THE CRUELLEST EARTHQUAKE

Excerpts of Remarks by Hon. David Kilgour
Member of Parliament for Edmonton – Mill Woods –Beaumont
To a fundraiser event sponsored by the
Edmonton Council of Muslim Associations
Sultan Banquet Hall
Mill Woods
January 9, 2005

Dear Friends:

My time is short so permit me to come directly to some of the issues which are on all of our minds.

The humanitarian response of Canadians and Albertans to the cruellest earthquake seen in forty years has been awesome.  Residents of Edmonton alone have reportedly already raised more than a million dollars.

The organizers of this event – God bless them – hope to raise $50,000 tonight.

Will we all finally begin to see ourselves as sisters and brothers of one world?

Will we next turn our generosity and resolve to deal with other crises too, including malnutrition, which alone kills about 24,000 persons – mostly children – a day?

What about measles, diarrhoea, malaria and HIV/AIDS and other mass killers?

We can defeat many of them if we are together as determined as we are about the tsunamis of December 26^th.

Please don’t misunderstand me.  Now is the time to focus on the victims of the Bandar Aceh earthquake.  The death toll is now above 150,000 and who knows how many survivors are till in mortal danger of danger of disease, dehydration and other reasons.

Many of us here tonight are members of faith communities.  How, we all ask, could a loving God permit this to happen to so many innocent people – so many beautiful children? 

Some theologians say that those tectonic plates, whose movement caused the Bandar Aceh earthquake, are part of nature and God does not normally interfere with the laws of the natural world.  If we fall into a rushing river, there is nothing God can normally do.  Others say that, while God did not stop the tsunami, He made His presence known by the countless humanitarian and generous acts which followed it, whether in Bandar Aceh, Sri Lanka, Somalia or Edmonton.

Perhaps like you, I think we humans are not meant to know why God permits tsunamis to occur.  As one writer put it, it’s akin to asking what heaven looks like in detail.  It’s unanswerable to human beings.

Whatever our analysis – theological, scientific or whatever – and whatever our conclusion – if any – we must make a generous donation to help the people of South Asia.

Thank you all for coming.

Thank you to the organizers.

Let’s make this event a real success. 

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