Mr. Speaker, I rise today to mark the centennial of the Treaty of Sèvres, signed at the end of the First World War. As part of the larger Versailles peace settlement, the treaty made a commitment to try Ottoman officials for perpetrating the Armenian genocide and set the borders of the Republic of Armenia by including the historic Armenian provinces into a sovereign territory under the protection of the allied powers.
Though often overlooked in our history, Canada played a major role in assisting the Armenian population through the genocide. At the time, prominent Canadians, British politicians and intellectuals called for Canada to assume the mandate for Armenia. Unfortunately, that project was never realized.
Today, I join thousands of Armenian Canadians in Don Valley North and across Canada to commemorate this important chapter in our collective history and commit to a just resolution for the Armenian genocide.