Madam Speaker, I commend the member for Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette. I agree with the thrust of his private member's bill. It is important for Canadians to put this issue in context. What is so important for us as members in the House and for Canadian society to understand is that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms did not come to us out of a vacuum. It is based on injustices that occurred while our country evolved, which is why we have come to the kind of society that we are today.
When we look specifically at the question of what happened to the Ukrainians and the internment during the first world war, it is important to understand some of the history. Ukraine was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, an unwilling part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, I might add. Many Ukrainians left Ukraine and came to Canada because they were not particularly happy with the subjugations they were put under in Ukraine. They came to Canada to find a new life, to become Canadians and to be part of Canadian life.
However, then the first world war comes along and we introduce the Enemy Alien Act where people who were from the Austro-Hungarian Empire were forced to register and something like 5,000 people were interned, most of them of Ukrainian descent.
One can just imagine how disquieting it would be for new arrivals, new immigrants to this country, to all of a sudden find themselves, because of something that is happening somewhere else in the world, to be interned by us. As the member for Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette said, if people were interned they then had to register with the police on a weekly basis.
How do things like that happen? They happen because at that time there was racism. We had superior races and inferior races. It did not only happen to the Ukrainians. As the member said, it also happened to Canadians of Japanese ancestry who suffered the same horrors during the second world war. We also know that as part of our history we had the Asian Exclusion Act and the Chinese Head Tax. We discriminated against all sorts of minorities. It was a fact of life at that time.
However, I think it was the suffering of all those groups, including the Jews, who, during the second world war, when they were looking for refuge to escape Nazi Germany, were turned away. Given all the suffering in the past, we now have the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The member talked about doing a more general kind of redress. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms recognizes that, which is why we have it. The charter is our guidance for the future so we do not repeat those mistakes.