OTTAWA—The Liberal government is exploring whether to revive an effort to make Sept. 30 a federal holiday to commemorate the dark legacy of residential schools.

In an email to the Star, a spokesperson for Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault said the government is “currently looking at options to pursue the bill that died in the Senate last parliament” — a reference to a private member’s bill that sought to declare Sept. 30 a federal holiday as Canada’s “National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.”

“We need to recognize the harm residential schools have done to Indigenous peoples and we want to make Sept. 30 the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation to honour the survivors of residential schools,” Guilbeault’s press secretary, Camille Gagné-Raynauld, told the Star.

She declined to disclose further details.

Former New Democrat MP Georgina Jolibois introduced a bill in October 2017 to create a new federal holiday to mark the importance of Indigenous reconciliation. The bill passed in the House of Commons but was not approved by the Senate before the Liberal-majority Parliament dissolved for the federal election last fall.

The bill originally aimed to make June 21 — celebrated as National Indigenous Peoples’ Day — a federal holiday. The day was switched to Sept. 30 and the Liberal majority government declared it supported the proposed law. The government also provided $10 million in the 2019 budget to support events held by community groups to mark National Truth and Reconciliation Day.

The bill would have made Sept. 30 a paid holiday for workers in federally regulated sectors, such as telecommunications and aviation. It also would have fulfilled one of the 94 “calls to action” from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which studied the impacts of Canada’s residential school system that were found to amount to “cultural genocide.”

Sept. 30 is currently marked by many Indigenous groups and communities as “Orange Shirt Day,” a day to commemorate residential school students that started in the Interior of British Columbia in 2013.

In a statement to the Star, Assembly of First Nations National Chief Perry Bellegarde said his organization supports making Sept. 30 a national holiday.

“A national holiday would promote reconciliation and provide all Canadians an opportunity to learn more about the Indian residential schools, their impact and their legacy,” Bellegarde said.

From the 1880s until the 1990s, the government- and church-run school system removed generations of Indigenous children from their families and home communities to indoctrinate them into the religions, languages and practices of Canada’s settler society. Untold numbers of children died at the schools, with incomplete records documenting at least 3,000 deaths, and many others were sexually and physically abused, the TRC found.

Ry Moran, director of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation in Winnipeg, welcomed the news that the Liberal government is considering reviving Jolibois’s effort to make the day a federal holiday. He noted that the Liberal government has also vowed to pass another failed NDP initiative from the last parliament: former MP Romeo Saganash’s private member’s bill to enshrine the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Canadian law.

The TRC “really was trying to ensure that we as a country could never forget, that we would be compelled to remember, and that we were provided ample opportunities to remember the very painful history that we have, and the potential for healing and hope,” Moran said by phone on Friday.

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“We really do encourage the government to take action on this.”

The Liberal platform from the 2019 federal election made no mention of declaring Sept. 30 a federal holiday. It did, however, promise to create a new federal holiday for Family Day, which is already a day off in many provinces.