Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m pleased and honoured to be able to second this motion. The issue of residential school is a chapter of Canadian history, of northern history, and it’s also a chapter of the lives of many of us that are here today. I look around this House and I think I see about eight or nine of us that went to residential school. I was 12, so that’s 49 years ago.

I’d like to thank the commission for the work that they’ve done bringing this issue to focus and helping us all embark upon a journey of healing and reconciliation, and of forgiveness, as my colleague indicated earlier. Hopefully, for all of us it’s possible, of course, for closure at some point. So as Mr. Yakeleya said, we can move on, we can acknowledge and place this experience that we’ve all lived through – and for some of us our parents and even our grandparents lived through – in its perspective and not allow it to control our lives.

So it’s an honour to stand here. I acknowledge and pay my respect and honour to all of the other folks that went through residential school, the survivors.

Mr. Speaker, I’ve chosen over my life to try to focus on what I think is one of the very positive aspects from my experience, and that is the very many good, life-long friends that I made in residential school and that I have to this day. Some are sitting here beside me and it was the good part. Thank you.