Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity to participate in the debate on the motion proposed by the official opposition.
The theme is man's inhumanity to man, an exhortation that we set aside a time every year to take note of this unfortunate subject. The subscript on the theme is the Armenian genocide of 1915.
Some amendments have been proposed by the government and by the third party dealing with technical aspects of the resolution and exhibiting some caution in terms of the use of the word "genocide."
Perhaps some of us are looking for ways to finesse the use of these historical facts, bring them into the present and find the proper pigeonhole, the proper categorization, the proper way to try to articulate it. I think there is some difficulty in doing that. Members on both sides of the House have articulated various perspectives on the difficulty. It is not easy to articulate events which happened a long time ago, in this case 81 years ago.
In any event, I have made up my mind. I made up my mind some time ago. I do not care about the technical aspects of this. I will leave that to others. Frankly, after 81 years we are at the point where the lawyers have become irrelevant.
I first became aware of what is being called the Armenian genocide about 12 years ago. I had an Armenian Canadian friend. He certainly did not become my friend to make me aware of the issue. However, in knowing his family I became aware of it.
About the same time I had the occasion to read an academic article in a British magazine of political philosophy and history. That magazine is called "Encounter". It was a well written and objective presentation of many aspects of history and political philosophy.
The article that I read was quite objective. It dealt with the then existing historical controversy about the issue of how many people actually died in the Armenian genocide. At the time, and perhaps still, there are conflicting views on the number. However it is measured, we are dealing with six or seven digits. However it is measured, it was, at least, a tragedy. It was the first genocide of this century. I have accepted that.
Irrespective of the vote on the motion and how the lawyers amend it, dovetail it and finesse it, I want Canadians to recognize what happened in 1915.
Since that time I have attended the annual commemoration of the April 1915 events. Everyone will know that the perpetrators were incapable of killing 1.5 million people on April 24, 1915. It went on for some time. At the time the world was engaged in another slaughter, the first world war. Millions were killed in that exercise. It happened at the same time that Lawrence of Arabia was pursuing his military career, perhaps 100 miles south of where this was happening. The world did not pay too much attention.
However, there were those who took note. I am pleased to say that there were those in Canada who took note. About 1921 some Canadians got together to bring to Canada some orphans of the Armenian genocide. Those orphans came to be known as the Georgetown boys. They were brought to a place near Georgetown, Ontario. While by present day standards it does not look too pretty, these orphans were parcelled out and taken to farms. They were not adopted. They had guardians. They were sent to school and they worked very hard on farms. Recently there was a commemoration of them by the Armenian community in Toronto which I attended. It was very moving.
These people are now very old. Most of them had smiles. However, the wrinkles in their hands and faces showed me something very real that happened 81 years ago.
We can all pick whatever term we like on this, tragedy, genocide, but all of us cannot help but pause and ask how this could have happened and to ask God not to let it happen again.
Following that, for the Armenians of that part of the Middle East and eastern Europe there was a diaspora. Those who were able to flee did. Those who were deported moved on. Somewhere between a few and many found their way, thankfully, to Canada, with the Armenian community regarding itself as a minority within Canada. Many of them have been mainstreamed, leading lives not so much as Armenian-Canadians but as Canadians of Armenian heritage.
However, one cannot forget that a huge chunk of people, part of one's heritage, was simply liquidated by a political entity, the Ottoman Empire. I was not alive during the time of the Ottoman Empire so I do not know what it was. I can read about it in the history books but I cannot reach back and touch it as part of history. However, those who survived those events have told me they happened. It is more than past due for the rest of the world to recognize it as it really was.
We should not leave this event alone in history without recognizing that man has on numerous occasions killed just as many in this century. There was the first world war, the Russian revolution which killed millions, and the genocidal German concentration camps which killed millions of Jews, Gypsies and political opponents.
We were a party to the second world war during which millions were killed. The Chinese Communist revolution was not a genocide but millions died. There was a massive slaughter of military personnel and civilians in Yugoslavia immediately following the first world war.
In the partition in India in 1947-48, two million people were killed trying to draw a line between India and Pakistan. It was a terrible tragedy. No one willed that one; it was man's inhumanity to man.
Just since I have had the privilege of serving as a member of Parliament, we have had the ugliness of the slaughter in Bosnia and in Rwanda.
This motion today is not just an attempt to recognize what happened in Armenia in 1915. It is an attempt by all Canadians to reconcile inside themselves with what has happened here, these tragedies, this death, these inhumanities. We have very little else we can use to help us reconcile inside ourselves. This resolution is one of the ways we can do it as a people.
We also wish, if we can, to reconcile ourselves with history. In this case it is my view the history books do not show exactly what happened. Maybe some do. Forgive me for not being able to read all the books and articles on this. However, in my experience as a Canadian and with my education I did not have access and was not made aware of the extent of this slaughter as I went through my schooling, as I was privileged to do for many years. I regret that we do not in a dedicated and comprehensive way try to make our students aware of some of these aspects of history.
I do not think we should be too partisan about the 1.5 million dead. I hope there is a way the opposition motion, the government amendment and the subamendment from the third party will resolve this in a unanimously adopted motion. It would be difficult
for anyone to vote against a motion when we are looking down a gun barrel at this many dead.