Mr. Speaker, I would like to inform you that I will be sharing my time with my hon. colleague from Laurentides—Labelle.
I am pleased to speak to the House today on residential schools. This will allow us to move things forward for the most affected parties, namely, aboriginals, Inuit and Métis, who, not all that long ago, were referred to as Indians and were seen as somewhat different from us.
I am familiar with residential schools, although not as much as the people I will be telling you about today. Nor were my experiences the same as theirs. I believe I know a little about these institutions from having attended them throughout my childhood, since I was an orphan. The family that raised me could not find the means to give me what they considered a reasonable education on their own. They therefore went to the local bishop for help. At the time, that was the only way to get any help.
I still remember returning to school every September, at a residential school not far from Quebec City, where I would stay for the entire school year, that is, from September of one year to the end of the following June. I am originally from Bas-du-Fleuve, more specifically the Matapédia valley. Of course, the return trip home would have been too expensive for the family that raised me. I swore to myself at the time that my own children would never go to such a school, because every time I went home, I felt like I had new parents and new siblings whom I had to get to know all over again during my summer holidays, which were always too short. I think this could be described as “learning the hard way”.
When I was 13, two months shy of my 14th birthday, I went to work in Abitibi. I did not see my parents again until 10 years later. My first job was loading planed wood onto rail cars. My partner was an Indian, as they were called at the time. He was the kind of man who never raised his voice. Around four in the morning, working a shift that had started at six the night before, when he saw that I was having a hard time handling 8 x 8 x 16 lumber, he would take one end of the board to help me, then load his own, and that went on until six in the morning. I worked at that job for five months, and I never heard him complain. He had been working there for eight years. He had gone to a residential school until he was 15. He did not live with the other employees because he had a little camp on the river. It was not until I went to visit him there that I began to learn about his life story.
When I moved to Val-d'Or, I drove a taxi a lot. Nights and weekends, I often drove one or two aboriginal families who were taking their children back to the residential school near Amos. They spoke French to me, but among themselves, they spoke Indian. To me, Cree and Algonquin were the same language. However, when they cried as they left their children behind, no translation was necessary. The residential school was not very far from their reserve. It took about an hour and a half or two hours to get there, but they had other children and could not afford the trip except to go back for their kids the following summer.
At the time, it seemed obvious to me—and I kept thinking about it because it was so striking—that while I could not understand them on the way there, I had no trouble understanding them on the way back because they were speaking French. Please understand that my pleasure at hearing them speak French was not selfish. From my perspective, I thought that since the English had forced us to speak English, it made sense for them to learn French. My thoughts on the matter were well intended.
Nevertheless, when they arrived at their reserve, it was astounding to observe the parents translating what the children were saying to the grandparents. At that time, my first thought was that the poor old folks had not been lucky enough to learn French like the young ones. Perhaps we were also an oppressed people at that time.
It was not until many years later that I truly understood the magnitude of what I had experienced, even though I counted some aboriginals among my friends.
In the 1980s, I played hockey with one of these friends, who had attended the Canadian junior training camp. I liked to tease him because he did not want to go out for a beer with the others; quite often I would have a soft drink with him. One evening he said I should help him to find some courses in Anishinabe and Cree. I was incredulous. He said that his entire education had been provided at an Indian residential school and that they had taken away his language, his culture and his family. He could not read or write in either Cree or Anishinabe. Therefore, he had no access to his history and his culture.
It was at that moment, I think, that I understood the scope of the experience without even knowing the other abuses suffered. It is somewhat embarrassing to admit this kind of thing. I have come to understand, since being elected, that I did not yet know everything. Today, I am even sure that had he not been aboriginal, he would have been a member of the Canadian junior team because he was really good.
I still see him. In fact I saw him not too long ago when we got the first nations pavilion on the Val-d'Or campus. It was really something to see the look on his face. It was a look of complete satisfaction and hope. He knows that the university will train first nations teachers in their language and their culture. I know that he will try to be there, maybe not to teach—although you never know—but rather to learn to read and write in his mother tongue, Cree, and in the language of his father's side, Anishnabe.
Have they suffered? I think so. Have they healed? I do not think most of them have. I am not an expert, but to hear them speak, if they can learn to master their language, it would be a positive step.
The Bloc will support this motion that the House apologize to the survivors of Indian Residential Schools for the trauma they suffered as a result of policies intended to assimilate first nations, Inuit and Métis children, causing the loss of aboriginal culture, heritage and language, while also leaving a sad legacy of emotional, physical and sexual abuse.