Mr. Speaker, it is with a heavy heart that I must once again rise in the House to call on the Conservative government to live up to the historic internment agreement signed by the previous Liberal government and the Ukrainian Canadian community on August 24, 2005.
This agreement was for the acknowledgement, commemoration and education of Canadians of a dark episode in Canada's history: the internment operations against Ukrainian Canadians.
Beginning in the 1890s, Ukrainian Canadian settlers transformed the wilderness of the Northwest Territories into the golden wheat fields of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. They were enticed to Canada with promises of free land. The government did this to counterbalance the northward push of American settlers into Canadian territories.
These hardy pioneers guaranteed the territorial integrity of Canada's borders.
Today, we can in fact say that they were one of Canada's founding peoples.
However, during World War I, prejudice and racism were fanned into xenophobia, leading to the introduction of the War Measures Act by an order in council of the Conservative government of Robert Borden.
Over 8,000 so-called enemy aliens, of which over 5,000 were Ukrainians, were interned, including women and children. Homes and homesteads were confiscated and some 80,000 Canadians were obliged to register as enemy aliens and report to local authorities on a regular basis.
Then, two years later, that same Conservative government passed legislation disenfranchising tens of thousands of Ukrainian Canadians based solely on the location of their birth.
Back on August 24, 2005, the previous Liberal government signed an historic agreement in principle with the Ukrainian Canadian community. An initial amount of $2.5 million was to be the first instalment of a $12.5 million multi-year package administered through the Shevchenko Foundation.
During question period on March 1, the Secretary of State for Multiculturalism all but confirmed that the Conservative government had no intention of living up to that agreement.
To add insult to injury, the Prime Minister, the Minister of Finance, the Minister of Canadian Heritage and the Secretary of State for Multiculturalism all thought it more important to declare in their so-called historic budget that three-down football is a heritage sport worthy of public support through heritage tax dollars, yet this same budget was completely silent on the acknowledgement of and education about injustices suffered by Ukrainian Canadians during World War I internment operations.
What a contrast. In the 2005 Liberal budget, the former finance minister, in his opening paragraphs, referenced Ukrainian Canadians and provided the funding for an internment settlement agreement.
The Conservatives, on the other hand, tore up this historic agreement. There is not even a mention of internment or a future consideration in the Conservative budgets of 2006 and 2007.
This failure to act by the Conservative government, despite record surpluses, is a breaking of the trust. When the Prime Minister was in opposition, he invoked the name of Mary Haskett, born Manko, the last survivor of World War I internment, in a House of Commons speech in which he committed himself to the resolution of internment.
Will the government re-announce this Liberal initiative while Mary Haskett, the sole survivor of the internment operations, is still with us? Will he do the right thing?