Canada denies redress requests of Ukrainians, other communities (12/25/94)

Canada denies redress requests of Ukrainians, other communities

by Christopher Guly

OTTAWA - Prime Minister Jean Chrétien has broken his promise and the Ukrainian Canadian community's 10-year-old redress claim over World War I internment operations is now dead.

Canada's Secretary of State Sheila Finestone announced on December 14 that the federal Liberal government could not compensate more than $400 million in redress requests for historic wrongs against six ethnic communities in Canada. That contradicts an assurance made in a June 8 letter from then-Opposition Leader Chrétien to Ihor Bardyn, chairperson of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress's redress committee, that his government would "continue to monitor the situation closely and seek to ensure that the government honors its promise."

Beyond the proposals submitted by the UCC and the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association (UCCLA) other groups seeking restitution included:

the Canadian Jewish Congress, for the turning away of a Second World War steamship, the St. Louis, that carried 900 Jewish refugees seeking refuge from Nazi Germany;
the Chinese Canadian National Council and the National Congress of Chinese Canadians, for the shameful treatment of Chinese immigrants to Canada, who faced a controversial head tax and were denied permission to bring their families to Canada;
the German Canadian Congress, over German-Canadian internment during World War II;
the National Congress of Italian Canadians, for Italian-Canadian internment during the same period;
and the National Association of Canadians of Origins in India, for the turning away of the Komagata Maru carrying refugees from the civil war that led to India's 1949 partition.

Instead of giving compensatory funds to each group, Secretary of State Finestone has established a $24 million Canadian Race Relations Foundation in Toronto, proposed previously by the Conservative government of Brian Mulroney and once opposed by the Grits.

In fact, the foundation was approved by a parliamentary statute but never proclaimed.

Reform Party multiculturalism critic Jan Brown criticized the decision, suggesting that the foundation would not help prevent similar mistakes in the future. However, she agreed with the Liberal government in not giving money to the groups, arguing that it was impossible to determine who was affected.

In a letter to the eight organizations representing the six groups, Ms. Finestone apologized for previous Canadian government actions "that were at odds with our shared commitment to human justice." However, she added that the government's "only choice lies in using limited government resources to create a more equitable society now and a better future for generations to come."

The Liberal government's decision isn't all that earth-shattering, considering former prime minister Pierre Trudeau's intransigence over compensating Japanese Canadians over World War II internment. At the time, Mr. Trudeau argued that a Canadian government should only be responsible for justice in its time.

John F. Kennedy made a similar comment when asked whether a president could ever atone for slavery in the United States.

Ms. Finestone echoed Mr. Trudeau's sentiments when she said: "We wish we could rewrite history. We wish we could relive the past. We cannot."

Yet three years ago, a motion by Liberal member of Parliament Peter Milliken (Kingston and the Islands), calling for Ukrainian Canadian redress, was unanimously approved by the House of Commons.

That appears to have remained only a good intention. The sole Canadian government redress claim recognized involved the Japanese Canadian community. In 1988, Mr. Mulroney's government paid out $360 million in compensation to the families of Japanese Canadians interned during the second world war.

However, when it came to dealing with the other six ethnic groups in Canada over their redress claims, the Mulroney government offered an "omnibus apology" and planned to build a "Nation Builders Hall of Record" in Ottawa. It also committed itself to placing commemorative plaques at the 26 sites of internment camps and to building an interpretive center at the Castle Mountain site in Banff National Park.

So far, only one plaque, erected by the UCCLA at Fort Henry, near Kingston, Ontario, stands.

Although the two Ukrainian agencies never got together on a joint proposal, the UCC request, based on a 1992 Price Waterhouse report, called for up to $50 million in compensation for economic losses suffered by some 5,000 Ukrainian Canadians interned during the first world war. Another 80,000 Ukrainian Canadians were branded "enemy aliens," forced to carry identification cards and stripped of their rights to vote.

The UCCLA, meanwhile, didn't want money, but sought a formal acknowledgment of the Canadian government's involvement in internment operations, an amendment to the 1988 Emergency Act, and a follow-up to the promised construction of monuments, markers and an information center to educate future generations of Canadians about the six-year Ukrainian Canadian internment operation.

But if anyone lost, it wasn't so much the two national Ukrainian Canadian groups as it was the few remaining survivors.

As Mary Manko Haskett, who was held along with her family at the Spirit Lake facility in Quebec, wrote in the January 30 edition of The Weekly: "What was done to us was wrong. And, because no one bothered to remember or learn about the wrong that was done to us, it was done to others again, and yet again. Maybe there's an even greater wrong in that."

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