Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, each year, Orange Shirt Day is recognized on September 30th, and this year that date falls on a Saturday, so I decided to devote my time today to speaking on an occasion that grows more important each year as our society works towards reconciliation between the Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians, and also the constant recognition of residential school survivors. Mr. Speaker, last week, I was honoured to attend a school assembly for Orange Shirt Day at N.J. MacPherson School in my riding, and it was great to see children from junior kindergarten all the way to grade five, participating in this important recognition of the wrongs of the past.

Mr. Speaker, this important day is an opportunity for communities to come together and support a reconciliation and the future of all children. It all originates with a woman who was once a little girl named Phyllis. Phyllis Webstad is Northern Shuswap from Dog Creek, British Columbia. When she turned six years old, she was brought to the St. Joseph Mission residential school for one school year in 1973. When she arrived, they stripped her, and her clothes were taken away including an orange shirt she had picked out with her grandmother. From then on, the colour orange always reminded her of this outrageous treatment at the hands of people who were supposed to care for her, but instead, made her feel worthless. For many years, those feelings would haunt Phyllis and cause her to make decisions that would have a negative impact on her life until one day she decided to start telling her story.

Mr. Speaker, that story has grown into an annual day of recognition and remembrance where we discussed the trauma of residential schools, and how it has affected countless Indigenous people and their families. I would like to personally thank Phyllis Webstad for lighting a spark that grew into an opportunity to learn from history, to not rewrite the wrongs of the past, and to always remember the troubled legacy of residential schools in Canada, and acknowledge that legacy so that we can all reconcile with these hard truths and move towards a brighter future together. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.