Mr. Speaker, I am very proud today to stand in the House to mark and to honour this important date in the ongoing and ever present struggle against oppression and discrimination.
I am especially proud because I stand in the full and confident knowledge that my party, the Liberal Party, has a long and proud history of standing up for the rights of the vulnerable and for all those who are discriminated against arbitrarily on account of their social, cultural or ethnic background.
As just one recent example of this commitment, I remind the House that it was the member of Parliament for Laval—Les Îles, a member of the Liberal Party, who introduced a motion last Friday that reads:
That the House recognize the importance of March 25, 2007, as the International Day for the Commemoration of the 200th Anniversary of the Act to Abolish the African Slave Trade in the British Empire.
It is a credit to all members of the House that the motion passed unanimously.
Anniversaries, such as the one we mark today, are important because they provide us with the opportunity to reflect on how far we have come and how far we must still go in the ongoing battle against oppression and discrimination. As odious and unthinkable as slavery may be to us, for very many people in the world today, slavery remains a reality.
Moreover, it saddens me to remind the House that slavery is not something that exists only in distant and foreign lands. No, slavery can and does exist even today here in Canada. We members of the House, the government and all Canadians must be ever vigilant and ever ready to identify new forms of human degradation which are all but slavery in name.
It is right, I think, to highlight the special role played by William Wilberforce in the struggle to abolish the slave trade and slavery itself. What most impresses me about Mr. Wilberforce's personal struggle was his commitment to principle and his far-reaching vision. Unwilling to be swayed by public opinion or to curry political favour at the expense of the vulnerable, Mr. Wilberforce pushed against the tide of public opinion, which, in his day, supported slavery, and eventually he helped to turn that tide.
On this day all members of the House and all Canadians must remember that the achievement of high ideals requires lasting conviction and sometimes the strength of will to resist popular opinion. Nevertheless, above all else on this day, we must remember and honour as best we can those who directly suffered at the cruel hands of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
The trans-Atlantic slave trade may have left an ugly scar on the history of the world but racism, forced detention and labour, and dehumanization of millions that is associated with it, left very real scars on very real people who endured it.
Tragically, it took the lives of at least three million people. It was a barbaric and appalling chapter in the history of humanity. The misery and suffering borne by men, women and children of African decent as the result of this horrific practice should never be forgotten.
We must congratulate ourselves for turning the page on this moment in history but we must never forget the reality of that history.