Madam Speaker, I want to congratulate the hon. member for rising. In the past session, he was a bulwark of the party's truth and reconciliation process, through which the government is engaging in the atrocities that have been uncovered in our residential schools across the country.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission has denounced the doctrine of discovery. Four of the commission's calls to action, calls to action 45, 46, 47 and 49, urge the government to publicly disavow the racist and white supremacist notion of the doctrine of discovery. The Supreme Court of Canada has repeatedly stated that the heart of reconciliation is to reconcile the pre-existing rights of indigenous peoples with the assertion of Crown sovereignty. The phrase “assertion of Crown sovereignty” is a Canadian euphemism for the doctrine of discovery.
The Mohawk Institute Residential School, which is near my riding, is beginning its painful process of recovering bodies. As we know, close to 7,000 children have been recovered across the country so far. Given its correlation with the deaths of over 7,000 indigenous children, would the hon. member repudiate the doctrine of discovery?