Madam Speaker, in the early 1960s, several Inuit kids from the north were taken away, selected as part of a Canadian government experiment to assimilate the Inuit into non-indigenous cultures.
These children have come to be known as the “experimental Eskimos”. As with the residential school system, the impacts and consequences the policy would have on the children were never considered.
This past week, the parties involved in the class action suit for residential schools in Newfoundland and Labrador have finally reached an agreement and settlement, which, as a survivor myself, I applaud.
It is in the same spirit of reconciliation that the Government of Canada needs to do the same in favour of the experimental Eskimos. The survivors of this other dark chapter of our history are calling on us to help them, so they too can turn a page on injustice, with dignity and honour.