Mr. Speaker, first I want to congratulate my colleague from Beauséjour—Petitcodiac for his excellent speech. I would also like to express my sympathy for the Acadians.
A grave injustice was committed to the Acadian population in this country from 1755 to 1763. Some 13,000 Acadians were removed to places as far away as Georgia and Massachusetts for reasons that were only known at the time. The motion calls for redress. It calls for an apology by the British government for those actions that took place some 250 years ago.
I stand corrected. The motion has been amended and it calls for a statement of what took place at that time. The original motion asked for an apology. I would like to deal with that issue.
We have no problem whatsoever in expressing our deepest and gravest sympathy for what took place in those dark days some 250 years ago. We disapprove of it and deplore it. We will ensure with every bone in our body that it will never happen again on our soil. As the member for Beauséjour--Petitcodiac mentioned, our sympathies go out to the Acadian population for what happened.
Acadians deserve our admiration for the manner in which they conducted themselves over the last 250 years. The Acadian population, with its rich culture and language, is some of the best of what this country has to offer. Acadians represent part of the great mosaic of Canada and represent an extremely important part of our nation.
Those who are separatists in the province of Quebec would do well to learn from the lessons of Acadian strength and dignity within Canada. Acadians are integral, essential, valued and honoured members of Canadian society. They are a group that has taught us much and continues to enrich Canada and Canadians from coast to coast. I say that as somebody from British Columbia.
The best way to redress past injustices is to invest in the future. It serves no purpose to look back hundreds of years in an effort to redress those injustices. However, it does justice to those who had atrocities committed against them. Today's society should learn from those injustices and act to ensure that they never ever happen again.
With our limited resources a wise and productive investment would be to use those resources to fight prejudice and discrimination and to ensure that past wrongs are neither repeated today nor in the future.
As was mentioned by the NDP member, I also want to bring to the attention of the House the plight of aboriginal people. Aboriginal people suffer grave injustices today within our communities. Rather than trying to redress past injustices, would it not be wiser to use the limited resources we have to upgrade, uplift and aid aboriginal people who occupy the lowest socioeconomic rungs in our society today? That would be a good use of our effort and our moneys, and a good way to build bridges between individuals.
We cannot live in the past. Some would seek to do that. Some groups find it attractive to dwell on past injustices as a way to build bridges within a group of individuals to hold them together. Is dwelling on past injustices not a shallow way of building bridges between people and holding a group together? Is it not nobler and more productive to look into the future and ask how we can build a better, safer future for all?
How can we build bridges of tolerance and understanding? How can we ensure that our culture and language thrive? I submit to the people who would seek to separate from Canada that the greatest strength the francophone population has today is to stay within Canada. The greatest protection for the French language and the francophone culture today is to stay within Canada.
To separate from our nation is probably the greatest threat to the French language and North American French culture today. Those who choose to split parts of Canada, particularly Quebec, away from the country would do well to heed that lesson.
My other point is about history. There is no consistency in the manner in which history is taught in our country today. It is often factually flawed. It is not taught enough in our schools. Jack Granatstein who was the curator of the Canadian War Museum has spoken eloquently time and time again of the importance of history in Canada and the flawed manner in which it is being taught across the nation.
We would do well to work with provincial ministers of education to develop a core curriculum of history that is consistent, based on facts and taught from coast to coast. How can we move forward or live today without knowing where we came from? We do a grave injustice to the students of our country and indeed all Canadians if we do not give them a firm grounding in our history.
Every year we say never again as we quite appropriately commemorate the genocide and injustices that took place during the Holocaust in Europe against Jews and other minorities. Yet we have not learned our lesson. As we speak, the same atrocities that took place in Europe during the Holocaust and against the Acadian population from 1755 to 1762 are taking place today.
Genocide is taking place. People are being taken off their lands and murdered, be it in Zimbabwe, Liberia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi or Rwanda. This is happening time and time again as we speak. We wring our hands impotently and ask ourselves why we do not do something when blood is being shed. We have learned nothing from history.
There is one central point I will make in this speech. We must look at history. We must learn the lessons of history and we must act. Merely apologizing for what took place 50 or 250 years ago is not good enough. We do an injustice to those individuals if we do not learn from their tragedies, their plights and the atrocities committed against them. We must learn lessons, build solutions and act if we are to ensure such atrocities, brutality, human rights abuses and mass deportations do not occur again.
It is happening as we speak. We cannot allow it to continue to happen. I ask the government to work with the international community to redress past injustices. I ask the government to look into the future and build solutions in a multilateral way to prevent such injustices from occurring now and in the future.