OTTAWA -- Canada is poised to formally recognize as a genocide the 1930s famine in Ukraine that claimed millions of lives.
Conservative MPs are planning to support a private member's bill introduced by Manitoba Tory MP James Bezan, a senior government official told The Canadian Press Tuesday.
It's a shift from last fall, when a government official told The Canadian Press during the 75th anniversary commemoration of the famine on Parliament Hill they have no plans to recognize the deaths as a genocide.
The famine saw millions of people starve in an area long known as Europe's breadbasket. People on Soviet-controlled collective farms went hungry as food was exported from the region.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper is under mounting pressure to adopt the genocide label, as Ukrainian President Victor Yushchenko is coming to Canada, starting with a visit to Ottawa May 26.
At a celebration last week with Manitoba MP Vic Toews to thank the Conservatives for acknowledging the Canada's internment of Eastern Europeans during World War One, a community leader mentioned the famine or Holodomor, sometimes translated as murder by hunger.
"Incidentally, Minister Toews, we would also be delighted with a rapid adoption of the Holodomor genocide bill, which is before Parliament," said Oleh Gerus, vice president of the Ukrainian Canadian Foundation of Taras Shevchenko.
Liberal and NDP members had earlier pledged support for the bill, which would also set aside an annual memorial day in November.
More than a dozen countries, including the United States, already formally recognize the famine as a deliberate attempt by the Soviet regime of Josef Stalin to eliminate ethnic Ukrainians and end their aspirations for independence.
-- By Tamara King in Winnipeg
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