Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I want to use my Member’s statement in terms of an issue that has been in the North for many, many years. It is regarding the residential school experience.
Mr. Speaker, lately I am seeing on TV and witnessing the ceremony in Ottawa of the honourable Governor General of Canada and the honourable aboriginal leaders across Canada and residential school survivors in Canada.
Mr. Speaker, the residential school experience has been an issue forefront in my community and it also has been an issue in my family in terms of how this whole experience has affected us. Mr. Speaker, in my research, thousands of students in the Northwest Territories attended residential schools. As a matter of fact, when I did my research, the Roman Catholic Diocese estimated about 10,000 students went to Roman Catholic residential schools, not counting the Anglican residential schools or the federal day residential schools.
Mr. Speaker, when I saw this and looked at the amount of the effects on parents in terms of residential schools, I took it back to the concept of living in one of our traditional bush camps and having three or four cabins there and having children play in those camps there, then one day a plane comes in, puts all the little children on the aircraft and flies them off somewhere and you don’t see those students for nine or 10 months, even years. Back in the small camps or even back in the families where they are sitting there with no children playing in the yards or there are no children at all. They don’t see their children. Some of these children have not come back to the communities as they are in other locations.
I want to acknowledge the parents who really missed out on this one and that we should be working with our parents to say how sorry the governments are for the type of thing they did by having their children taken away. We should really do something for the parents. The parents are left alone in terms of what to do.
I will be asking questions later on to the Minister as to how we’re going to make amends with our parents in the communities with regard to the residential school impacts.