Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for Don Valley North for tabling this motion to designate a week to commemorate the victims of genocide. I also commend the hon. member for Saint-Denis.
The hon. member for Don Valley North is very involved in his community. In fact, he is the first member of the House of Commons of Armenian origin and, as such, like all the members of his community, is very concerned about the issue of genocide and the suffering of its victims.
Since I am in favour of recognition by the Government of Canada of the genocide of the Armenian people, I welcome the opportunity to speak to this motion today. Because I also feel very close to this community, on February 1st this year, I wrote to the Minister of Foreign Affairs to condemn a decision by the Armenian president to prohibit temporarily the FRA Dachnaktsoution Party, in December 1994.
The motion, therefore, proposes that, to ensure that this crime against humanity is condemned and we remember the genocides of the past, the Canadian government designate the period
between April 20 to 27 of each year as the week to commemorate the victims of genocide.
I must point out that the suggested date coincides with the sad anniversary of the first great genocide of the twentieth century, that of the Armenian people in April 1915, when more than one million people were killed. In fact, the purpose of the amendment I will move later on will be to express what is implicit in this motion.
I would like to quote what was said by a survivor of this genocide, Aram P. Aivazian, who wrote an important book entitled: Armenia usurped by genocide and treachery . This book describes the horror of this crime against humanity and subsequent government denials. Mr. Aivazian wrote:
"As a survivor in Canada, I am left with a daily echo of these memories, the brutally ignored and shamelessly denied tragedy of the Armenian holocaust. The rest of humankind have their own places in the sun, but not my fellow exiled Armenians who lived under foreign flags, deported by brute force and massacred with no option to return to their enslaved homeland".
Mr. Speaker, these words could apply to all who have been exiled or deported from their homeland. The steadfast refusal to recognize the Armenian genocide, this first holocaust of the twentieth century, is an attitude we must condemn, because denying that it exists is the ultimate step in the process and constitutes a form of indirect support. Silence is a form of consent.
This Liberal government, when it was in the opposition, supported recognition. Now that it is in power, it should, with the opposition's support, specifically condemn the Armenian genocide. However, this government now subordinates human rights to political and economic interests, which goes against traditional Canadian values.
I want to remind my colleagues in this House that many political figures in Canada have come out in favour of recognizing the Armenian genocide. The hon. Marcel Prud'homme, now sitting as an independent in the Senate and former Liberal member for Saint-Denis, intervened twice in 1990 and 1993, to ask the Conservative government to recognize the Armenian genocide.
In March and April 1980, the Ontario Legislature and the Quebec National Assembly passed a resolution asking the Government of Canada to recognize and officially condemn this genocide and the atrocities committed by the Turkish government against the Armenian people.
On May 11, 1984, the Hon. Sinclair Stevens rose in the House to recognize the existence of this genocide and to say that action was necessary. On May 27 and 28 1984, the hon. members for Edmonton Southeast and Willowdale, members of the present government, spoke to this House on the subject of the Armenian genocide.
I shall, if I may, quote what was said by the hon. member for Edmonton Southeast:
"But the Armenian slaughter is an act of history and we cannot wipe clean for the Armenian descendants by pretending it never happened".
Finally, in May 1985, in the Quebec National Assembly, Gérald Godin, who is recently deceased and who was, at the time, the Minister of Cultural Communities, reiterated his condemnation of the genocide.
His motion was seconded by Claude Dauphin, the Liberal member for Marquette and by Thérèse Lavoie-Roux, who is now a Conservative senator. At the time, she said that, in international relations, because of economic and other ties Canada has with Turkey, the federal government was known to exercise extreme caution before taking any initiative. She added that the peoples' court, in Paris, had confirmed in a decision on April 16, 1984 that there had indeed been a genocide.
Until people take more positive action to stop it, there will continue to be a sort of conspiracy of silence surrounding the genocide of the Armenian people. It must be brought to light; it must be given international recognition. Le Devoir of May 23, 1984 carried long extracts of a lecture given at McGill University by the former Minister of Justice of Quebec, Herbert Marx. It said, and I quote: ``After giving the background to the tragic events of 1915-16, Mr. Marx expressed his outrage at the fact that the genocide of the Armenian people was never officially recognized because of interventions by the Turkish government at the United Nations''.
On April 20, 1994, I rose in this House, on behalf of the Bloc Quebecois, to call upon this government yet again to recognize this genocide.
On April 22, 1994, two other members of this House made statements in this regard, including the hon. member for Don Valley North, who not only denounced the Armenian genocide but called on the Government of Canada to recognize it. He said, and I quote: "-I call upon the Government of Canada to recognize and condemn the Armenian genocide and formally request the Turkish government to assume responsibility for this atrocity once and for all, as Germany did for the six million Jews in World War II".
Considering all these expressions of sympathy and declarations, how can we not recognize the existence of the genocide?
On June 18, 1987, the European parliament recognized this genocide, as did the Russian parliament, more recently, on April 22, 1994.
For this reason, the hon. member's motion is so appropriate today. We should not forget such a crime against humanity. Canada should not side with countries which have chosen to forget and which are relying on time to wipe away the memories of it.
On April 23, 1994 I and several other MPs attended a commemorative evening in Montreal, which drew several big political names. The guest speaker, Mr. Hrayr Balian, the permanent representative to the UN in Geneva of an NGO which defends human rights, said that the challenge facing the international community is prevention. The best prevention is ensuring that the persons responsible for past and current genocides be punished for their heinous crimes.
He added that relations between Turkey and the Republic of Armenia cannot be based on ignorance and denial of the past. One of justice's basic goals is that the perpetrators of a crime be held responsible and that the rights of the victims be protected as much as possible. For there to be justice, the truth must be revealed, demonstrated and the guilty parties must admit their guilt.
In this sense, I can only deplore the fact that the motion is not a votable item, and our party will support the petition made by the hon. member for Don Valley North that it be votable. We would also like to reiterate our support for the request that the Government of Canada specifically recognize the Armenian genocide.
In closing, setting aside a week to commemorate victims of genocide is a step towards recognizing the Armenian genocide, and a real step towards preventing the reoccurrence of this kind of crime against humanity. To this end, I move, and the member for Frontenac seconds:
That the motion be amended by adding the phrase "particularly to mark the 80th anniversary of the Armenian genocide", after the word "government" and before the words "should designate".
