Mr. Speaker, almost a lifetime ago in my grandparents' home country, seven million Ukrainians starved to death at the hands of Joseph Stalin. Determined to bring the Ukraine under Soviet control, Stalin starved the very Ukrainian farmers whose grain he then shipped to Russia and sold to western countries. The food left the Ukraine, but the people were barricaded in. The results devastated and nearly destroyed an entire generation of Ukrainians. In the words of one Soviet writer, people were “dying in solitude in slow degrees—trapped and left to starve, each in his own home”.
Moreover, it was a crime in the Ukraine to discuss the famine. Many international observers dismissed it as a rumour until documents surfaced in the 1980s.
Canada became the new home for many Ukrainian famine survivors after the second world war. All Canadians join with them and their families as they mark this month, the 65th anniversary of the Ukrainian famine. We pledge: “We remember. Never again”.