Mr. Speaker, yesterday marked the International Day for the Abolition of Slavery. Canada's early settlers brought slaves to Upper Canada and slavery expanded rapidly as British Loyalists brought their slaves with them.
In 1793, under Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe, Upper Canada, which is now southern Ontario, became the first jurisdiction in the British Empire to limit slavery. A few years later, in 1807, some 200 years ago, Westminster passed a bill to abolish the slave trade in what was then the British Empire. The Slave Trade Act of 1807 marked the beginning of the end of the transatlantic slave trade.
This bicentenary gives us an opportunity to remember and pay tribute, and to demand to know why in some parts of the world today forms of slavery still persist two centuries after the argument for abolition was won, an issue the member for Kildonan—St. Paul has been working on and something the Secretary of State (Multiculturalism and Canadian Identity) will mark in Toronto this December 10.
The abolition of slavery marks an important point in our nation's development as we work toward a more enlightened society.