As we mark five years since the loss of Our London Family, we pause to remember, to grieve, and to honour four lives that should still be among us.

On June 6, 2021, four members of the Afzaal family were murdered in a hate-motivated terrorist attack while out for an evening walk in their own neighbourhood. Three generations of one family were taken from us in a single act of premeditated violence. A young boy survived but was left to carry the absence of those who loved him most. That night not only destroyed a family, but it also marked our city, our community, and Canada, the country that had told itself such hatred lived somewhere else.

We have spent five years refusing to look away from the truth that this attack forced into the open. Islamophobia is not a problem that belongs to other places or other times, it exists here, it has cost lives here, and when it is allowed to grow unchallenged, it becomes what it became on that evening in London.

We are grateful for what this city showed in the days that followed. Muslim Londoners were met by neighbours, faith communities, and ordinary residents who decided that hatred would not be permitted to define this place. We acknowledge the Municipal Government and the London Police Service for words and commitments offered in a spirit of partnership, and we hold them, alongside every institution in this city, to the standard that matters most, which is what is done in the years between anniversaries rather than what is said on the day.

Remembrance carries an obligation. We honour the Afzaal family by insisting that the safety of Muslim Canadians must be treated as a matter of public policy. That means sustained protection for mosques and community spaces, the full implementation of measures to confront anti-Muslim hate, and the reversal of decisions that have weakened the federal capacity to address Islamophobia at the very moment it is rising across this country. Words of solidarity are necessary, but they cannot substitute for action.

In the years since that night the threat has not receded but has instead intensified, and since 2023 this country has seen a sustained and skyrocketing escalation of anti-Muslim hatred that has touched nearly every part of Muslim life. Mosques have been targeted, schools have been targeted, Muslim women have had the hijab torn from them in public, and Muslim students have been singled out on campuses and in classrooms. We have seen multiple incidents that could have forced us to mourn again. Through all of it we have watched institutions that were built to protect every Canadian fail Muslims. There is support in this country, and we do not discount it, but there is far more work left undone than there is comfort to be taken.

What this anniversary makes impossible to ignore is the unequal value placed on Muslim life in this country. The Muslim community is the only community in Canada to have suffered two mass-casualty attacks aimed directly at worshippers and families because of their faith, first at the Quebec City mosque and then here in London. A loss of that magnitude, visited twice on a single community, demands more than remembrance. We therefore call on political leaders of every party and at every level of government to meet this moment with the seriousness it requires, to lower the temperature of a public discourse that has made Muslims a target, and to advance policies that protect our community rather than ones that place new burdens upon it. We do not ask to be valued above anyone, we ask only to be valued equally, and to be kept as safe as any other Canadian expects to be.

Five years later, we remember Salman Afzaal, Madiha Salman, Yumna Afzaal, and Talat Afzaal. We keep Fayez in our duas, the boy who survived and now carries the weight of all that was taken from him. We stand with every community in this country that lives under the weight of hate, and we reaffirm that the work of preventing the next attack belongs to all of us.

We will never forget them. We will not stop until the promise made in their memory is one this country is prepared to keep.