The legislation will establish a new statutory holiday to commemorate the victims and survivors of indigenous schools.

The move came the day after an aboriginal in British Columbia confirmed the discovery of the remains of 215 children buried in unmarked graves on the site of a former residents’ school in Kamloops.

The bill follows a similar bill introduced by the NDP in 2017, which was introduced in the Senate two years later.

The statutory holiday for workers supervised by the federal government is set for September 30.

The Christian churches and the federal government established boarding schools in the 1880s and continued the boarding system for more than a century to seek to raise and assimilate indigenous children who suffered extensive physical and sexual abuse in these institutions. Thousands of people died in it.

The last one closed in Punnichy, Saskatchewan in 1996.

The Secretary of Heritage, Steven Guilbeault, who sponsored the bill, established a connection with the unmarked grave discovered by the Tk’emlups te Secwépemc First Nations.

“The burial without a name is far away from home. The family can never be cured. The story will never be told. The grief will never really begin. The tragedy of the boarding school must go beyond words. I thank my colleagues for their actions and adoption C-5 bill,” he said in a Twitter post.

Perry Bellegarde, head of state of the Aboriginal Congress, said earlier on Friday that “today will be the perfect day for the passage of the C-5 bill”, calling on federal leaders to do so, and thanking members of Congress thereafter .

Green Party MP Jenica Atwin debate in tears during Friday’s Third Reading debate as she portrayed the direct line between the legacy of colonialism and the myriad challenges facing indigenous peoples today.

She said that the C-5 bill will help make people aware of “the horrors of the past.”

Marc Miller, Minister of Indigenous Services, stated that this legislation marks a step towards correcting past mistakes related to the boarding school system, which he believes is “contained in colonialism and promoted by systemic racism. National tragedy”.