Madam Speaker, I am honoured to speak to this important issue this morning.
It is hard for us to imagine now what it might have felt like to experience slavery in the past. It was a tragedy of untold proportions. Sophocles said that of all human ills, the greatest is slavery.
Today I am talking about Motion No. 36, which recognizes the past and present contributions of people of African descent and proposes designating August 1 of every year as emancipation day. Naturally, I support this motion.
Designating a commemorative day sends two important messages. First, we recognize the harm caused by the practice of slavery in North America and clearly state that slavery was wrong. Second, we signal to the world that slavery is never acceptable, regardless of time, place or circumstance.
Despite what people might think, slavery has not been abolished. Contemporary forms of slavery still exist. For example, we have talked a lot about the Uighurs recently. They are being subjected to forced labour in camps in China.
Older forms of slavery are even re-emerging. According to a CNN news story from four years ago, African migrants in Libya were being auctioned off like cargo. This has also been observed in recent years in Syria and Iraq, where thousands of Yazidi girls and women have been held captive by Daesh and subjected to slavery. I think everyone agrees that slavery, whether in older or modern forms, must be abolished.
As the motion points out, the British Parliament abolished slavery in its empire as of August 1, 1834. This is an important event that needs to be commemorated, which is why the government should designate August 1 of every year emancipation day.
On August 1, 1834, the British Empire capitulated and ordered the emancipation of slaves, following many years of debate on the issue. In fact, the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada was the first British legislature in North America to propose the abolition of slavery.
People will not remember that. From the very first sitting of the first Parliament of Lower Canada in December 1792, MP Pierre-Louis Panet introduced legislation to abolish slavery, nothing less. The bill was introduced on March 8, 1793, and in principle was to be passed on April 19. Unfortunately, it died on the Order Paper. Still, this bill illustrates how concerned Quebeckers were about this issue once they had a Parliament to express their opinions.
Another example of Quebeckers' concern for the equality and liberty of all is the emancipation of Jews in 1832. That year, the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada, presided by the great Louis-Joseph Papineau, passed legislation that was unprecedented in the British Empire to recognize the full civil, political and religious rights of Jews, finally allowing them to sit in Parliament, which previously had not been the case.
A few years later, in 1838, after the violent suppression of the Lower Canada Rebellion, the patriots enshrined in Quebec's declaration of independence that all individuals, including indigenous peoples, enjoyed the same rights. The patriots demonstrated their commitment to human rights and equality for all communities on their land. They went even further than abolishing slavery.
Obviously, August 1, 1834, is a significant date. It is important to understand that the abolition of slavery did not come out of nowhere, nor did it happen because of a sudden humanist awakening on the part of politicians of the day. Not much about this aspect is taught in history classes, but it should be noted that slavery was abolished as a result of decades of struggle by humanists and, more importantly, by slaves themselves.
Let us talk about that struggle. Today, we talk about the social struggle for human rights. This brings to mind things like petitions, protests and appeals to politicians and authorities. How can slaves fight for their cause when the very institution that wants to get rid of them deprives them of all their freedoms? Given that slavery deprives slaves of the possibility of open assembly or petition, how can they resist? It is not complicated. They disobey, flee, break their chains, sometimes literally. They suffocate the oppressor who denied their humanity, and they rebel violently.
Nelson Mandela said that “it is the oppressor who defines the nature of the struggle, and the oppressed is often left no recourse but to use methods that mirror those of the oppressor.”
There were dozens of revolts by slaves in America. The most well known is definitely the revolt that led to the independence of Haiti and the end of slavery in that country. Haitians suffered the horrors of war to free themselves from domination and gain their freedom. Other slave uprisings did not meet with the same success, but that does not mean they were in vain, including those revolts that led to bloodshed. I am thinking, for example, of the Stono rebellion, which took place in what was then the British colony of South Carolina.
In 1739, slaves gathered, took up arms and organized a great march. The word “Liberty” was written on a banner. This uprising was crushed, but it inspired another uprising in the neighbouring colony of Georgia the following year, and yet another in South Carolina the year after that. The colonial authorities ended up imposing a 10-year moratorium on slave importation in the region. It was a small victory, but a victory nonetheless.
Open rebellion was not the slaves' only form of resistance. When an unjust system forces a person to work for an owner, without compensation and without rights, the act of fleeing constitutes a heroic act of resistance. Many American labourers fled north after slavery was abolished in the British Empire, but before that, slaves would flee under both English and French rule.
Today I would like to talk about a Black slave from Montreal named Marie-Joseph Angélique. In 1733, she asked her owner to free her. When her request was denied, she fled with a companion towards the ports of New England, hoping to make it back to Portugal, where she was born. She was captured in Chambly two weeks later and returned to her owner. Not long after, in April 1734, Marie-Joseph Angélique was blamed for a fire that destroyed Montreal's merchants' quarter. She was accused of setting the fire to create a diversion so that she could escape once again. She was convicted, tortured and hanged. It is still not known whether she was responsible for the fire, but we can be sure that Marie-Joseph Angélique was right to want her freedom, to reject slavery and to flee.
Open revolt and flight were acts of resistance that hurt the system that was in place and contributed to its abolition. By resisting, slaves made it more costly to maintain repressive systems. Keeping the system in place was less profitable for merchants and slavers since they had to deal with escapes and the risk of violent uprisings. Slaves were the victims of this major historic crime, but, in a way, their resistance also made them agents of change. Obviously, they had to resist in order to overcome this injustice.
Militant abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass clearly illustrated the need to fight. He said, and I quote:
If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.
This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
The bottom line is that in the end, resistance and struggle pay off, even if the process sometimes takes time. Quebeckers are all too familiar with that fact: 200 years of oppression, struggle, fighting and two lost referendums. Our thirst for freedom is still present, still intact. In the end, every little contribution that is made to the cause of freedom bears fruit. It may not happen right away, but every contribution bears fruit in time.
I have a lot more to say about freedom, but I would like to close by saying that Motion No. 36 is an important one. I support the motion, as do all members of the Bloc Québécois.
