In a rare visit to the West Island, federal Liberal party leader Stéphane Dion attended a mosque prayer session last Friday at Mukalah-al Mukarammah on Gouin Boulevard in Pierrefonds/Roxboro and presented the opposition's new 'minorities at risk' program to local media.

"I wan to show solidarity to a place of worship that has been a victim of 4 incidents," Dion said during a small scrum outside the mosque before the prayer session, flanked by local MPs Bernard Patry and Francis Scarpaleggia as well as mosque officials like its president Salim Devji.

Three of the vandalism acts Dion was referring to were suffered by the mosque this year, the last one only about a month ago, when one of its glass door panes was shattered by a rock during the early hours of dawn when nobody was around. Members of the mosque discovered the incident a few hours later and alerted police.

"If we have the support of the Canadian people," Dion said, "when we're governing, we'll run a new communities-at-risk program," he explained.

Under such a program, a Liberal government would set aside about $75 million annually to help out religious or ethnic communities meet their financial needs for educational, social or safety programs, Dion said. For example, the program would have helped cover the cost of the 13 security video cameras installed at the mosque after the last act of vandalism, he said.

"It's really horrible," Pierrefonds-Dollard MP Bernard Patry said of the repeated attacks on the mosque. "And it has to stop. You know, in my riding, I also have Sikhs, Tamils, Jews" he said, hoping such acts would not extend to those communities.

Mosque president Salim Devji said it was a "great honour" to welcome Stéphane Dion and the two local Liberal MPs to Mukalah-al Mukarammah. "We have to live in peace and harmony with the rest of the country," Devji added.

Later, as worshippers at the mosque filled its large hall and sat down on the floor, it was with a shaky and emotive voice that Dion took to the microphone, thanking the council for arranging the visit and talking about how he remains inspired by the actions undertaken by his predecessor Jean Chrétien after the terror attacks on September 11, 2001. He had visited a mosque in Ottawa and spoken about the terror threat had to be fought together, Dion said.