Honourable senators, January 8, 2020, is a date that will be forever imprinted on our hearts and minds. On that day, no one could have imagined the tragedy that was about to unfold.

It was 5:15 a.m. local time in Tehran, and Ukraine International Airlines Flight PS752 was supposed to be taking off. Instead, it waited, delayed for an hour. Although they had no way of knowing it, for the 176 people on board, that hour would be their last.

At 6:12, Flight 752 departed from Tehran International Airport and was expected to land in Kiev at 8 a.m. local time. As we know, it never arrived.

In spite of intense military activity, Iran had neglected to close its airspace and was allowing commercial airliners to fly in and out of Tehran. Less than two minutes after Flight 752 had left the runway, the Iranian regime aimed two missiles at the civilian aircraft and pulled the trigger. All 176 people perished.

When Canadians awoke to the devastating news, we were initially unaware of the enormity of our loss. But as the names and identities of those who were killed became known, the nation was stunned. Of the 167 passengers, 138 were travelling to Canada, 57 were Canadian citizens and 29 were permanent residents. From one end of the country to the other, families, friends and loved ones reeled under the weight of the breaking news.

The Canadians who perished came from six different provinces and included students, faculty and recent graduates from 20 universities, colleges and technical institutes across the country. They were engineers, dentists and doctors. They were academics, professors and volunteers. They were children, scientists, teachers and professionals.

But to those who loved them, they were so much more. They were mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, sons and daughters. They were roommates and newlyweds, neighbours and colleagues. They were friends and they were family. And now they were gone.

This tragedy is far from over. In fact, for those who have just lost a loved one, it has only begun. In front of them stretches a lifetime of missed birthdays, anniversaries and celebrations. Every day they will see the empty places at the dinner table and the missing faces in the family photos. There are no words that can soften the blow of such a loss or hush the waves of regret that assault us in times of grief. There are no speeches that can dull the pain, stem the longing for one more chance to say, “I love you,” or to linger a little longer with a final hug.

To the families who weep and to the friends who mourn, our words cannot diminish your loss. But in them we hope you will feel our embrace. You are not only in our thoughts and our prayers; you are also in our hearts.

May God envelop you with his undying love and sustain you in your grief. Thank you.

Honourable senators, on behalf of the Independent Senators Group, I wish to extend our sincerest condolences to the families and friends of the 176 victims of this terrible tragedy. I hope you can take some solace in the sympathy and solidarity expressed in this chamber today. Our hearts go out to you.

The 176 innocent victims of this tragedy included Ukrainians, Iranians, Britons, Germans, Swedes, Afghans and 63 of our fellow Canadians. This tragedy claimed 176 innocent victims plus many more, when we count their relatives, their friends, their communities and their countries. Seven of the victims were from Quebec, including a young couple returning from their honeymoon. There were also PhD students, engineers, professors, workers, individuals and families with young children. So much talent, expertise, diversity and human wealth has been lost to us forever.

The crash of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 is indeed a terrible human tragedy, and it is one that mostly could have been avoided. It is a strong reminder that too often in times of conflict between nations, the true victims remain the innocent bystanders.

This is why I want to take the time today to talk about the importance of diplomacy and openness in our society. Conflicts are often rooted in ignorance, misunderstanding, fear and hate. As parliamentarians, and in the memory of the victims of this tragedy, we need to think about ways to fight these persistent evils. We have to be leaders of change to set the example for everyone. Our words must be bearers of hope and truth. We have a responsibility to fight hate speech and the propagation of fake information.

Our role as senators enables us to create strong bonds with foreign parliamentarians. We should cherish those opportunities to promote diplomacy and mutual understanding in the hope that such tragedies never happen again. May the victims rest in peace.

You will not be forgotten. Faramooshetan nakhahim kard.

You will not be forgotten.

Honourable senators, I rise today to speak about those who tragically lost their lives aboard flight PS752 on the morning of January 8, 2020; 167 passengers as well as 9 crew members died on that flight. Of the passengers, 138 were travelling to Canada, including 57 Canadian citizens. This has been the largest loss of Canadian lives in aviation since the 1985 bombing of Air India flight 182.

While details of the crash are unclear and we are left with many unanswered questions, it is important that we continue to keep in the forefront of our minds the victims of this terrible incident and, of course, their families and friends who are dealing with the loss of loved ones.

Many of those aboard were students or academics returning to Canadian universities after spending the holiday break in Iran with family. One such student was Masoumeh Ghavi, a master’s student in engineering at Dalhousie University in Halifax. Ali Nafarieh, a professor at Dalhousie University and owner of the IT company where Masoumeh worked, said of her:

I can say she was for sure one of the top students. I remember she has always a smile on her face. What she brought in our company in addition to skills and knowledge and experience was her energy. She changed the atmosphere over there. We’ll miss her a lot.

Masoumeh’s younger sister Mandieh was also on board and was about to start university in Halifax as well.

St. Mary’s University lost two students who had been studying in the Master of Finance program. Maryam Malek and Fatemeh Mahmoodi were classmates and friends who had been returning from a holiday break celebrating the end of their first semester. Both women spoke three languages. Close friend Varun Agrawal said of the crash:

It should not happen like this. They were very innocent and it shouldn’t be like this.

Dr. Sharieh Faghihi, who was a Halifax dentist and an alumnus of the Dalhousie Dental School, has been described as having been an “absolute joy” and one of the kindest human beings. Dentist Ebrahim Kiani had worked with Faghihi and had met her 25 years ago when she was head of the periodontics department at the Shiraz University of Medical Science in Iran. In his words:

She was very kind, very generous with her knowledge and very skilled. She was published in many journals... She was a good mentor to me.

Honourable senators, these were real people: mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers and friends, who were flying to Canada. For loved ones left behind, this type of loss seems unimaginable. We are reminded, at times like this, that in the blink of an eye our lives can radically change. A seemingly normal day can quickly become a date seared in our memory forever, and it can become attached to so much pain.

Honourable senators, on behalf of the progressive caucus, I extend our thoughts and prayers to families and friends of those who passed away as a result of this needless tragedy. Our country has lost some exceptional Canadians.

Honourable senators, I join with my Senate colleagues in expressing my profound sympathies for the terrible loss of life arising from the shooting down of flight 752. Alberta suffered a disproportionate and terrible loss; of the 57 Canadians murdered, 30 were from Alberta. The University of Alberta, one of Canada’s leading research institutions, suffered a grievous loss with 10 leading professors, researchers and outstanding students having been taken from us.

The Economist magazine, in its coverage of the tragedy, noted that the victims were many of the brightest minds in Iran. Canadian universities, as mentioned, including the University of Alberta and the University of Calgary, have been a tremendous beneficiary of this exodus from Iran over the last 40 years, and now many of those contributing community members have been stolen from us.

In addition to the brilliant academics and students, we lost newlyweds, community volunteers, a psychologist, an obstetrician and a family with young children. This pointless loss is too much to comprehend and impossible to forgive or forget.

Honourable senators, I, too, rise in grief and mourning to pay tribute to the victims of flight 752 from Tehran that killed all 176 passengers on board. The numbers are worth repeating because I would like to sear them into our national memory. Of the 176 passengers, 138 were headed to Canada. A full 57 were Iranian Canadians. A further 29 were permanent residents to Canada from Iran. At least 40 were academics or foreign students located in universities and colleges across our country, particularly Edmonton. There is therefore no real way of knowing how many future Canadians we lost on that flight.

A map of their lives tells us that many were doctors, lawyers, professors and scientists. Many more were destined to become contributing members of our society, but the real loss is the loss of a child, the loss of a mother, a brother, a friend. No price can be put on that. No price can be put on the grief that is running like a river through the Iranian-Canadian community.

We are a smallish community, just over 200,000 in Canada, mostly arriving, like me, after the revolution in 1978. There are less than six degrees of separation between us. Everyone knows someone who knows someone who was on that flight. It is inevitable that this tragedy dredges up memories of another crash nearly 35 years ago. As someone who is connected by birth to India, by marriage to Iran and by citizenship to Canada, my three worlds collided together on that early January morning.

The response then, in 1985, to the largest mass killing of Canadians was muted. The tragedy was treated as a foreign tragedy. We all know the sad story of the Air India victims and their long, hard fight to get attention and justice as Canadians. In comparison today, the families of the victims are receiving immediate personal attention, compensation and support, not just from the Government of Canada but from Canadians. They need that support to disentangle the enormous difficulties they face. If there is one thing that gives me solace, it is to see how our nation has come together. We have demonstrated by words and by actions that we are a nation of immigrants, that we not only celebrate our diversity but mourn collectively as a nation when called on to do so.

History may well show, honourable senators, that we have finally come of age, embracing and recognizing that a hyphenated Canadian is not a lesser Canadian. Thank you.

On January 12, I had the honour of representing the Senate of Canada at a ceremony to pay tribute to the victims of the crash of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752. The ceremony was held at the University of Alberta. This tragedy hit my city, Edmonton, hard because more than a dozen of the victims lived there and most had ties to the university.

It was minus 38 degrees that afternoon, colder with the windchill, but more than 2,500 people packed into the university’s Saville Centre. Hundreds more who couldn’t fit into the room huddled in the hallways watching the live feed on their phones. On that day we wanted to be together, sharing our grief as a community.

One by one, colleagues, students, professors, coaches, friends and lovers of the victims came to the stage and to the microphone to tell us the stories — the personal, particular stories — of the brilliant, vibrant and joyous Edmontonians we had lost. And for two hours they lived again in the recollections of those who knew them, until the rest of us began to feel that we had known them too.

We laughed at the story of how Dr. Mojgan Daneshmand, an acclaimed engineering professor who held a Canada Research Chair in radio frequency microsystems, actually went into labour the day before she was supposed to defend her dissertation.

We laughed at the story of graduate students Arash Pourzarabi and Pouneh Gorji, an engaged couple who decided to host their friends for a real Canadian Thanksgiving — two literal computer geniuses who somehow miscalculated and didn’t get their turkey cooked until 1 a.m.

We laughed at the story of devoted sisters Sara and Saba Saadat, gifted young scientists and puckish peacemakers who once locked two of their best friends who were having a fight in a car until they made up; and who were fiercely proud of their mother, Dr. Shekoufeh Choupannejad, a physician who had re-qualified to work as an obstetrician in Edmonton. But our laughter was bittersweet knowing that Mojgan, her husband Pedram Mousavi — another beloved U of A engineering professor — and their two young daughters — Daria, 14; and Dorina, 9 — would never come back to Edmonton, the community they loved, and that Dorina would never play another soccer game.

We laughed and cried at the same time as we realized that Arash and Pouneh, who were married in Iran seven days before they died, would never organize any more dinners and that Sara and Saba would never help their friends again.

All those extraordinary lives were blown right out of the sky. One moment from the ceremony haunts me. A singer was invited to the stage to perform what we were told was a beloved Persian song. Overcome with emotion, his voice faltered; and then from the audience, people who knew the words joined in, singing along with him until he could regain his composure, supporting him to the end of the music.

Now it is our turn. We need to support the families and friends and colleagues and students left behind. The people we mourned in Edmonton that afternoon risked and sacrificed so much to start new lives here. They gave my city, my province and our country their gifts of light and love. May their memories forever be a blessing and a reminder of what makes Canada so extraordinary.

Honourable senators, today we express deepest sympathies to all who lost family, friends and members of their community in the recent tragedy of Flight PS752. Every so often, unexpected events occur that result in needless loss. These remind us of the fragile nature of our own lives. No one can be certain that their loved ones, friends or neighbours will be here tomorrow.

We can understand the deep human cost of this tragedy because all of us have lived through loss. This event, however, is more painful because of the circumstances in which it occurred.

This may remind us of other tragic events that have affected us deeply or personally. For myself, I am reminded of the tragedy of Swissair Flight 111, which went down just outside Peggy’s Cove in my home province of Nova Scotia. I vividly remember receiving an urgent phone call that led to the mobilization of mental health personnel. Our response efforts took an emotional and lasting toll on many of those involved.

Lessons learned there, and from other tragic events, help us better respond to the heart-wrenching circumstances of Flight PS752. We know that neither medication nor grief counsellors can take away the pain of loss. We know that great loss can only be healed gradually. It is the families, friends and communities of the bereaved who play the most significant role in the healing process.

All Canadians have felt the impact of this tragedy and we can all be part of the healing community. While we may not be able to bring a casserole, we can help by donating. While we cannot give a hug, we can actively demand justice for those who lost their lives.

Honourable senators, I am certain that your thoughts and prayers, like mine, go out to those left behind. I am also certain that because we all understand the depth of loss, each of us will give an extra special embrace to those we care for most. Just because.

Honourable senators, it has been almost one month since Ukraine International Airlines Flight PS752 was accidentally shot down. It has been almost one month since 176 lives were ended far too early. We will never be able to begin to understand the love, talent, intelligence and joy we lost on January 8, 2020.

Countries from around the world, including Ukraine, Afghanistan, the United Kingdom, Germany and Iran, lost too many of their own. However, on that tragic day, 57 of our own were lost as well. We lost 57 Canadians who had lived here their entire lives and Canadians who came here for better lives. It does not matter if they were born here or how long they resided here. They were part of our great nation. They were Canadians.

Loving, talented, intelligent and valuable members of our communities were killed out of fear. Politicians, like ourselves, were fearful and they made decisions that cost 176 people their futures.

Dr. Forough Khadem had a very bright future ahead of her. Hers is a name that will be remembered throughout Canada thanks to the University of Manitoba.

The University of Manitoba announced on the day of Khadem’s memorial service that they would be establishing a scholarship in her honour. Khadem was a scientist who was killed on Flight PS752. She graduated in 2016 with a PhD in immunology from the University of Manitoba. She made important scientific discoveries and was working at a Canada-wide non-profit.

People who knew her said she embodied the best qualities of scientist, scholar, colleague and friend. Forough Khadem had her whole life still ahead of her, like many of the other people who died on that plane; and like all those people, she did not deserve the painful and unnecessary end she was given.

Honourable senators, when we heard that so many innocent Canadian lives were destroyed in a second by warmongering politicians, we were saddened as 176 innocent lives were lost. I urge all my colleagues today to look at establishing a ministry or department of peace focused on negotiating conflicts. Violence never solves problems; violence destroys innocent lives. There is no one more innocent than Kurdia Molani, a year-and-a-half-old Canadian baby whose innocent blood was spilled so senselessly.

As politicians who are meant to lead, we cannot condone the behaviour and actions of our fellow politicians on the days leading to January 8, 2020. However, as human beings capable of empathy, compassion and love, we must honour, pay respect and, most importantly, we can never forget the Canadians and others who lost their lives on flight PS752.

Honourable senators, I rise today to pay tribute to all those who were killed during the tragic attack on an airplane in Iran.

On January 8, 2020, all 176 passengers and crew were killed in a senseless missile attack on a civilian aircraft, Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752. Many were Canadians. All were on their way to Canada.

At least 15 of the deceased had ties to British Columbia. We need to remember each of them: who they were, their dreams and their reality. Their dreams have now been extinguished in this senseless tragedy. I want to honour them by speaking about them briefly in this place.

Soheila Moghaddam worked at the Lion’s Gate Travelodge in North Vancouver.

Mehran Abtahi had gone to Iran to meet his wife. After earning his PhD, he joined the University of British Columbia as a post-doctoral research fellow in the department of civil engineering. He had found a good job in Vancouver and was looking forward to starting a new chapter in his life.

Ardalan Hamidi, Niloofar Hamidi and Kamyar Hamidi — all three of these people were from the same family. Mr. Hamidi was an engineer and his wife, Niloofar, graduated in 2018 from UBC with a bachelor in education. Their young 15-year-old son Kamyar was a Grade 10 student at Riverside Secondary School in Port Coquitlam. He loved music and wanted to be a producer when he was older.

Naser Oshibi and his wife Firouzeh Madani — the North Vancouver couple were both award-winning physicians in Iran who worked very hard to have their medical licences recognized here. They leave behind a daughter who is a student in the Lower Mainland.

Delaram Dadashnejad, an Iranian student who was enrolled at Langara College in Vancouver to become a dietician, leaves a sister living in Burnaby.

Roja Omidbakhsh was a student at Gustavson School of Business at the University of Victoria.

Fatemah Pasavand and Ayeshe Pourghaderi — Fatemah was 17 years old and travelling with her mother, Ayeshe. Fatemah was a student at Carson Graham Secondary School in North Vancouver. The family owns a bakery in North Vancouver. They were permanent residents and excited about becoming Canadian citizens.

Hossein (Daniel) Saket and Fatemeh (Faye) Kazerani — Daniel, as he was known, was an engineer with a North Vancouver real estate developer. His wife Faye, as she was known, was an assistant to a cardiologist at St. Paul’s Hospital. They were both described as having a zest for life that lit up the room when they entered.

Mohammadhossein Asadi Lari and Zeynab Asadi Lari were siblings in their twenties. Zeynab was enrolled at UBC in biology. Her dream was to become a doctor. Her brother had graduated in 2018 in cellular and anatomical and physiological sciences with honours.

Erica Frank, a professor and chair of research at UBC, was quoted as describing Mohammadhossein’s death as “an astonishing and excruciating loss.” She went on to state that his death was also “an enormous loss for public health globally.”

It is with great sadness that I reflect on these needless and tragic deaths and want to assure them and their families that we shall never forget.

Thank you, meegwetch.