Mr. Speaker, it is with great honour I rise today to speak about this significant piece of legislation. We can all agree on the importance of acknowledging the impact of Indian residential schools on first nations, Inuit and Métis people.
Bill C-369, an act to amend the Bills of Exchange Act, the Interpretation Act and the Canada Labour Code (National Day for Truth and Reconciliation), calls for a day of commemoration, but an essential part of this day would be about educating Canadians.
I represent an area of Montreal that is traditional indigenous territory. It does not have a reserve on it, but it has many indigenous people and was a meeting place for indigenous peoples well before my people arrived.
The challenges we face as non-indigenous people in understanding what has gone on in the past are great. Before the word “reconciliation” comes the word “truth”, and that is perhaps the biggest challenge we face not only in this House but across Canada. What we still do not know is the truth. Often the truth is exceedingly painful.
I have had the privilege of starting on a very long path of learning an indigenous language, and not surprisingly, it has come with some surprises. As someone who was taught English and French, and has taken them both for granted, my conception of language is kind of a string on two soup cans between the people talking. It just vibrates, and that is what language is.
Naively, I embarked on this attempt to learn Kanyen'kéha, or Mohawk, thinking, like an idiot, “How hard could it be?" It is exceedingly hard. Having put perhaps an hour a day into it, I come out of these learning sessions, whether I am doing passive listening or working in my workbooks, with my brain completely fried.
One would think of it as if I were embarking on learning another Indo-European language that had some similarities with English and French. It is quite the contrary. It is a process of learning root words and piecing together ideas and images that are then conveyed onto other people. In this, one gains a very small glimpse into a window—