Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for his talk today. It is very hard to follow, and I very much appreciated it.
I, too, reached out to a dear friend, Tanya Kappo, who has been travelling the country and the world with vamps. Those are the decorated tops of moccasins displayed in a program called Walking with our Sisters. There are over 1,000 of these moccasin vamps that families from around the world have contributed, because they come from families where there are missing and murdered aboriginal women. I contacted my friend Tanya to get her perspective on this, because she has worked with the survivors of residential schools seeking a settlement. However, she was too preoccupied with her dedication to this process. I recommend it to everyone in this place. If they have not had the opportunity to participate in Walking with our Sisters, it is a very profound experience.
I want to recognize my colleague, the member for Timmins—James Bay, for bringing this forward and giving everyone in this place an opportunity to share their perspectives and say that we all stand by those 94 calls for action, including the request to the Pope.
I also want to recognize my colleague, the member for Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, for his strong work in this place in having the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples recognized here in Canada.
I also thank my colleague, the member for Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, for her work seeking support for mental health for many multi-generation sufferers from residential schools; her effort to try to get government support for the revitalization of aboriginal languages lost because of the experience in residential schools; and her struggle to have a statutory holiday for aboriginal day so that, in fact, we can use that day to deliver what the TRC calls for, and that is to educate everyone in Canada about what happened to our aboriginal friends in the residential schools.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established under the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement in 2006. That settlement agreement was intended to settle the many court cases launched by indigenous people who had suffered through residential schools. It was a beautiful mechanism to move forward and do something positive.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission travelled for six years across the country hearing testimony from aboriginal peoples and others. There were over 6,000 testimonies. It was about the people who were taken from their families, in far too many instances by force, and forced to reside, in most cases, for their entire childhood in residential schools, denied access to their families or siblings, denied the right to speak their languages or to practise their culture, severely punished if they disobeyed, and suffering great abuse, including physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. The result was the loss of language, culture, the love and support of their families, and frankly, the simple joys of childhood.
I want to share the words of my dear friend, Grand Chief Wilton Littlechild, who was one of the commissioners on the TRC. He shared this:
One has to remember that this is the first commission in the world that is uniquely focused on children: what happens to a child when you take him or her away from his or her family, what happens to parents when you take their children away? What is the impact on that family? It is a very serious issue, not just directly on the child and family but also intergenerationally, the trauma that is suffered by the next generation of people because of residential school.
Some 27 of those residential schools operated in Alberta, my province.
I had the privilege of giving testimony at the session of the TRC at Boyle Street, a centre for the homeless in Edmonton. I appreciated the opportunity to extend apologies myself, personally, and to share how profoundly I have been impacted by my experiences growing up.
I grew up next to the Paul First Nation. My family, in fact both grandparents, were friends with the Métis and the Paul Band. As I grew up, it was profoundly hurtful to me to hear other Canadians saying dismissive and offensive things about indigenous people, when I grew up in that loving circle, going to their dances, and appreciating their culture and what beautiful people they are.
I also attended the final national gathering in Edmonton, and I was horrified to hear the testimony from a residential school survivor who was sent alone, at the age of five years, from the B.C. coast to a residential school in St. Albert, near Edmonton, with only a mouldy bologna sandwich to survive, to be abused the moment she entered the door of the school.
At the same moment, I was starting elementary school in a school very near there. That has stayed with me, and it will stay with me all my life.
Based on the six years of testimony, the commissioners issued their report, “Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future”. They issued, as my colleague said, 94 calls to action. The government has committed to act on all 94, as all in this place should be committing to and as my colleagues are.
Four of those were addressed to the churches, seeking apologies and reconciliation. Many of the churches have apologized, but one critical apology remains missing. That is call to action 58, to the Pope:
We call upon the Pope to issue an apology to Survivors, their families, and communities for the Roman Catholic Church’s role in the spiritual, cultural, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis children in Catholic-run residential schools. We call for that apology to be similar to the 2010 apology issued to Irish victims of abuse and to occur within one year of the issuing of this Report and to be delivered by the Pope in Canada.
That was in 2015.
Other calls are for the church to educate their clergy and their congregations on the abuses that occurred in these schools, on the need to recognize the history and the culture of indigenous peoples, on the right then and the right now to practice their own spirituality, and for establishing permanent funding for aboriginal peoples for healing, reconciliation, culture, language, and revitalization.
The Catholic Church has failed to pay the compensation directed by the agreement. Other churches have apologized, as I mentioned: the United Church, which I belong to; the Anabaptists; the Anglican Church; the Presbyterian Church; and some of the Catholic orders, including the Jesuits in Canada.
The former prime minister apologized and the leaders of the official opposition at the time apologized. I am so proud of my former leader, Jack Layton, who persuaded the prime minister to allow the leaders of the first nations, the Métis, and the Inuit, including the Native Women's Association, to be here in the chamber when that apology was delivered, and to respond.
As Senator Murray Sinclair reminds us, the Pope has apologized for past abuses in Ireland and in South America. Certainly Canada's aboriginal peoples have long awaited this overdue papal apology. We have heard from a number in this place whose own families have suffered from this.
I welcome the opportunity to join all members of Parliament in supporting this call. In closing, I would like to share the words of the then-moderator of the United Church, Bill Phipps, in 1998:
As Moderator of The United Church of Canada, I wish to speak the words that many people have wanted to hear for a very long time. On behalf of The United Church of Canada, I apologize for the pain and suffering that our church’s involvement in the Indian Residential School system has caused. We are aware of some of the damage that this cruel and ill-conceived system of assimilation has perpetrated on Canada’s First Nations peoples. For this we are truly and most humbly sorry.
I add that apology.