Mr. Speaker, the bill put forward by the hon. member for Brampton Centre gives me pause for reflection on a very serious issue. I am talking, of course, about genocide and other crimes against humanity that we should never forget, let alone pretend that they never happened.
As members know, these last few years, Bloc Quebecois members have supported every measure to underline and commemorate tragic events where men have shown how inhumane and violent they can be at times. We have stood up against those who tried to wipe out all memories of these tragedies.
Let me remind my hon. colleagues that, in this House, in 1996 to be exact, the Liberal government toned down a motion concerning the Armenian genocide by dropping the word genocide and replacing it with the term tragic event.
That same year, the Minister for International Cooperation pressured the mayor of Montreal to abandon his plans to erect a monument to the victims of the Armenian genocide. Again, the minister would have preferred tragic event instead of the term genocide.
At the time, I rose in the House to remind my colleagues that toning down wordings in such a context is tantamount to confirming that the final step in a genocide is to attempt, after the fact ,to deny its very existence, or at the very least to minimize its importance. That is what is called selective memory.
For the Bloc Quebecois, genocide and all other crimes against humanity must not be hushed up. There are lessons to be learned from them. Also, the words used to describe these barbaric acts must not be used as a pretext to trivialize unspeakable acts.
Let us not forget that our sense of history and our collective memory will keep alive the memory of humanity's past.
The contents of Bill C-224, which we are now debating, are pretty clearly defined in the title, an act to establish by the beginning of the twenty-first century an exhibit in the Canadian Museum of Civilization to recognize the crimes against humanity as defined by the United Nations that have been perpetrated during the twentieth century.
My colleagues in the Bloc Quebecois and myself will not oppose initiatives aimed at reminding people of past errors so they will ever occur again.
Having worked in education, I find it essential that our young people have a better knowledge of all these tragic mistakes and all these instances of genocide.
Therefore, we are interested in the idea of informing the public about genocide and other crimes against humanity through an exhibit in the Canadian Museum of Civilization.
It could be an interesting tool for teaching the young and the not so young.
But the teaching of history is also important, because not all Quebecers and Canadians have a chance to visit museums.
So that future generations recall these human tragedies, maybe they could be included in the curricula of our history courses. This would be another good way of ensuring that these events live on in our collective memory.
We therefore see the debate on the bill introduced by the member for Brampton Centre as a unique opportunity to recall the growing concerns of Quebecers and Canadians with respect to major crimes against humanity.
However, it is not for the Bloc Quebecois to impose themes or exhibit material on museums. It is not for politicians in this House to decide these matters.
We are here today to raise a concern that is important to the constituents we represent and to express a wish and support for a future exhibit. It is from this perspective that we feel that Bill C-224 is well-intentioned and that we support it in principle, but we feel that the Canadian Museum of Civilization should have full latitude to make any decisions.
As parliamentarians, our responsibility goes beyond supporting the idea of an exhibit on genocides and crimes against humanity. For example, we know that Canada was and still is a haven for too many people responsible for war crimes or crimes against humanity.
The Bloc Quebecois has supported measures to amend the Criminal Code to allow the removal and expulsion of war criminals. We are still waiting for another amendment to the Criminal Code that would allow us to judge these people here.
This is a concrete measure that the government and parliamentarians will have to adopt some day if they are serious about learning from the past.
Unfortunately, many genocides and crimes against humanity were committed during the 20th century. We are most familiar with the plight of Armenians, the Holocaust and, more recently, the atrocities in Cambodia, Rwanda, Burundi, East Timor, Bosnia or Kosovo, to name but a few.
For people to remember, for our collective memory to remain intact, for reconciliation to be possible among people, society must remember its epic moments, but also its darkest ones.
It is in the recognition of the peoples' right to exist that justice and freedom take on their full meaning. Is justice not freedom in action?