Mr. Speaker, I am rising to request an emergency debate on the discovery of 215 children buried at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School.
The discovery of those children last week is a sad reminder of Canada's genocidal actions against indigenous peoples.
First nations, survivors, elders, leaders, the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation and others are calling for action to confront this history and help bring about closure. Families and communities are discussing this important issue, and Parliament needs to do so as well.
Canadians were horrified to learn of this discovery. It is heartbreaking to think about the families that never knew what happened to their children, to first have to grapple with the loss of their children, who were stripped from them, stripped from their homes, their identity, their language stolen from them, and then to have to deal with the loss of these children. So many more indigenous communities around the country are also wondering what happened to their children.
I think about the memorials happening across the country, memorials where people are placing children's shoes to commemorate the lives lost, the flags flying at half-mast and indigenous elders who are conducting sacred ceremonies to guide the spirits of these children.
We know this mourning is incredibly important, and we mourn together the lives of these children, but we must move beyond just mourning at the federal level, at the government level. We must move beyond symbolic gestures to concrete actions.
In this emergency debate, we can talk about the fact the government continues to fight indigenous kids and residential survivors in court. We can talk about the steps we can take to truly walk the path of truth and reconciliation, implementing the calls to action, only 12 of which have been implemented so far.
We can move beyond just symbolism and move to action by committing to funding the investigation and by working in partnership with indigenous communities of other potential sites like this. We can walk the path of reconciliation with concrete actions to commit to justice in the honour of those lives lost.
That is why I am calling for an emergency debate, for us to move beyond just words to concrete actions and to talk about what those actions might be.