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The sight of Conservative backbencher, Jim Eglinski, rising to ask Justin Trudeau the first question in the House of Commons Wednesday was an unusual deviation from the norm.

The Alberta MP is not one of the Opposition’s great orators. But he is a 40-year RCMP veteran and was one of the first officers on the scene after the shooting of Indian cabinet minister, Malkiat Singh Sidhu, on Vancouver Island in May 1986. (Sidhu survived but was later assassinated in India).

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The perpetrator, who was later convicted of attempted murder, was Jaspal Atwal, the man at the centre of a diplomatic storm after being invited, and later un-invited, to a reception attended by Justin Trudeau in New Delhi during his now infamous visit.

Eglinski said he would never forget the day he helped Sidhu and his wife into the ambulance. “It is a reminder that the victims of terrorism have names, have faces and have families,” he said.