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Righting The Wrongs
WSN Network
It
never hurts to say sorry, and
Canada is not worried about how far it will have to travel to right
the wrongs. It is the sign of a brave and righteous nation that
wants to right the wrongs, irrespective of the distance it may have
to travel.
In
1984, then prime minister Pierre Trudeau famously refused to
consider financial compensation for the 20,000 Japanese Canadians
who were forced into internment camps and had their property seized
during World War II. "I'm not sure where we would stop in
compensating," he told the Commons. "I know we'd have to go back a
great length of time in our history and look at all the injustices
... I don't believe in attempting to rewrite history in this way."
But times change, and so does government thinking. In 1988, the
Progressive Conservative government of Brian Mulroney issued a
formal apology and a $291 million compensation package for the
12,000 Japanese Canadian survivors of the wartime internment.
The Stephen Harper's government has been issuing a slate of
apologies and compensation packages for past wrongs, beginning with
a $42 million pledge to make up for racist Chinese immigration
polices in the early 1900s.
The apology to the Sikhs, to the nation and to the wider world this
week with the governing Conservatives backing Liberal MP Ruby
Dhalla's Resolution, is part of the spirit of righting the wrongs
And on June 11,
Harper will deliver a "meaningful and respectful" apology in the
House of Commons to the First Nations for the physical and sexual
abuses at
Canada's
residential schools.
Under the
"historical recognition program," the government is also
distributing money to help various ethnic groups commemorate past
wrongdoings, including $2.5 million for the Komagata Maru, $10
million for the World War I internment of about 5,000 Ukrainian
Canadians, and $300,000 for an educational program concerning the S.
S. St. Louis, a ship carrying 900 Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi
Germany that was turned away by Canada in 1939.
Is all this too
much apologizing? Not really. First of all, it never hurts to say
sorry. Second, it can be educational. Or, as Jason Kenney, secretary
of state for multiculturalism, puts it, "It is important for all
Canadians to understand our history, including the more difficult
periods," he said.
21
May,
2008
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