Speeches by Rolfe Commissiong

1 Mar 2019 House of Assembly

Official Hansard Report - House of Assembly

12 words

I may very well be, Mr. Speaker. [Inaudible interjections and laughter ]

1 Mar 2019 House of Assembly

Official Hansard Report - House of Assembly

106 words

I may very well be. Mr. Speaker, I am going to start at the end of where I was originally int ending to go and maybe then go to the front. Mr. Speaker, there has been a lot of concern here about the issue of immigration. We heard the Minister say that comprehensive immigration reform is on its way. Mr. …

1 Mar 2019 House of Assembly

Official Hansard Report - House of Assembly

4 words

Because he was black.

1 Mar 2019 House of Assembly

Official Hansard Report - House of Assembly

70 words

Mr. Woolridge ended up driving taxi. That was the fate of so many educated black men of that generation, many of whom are still living, like my mother and father and so many others. And s o when I hear about, We need to bring more people in and we need to open the floodgates of i mmigration, we need …

1 Mar 2019 House of Assembly

Official Hansard Report - House of Assembly

2 words

—dissident cord—

1 Mar 2019 House of Assembly

Official Hansard Report - House of Assembly

42 words

—dissident cord within m yself and generations of black Bermudians within this country. Mr. Speaker, in this continuing journey down memory lane, I just want to share with the listening audience out there and my colleagues here, Mr. Speaker, with your indulgence—

1 Mar 2019 House of Assembly

Official Hansard Report - House of Assembly

386 words

—an excerpt from a book written by the Honourable Walton Brown, Jr., the current Minister of the Cabinet. The book’s title is, Bermuda and the Struggle for Reform: Race, Politics, and Ideology, 1994- 1998. It was published, I guess, probably, roughly, a decade ago or more. And it reads as follows on the issue of immigration. It says: “The second …

1 Mar 2019 House of Assembly

Official Hansard Report - House of Assembly

42 words

But what did we get from white Bermuda? That’s right! For the most part, we hear it from them all the time. It is “reverse racism.” These blacks are only doing to us what we have been doing to them. [Inaudible interjection]

1 Mar 2019 House of Assembly

Official Hansard Report - House of Assembly

96 words

Do you know the scars from that period are still resonating? Where did these hoards that flooded in here during that period, where did they work? In Bermuda’s private sector! Who did they displace in that sector? Our parents! Our grandparents! Do you want to know why the current s tats that we see around racial disparity are the way …

1 Mar 2019 House of Assembly

Official Hansard Report - House of Assembly

32 words

—we must govern as a r esponsibility for all of Bermuda. But let me tell you this. All of Bermuda includes marginalised people, and, for the most part, they are black Bermudians.

1 Mar 2019 House of Assembly

Official Hansard Report - House of Assembly

19 words

Not black and white. Right now, if we have any unemployment, it is black Berm udians who are unemployed.

1 Mar 2019 House of Assembly

Official Hansard Report - House of Assembly

118 words

Statistics indicate . . . evidence- based conversati on, right? Statistics indicate that there is full employment, statistically, in Berm uda’s white community. Look at the stats that we saw the other day around health care. Over 2,000 black Bermudians did not have health insurance, as [at] 2010. And that inc luded some black children. You know what the corresponding …

1 Mar 2019 House of Assembly

Official Hansard Report - House of Assembly

78 words

Wait now. Six years later, in 2016, over 4,000 black Bermudians are without health insurance, the corresponding figure for whites [is] 4 00plus. So do not come with any false moral equivalency to me, because that is what is being perpetrated here. We do not want to be like Cayman! Our parents fought and sacrificed to make sure we were …

1 Mar 2019 House of Assembly

Official Hansard Report - House of Assembly

196 words

Cayman Islands. Humph! Now, we understand that we have an ageing population. Well, I say, let’s have an evidence- based conversation. The average age in Bermuda is 44 years of age. We are in demographic winter. But do you know how we had this conversation about how we are going to go forward, including on issues of imm igration? When …

1 Mar 2019 House of Assembly

Official Hansard Report - House of Assembly

70 words

I will tell you this. Outside of that right -wing fascist newspaper down in Cayman, the [Cayman] Compass, or whatever it is called, which is a fellow traveller with the Royal Gazette, because the Royal Gazette is like in the same ideological space. Right? I bet you that if you speak to Mr. and Mrs. Cayman Islands down there and …

1 Mar 2019 House of Assembly

Official Hansard Report - House of Assembly

15 words

To create a Cayman back then. Anyway, Mr. Speaker, let me just continue on. [Crosstalk]

1 Mar 2019 House of Assembly

Official Hansard Report - House of Assembly

345 words

I, too, want to commend, Mr. Speaker, our newly minted Honourable Finance Minister for this March’s inaugural budget before this august Chamber. We hope this is a first of many more to come. He has amply demonstrated that he was more than capable of delivering a budget that has given confidence to every sector of this country —every se ctor. …

1 Mar 2019 House of Assembly

Official Hansard Report - House of Assembly

38 words

But yet all we get is them pouring contempt upon that overwhelming majority. They sti ll have not learned the lesson inherent in that defeat —one of the greatest political defeats any party in this country has endured.

1 Mar 2019 House of Assembly

Official Hansard Report - House of Assembly

7 words

In the modern era. [Inaudible i nterjections]

1 Mar 2019 House of Assembly

Official Hansard Report - House of Assembly

89 words

Mr. Speaker, did I get ev erything? Did I, and others, get everything that we would have wanted out of this budget? I am going to be honest with you. I would have liked to have seen more. As a progressive committed to economic and racial justice, I would have been more than pleased to see the tax burden substantively …