Mr. Speaker, April 26 marks the 27th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. The Ukrainian Canadian Congress will be holding a Chernobyl memorial service this evening at 6 p.m. at St. John the Theologian Ukrainian Catholic Church on Lakeshore Road in St. Catharines. I encourage those who can attend to be there to help remember the events of that tragic day.
The costs of the Chernobyl disaster went far beyond the immediate impact it had on the people who were there on that day in 1986. From first responders, like the firefighters who were exposed to life-threatening levels of radiation, to mere bystanders who lived in nearby towns, several thousand people lost their lives because of the accident.
Latent radiation has also caused abnormally high levels of cancer and birth defects in humans and animals for decades.
Our Canadian government has allocated resources and assistance to help finally contain the Chernobyl site by 2015. I am proud that we are taking much needed action. Ukrainian families have lived with the effects of Chernobyl for far too long.
The lessons of Chernobyl must not be forgotten, and our hearts go out to the families who are still affected by this disaster nearly three decades later.