Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the passion and the very personal, stirring stories that the member from the New Democratic Party told us today.
A lot of us know, from our own conversations and our own interactions on these things, something of the depth and serious darkness that happened in a lot of different situations. There were those who had some positive experiences, but the forced taking of children from their parents and the intergenerational breakdown that he alluded to was unfortunately too often the case.
I want to gently chide my colleague in the House today for specifically referring to that as genocide. I think he well knows the UN definition of genocide. It is a very precise definition. It is not to be used in the kind of free-handed manner that he used it here.
We do not in any way want to lessen the travesty that occurred in terms of the residential schools, nor do we want to play loose with the language and describe it as something which according to the UN definition is a different category.
I would ask for the member's response on that. I think he is probably a modest enough and a humble enough man to acknowledge that maybe he went a little too far at that point. We do not want to play loose with these words and in any way diminish the meaning of these words that are used on the international scene.