Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Kildonan—St. Paul for her work as president of the Canada-Ukraine Parliamentary Friendship Group.
There is no doubt in my mind that this was a genocide. If we look at the definition of what it is in the UN Convention, we can see it was a genocide. We already have a total of 20 countries that have recognized it as a genocide, including the U.S. Senate and the U.S. Congress, the Canadian Senate, Argentina, Australia, Brazil and more.
Back in 1988, the U.S. conducted a commission, as asked for by the U.S. Congress, on the Ukrainian famine. In that, it made 19 findings. It said that in no uncertain terms this was a genocide, it was a man made famine and it was done to exterminate the Ukrainian people.
We have to recognize that in Canada not only do we have a lot of survivors of the genocide, but we also have not only those who suffered through the holodomor, but we have people like myself who are of Ukrainian descent. Luckily my grandparents were able to leave the Ukraine at the turn of the century, before the holodomor came into effect, before the communists ruled Ukraine.
All of us feel for the old country, as they often put it, and we want to ensure that everybody understands what happened. We want to ensure we correct the record so it does not happen again.