Mr. Speaker, I join others in congratulating the member for Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette for his persistence and for his flexibility in ensuring we could come to this point tonight. As chair of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, it was a pleasure to deal with the member and other members of our committee. It also was a pleasure to see that an initiative by a member of Parliament could have the attention of the government. He, government officials and the minister were prepared to work cooperatively to come to an agreement on what should be in the bill that would satisfy everybody.
An important partnership in these discussions was also the Ukrainian-Canadian community nationally. All in all I this is a long overdue, but it is a most welcome step toward reconciliation for wrongs of the past. The House, and Canadians have heard the wrongs done to Canadians of Ukrainian origin during and following the first world war. These circumstances are not proud moments in our past. Nor are they actions that Canadians today would consider acceptable.
As we move forward, we are trying to do a couple of things. First, is to recognize and acknowledge a wrong was done. Second, is to work with the community as it decides how it would like that sad stage in the history of Ukrainian-Canadians, and in our history as a country, commemorated and how it would like other Canadians to learn about the experiences as a way of contributing to avoiding this type of thing happening in the future.
We did not have safeguards in place back then to protect the rights of Canadians, to ensure that governments could not act in this kind of arbitrary manner. As we move forward with the acknowledgement, commemoration and education of Canadians about these events, Canadians should be encouraged to appreciate how much Ukrainian-Canadians have contributed to our country and how much they have given despite the treatment received at that terribly dark time in our history. Ukrainian-Canadians are involved in every part of our society, in every profession, in the arts and culture. They have put aside understandable bitterness about the past to be fully contributing Canadians through many generations.
Part of moving forward is learning from the past and stiffening our resolve to not make the same mistakes again. I have to take a moment and say that at that time the government and Canadians thought it was all right in the name of security to remove certain privileges, rights and property of Canadians. I urge all of us to ensure that we examine the actions we take today so we do not make similar mistakes for which our children and grandchildren will judge us.
I am happy to support the bill. I also am happy to have had the chance to work on it, and that we have taken an important step toward reconciliation.