, but mostly people who are dedicated to the community, volunteers at the church and members of every cultural organization. I will never forget them.

However, I want to remind some of you here today — several of you who weren’t here 10 years ago — of an event involving a potato farmer in my great region of northwestern New Brunswick.

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That potato farmer was named Henk Tepper. And Henk Tepper was imprisoned in Lebanon 10 years ago based on an extradition mandate requested by the Algerian government supposedly for a shipment of bad potatoes that was, a month after, sold to the Syrians. We have no knowledge of any Syrian who died from eating those New Brunswick potatoes.

However, since the month of May when the family came to my home and asked for my help to try to get Mr. Tepper back to Canada, I started on a journey that I never thought would bring me to so many challenges — so many personal, political challenges — in all my life. Actually, for 10 months, I hardly slept because I was going over and over in my head: What can I do? What have I missed? Where do I go from here?

The issue was that Mr. Tepper was in a Lebanese prison. And though myself and many of my colleagues in the Senate at that time made representations to our Canadian foreign affairs office and minister, there was, from my perspective, no real help provided to Mr. Tepper while in prison in Lebanon. That avenue was hardly open.

We also explored the Algerian avenue to see how we could provide proof to the Algerian government that the potatoes were not rotted. There, we bumped into another dead end because I called the senator in Algeria who was responsible for agriculture. It turned out that senator’s nephew was the Minister of Agriculture. It triggered something bizarre in my head, and I went and did all of the research for agriculture for the year before the event happened in Algeria, where I figured out that in the Algerian press there was the notion of a potato consortium in Algeria. That was another dead end.

The only option that we had was to give all the proof that we could to the Lebanese government. We managed to provide that to the Prime Minister, Minister of Justice, Attorney General and a few judges who understood the case. We did so from May going to December of that year, where myself and Mr. Tepper’s lawyer from New Brunswick went to Lebanon. Landing in Lebanon, we got the message from the Canadian embassy that we should leave Lebanon, that we had nothing to do there.

Those of you who know me certainly understand that I am more dedicated and persistent than that. The next day, we visited Mr. Tepper in his prison. Boy, he was certainly not the jolly giant that I knew the year before. But through that effort, we spent five days meeting with ministers, including the then-Minister of Tourism, who has dual citizenship. He was also a Canadian from Montreal.

Colleagues, if it had not been for the very tight relationship and mutual respect between Canadians and Lebanese, who understand and share our values, Mr. Tepper would have been sent to Algeria to never be seen again.

Two months after our visit to all of these Lebanese authorities, Mr. Tepper was given back his Canadian passport, put on a plane and sent back to Canada. That is my experience with the Lebanese community, and the values that we share and the friendship that we share.

I am very grateful to Senator Cordy to have put this bill in front of us. I hope that it will not be delayed. Don’t delay this for the sake of delaying tactics. It does not give you anything at the end of the day.

Coincidentally, it is before Christmas. I will be ever so grateful — and not only me. The entire northwest of New Brunswick wanted their potato farmer back in their community. It was because of the Lebanese authorities and friendship that they have with Canada. At least for me, I want this bill to be moved forward before Christmas as a sign of good will for this very decent human event that you did for a Canadian potato farmer. Let’s do this and get this passed before Christmas. Thank you.