Alberta NDP wants Canada put on list of genocidal nations for Genocide Remembrance Month

UCP MLA Peter Singh has put forward Private Member’s Bill 205, the Genocide Remembrance, Condemnation and Prevention Month Act, which establishes April as Genocide Remembrance, Condemnation and Prevention Month.

The bill would acknowledge the Armenian genocide, the Ukrainian Holodomor, the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, the Srebrenica massacre, the Yazidi genocide, and the Rohingya genocide,

Alberta’s New Democrats, though, say that the bill falls short, and are demanding that Canada be put on the list for its treatment of Indigenous peoples.

“The mass kidnapping, abuse, and murder of indigenous children in residential schools was a genocide,” said NDP MLA Janis Irwin  during Question Period on Wednesday. “The murder and disappearance of indigenous women and girls in Canada is a genocide.”

NDP MLA Richard Feehan echoed those sentiments, saying: “The mass kidnapping, abuse, and murder of children on the basis of their ethnicity is genocide. The indifference of government of widespread disappearance and murder of women based on their ethnicity is genocide.”

Feehan suggests that while Canada is not directly responsible for the the “genocide” of murdered indigenous women, the nation’s indifference to enforcement is enough for the label. RCMP statistics say 70 percent of Indigenous women are killed by someone of their own race.

“Three times today in question period, I asked the Minister of Indigenous Relations to call the legacy of oppression against Indigenous people Genocide. Three times he refused to do so,” Feehan later said on Twitter.

Feehan has also said that Alberta "has a history of genocide."