EDITORIAL: At long last, a wrong will be righted (09/04/05)

EDITORIAL

At long last, a wrong will be righted

It took two decades of lobbying, but - finally - the Ukrainian Canadian community has secured an "agreement in principle" with the government of Canada regarding recognition of and redress for the unjust internment and disenfranchisement of Ukrainian Canadians in 1914-1920.

As noted in the news story on the front page of this issue, the agreement provides for an initial payment of $2.5 million to the Ukrainian community to fund commemorative and educational programs. Over the course of three years the Canadian government is poised to provide $25 million to acknowledge the injustice done, to commemorate the first world war-era internment operations and to educate the Canadian public at large about this shameful episode in history.

The announcement in Regina, Saskatchewan, of the agreement in principle was but the first step in resolving the internment issue; according to the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association (UCCLA), which has been in the forefront of redress efforts, final negotiations are expected to take place in the very near future.

As readers may or may not recall, during Canada's first national internment operation persons labeled as "enemy aliens" were interned under the War Measures Act. Their property and possessions were confiscated, and they were disenfranchised. Over 5,000 of these 8,579 "enemy aliens" were Ukrainians, who happened to be immigrants from the territories then under the control of the Austro-Hungarian empire. The internees were used as slave labor to develop Canada's national parks, logging, mills, mines, railways and bridges. Another 80,000 - the overwhelming majority of them Ukrainians - were required to register as enemy aliens and to report regularly to local authorities. This great injustice was done to Ukrainian Canadians and other Europeans despite the fact that none of them was shown to be disloyal to Canada.

For more than 80 years Ukrainian Canadians have lived with this wrong and have suffered from its crippling legacy. As the UCCLA has noted, as late as World War II it was observed that the Ukrainian Canadian community was still suffering the effects of the internment operations; a secret government report went so far as to note that even some of the community's leaders were still "in fear of the barbed wire fence."

For at least 20 years the Ukrainian Canadian community has lobbied for redress in the form of acknowledgment of the wrongs inflicted on them, as well as funding for commemorative projects hallowing the suffering of the internees and educational programs to finally tell the true story of the internment operation. In 1992 Prime Minister Brian Mulroney (Progressive Conservative) raised the community's hopes when he told the Ukrainian Canadian Congress that he would negotiate a settlement. In June 1993, then leader of the opposition Jean Chrétien (Liberal), promised to support redress. Although he became the prime minister, he never did honor that pledge.

Now it appears that Ukrainian Canadians will get their due. In February, Minister of Finance Ralph Goodale included $25 million in the government budget for a redress fund. Now, with the direct support of Prime Minister Paul Martin (Liberal), the community has been able to negotiate an agreement in principle (AIP). At the signing ceremony in Regina, Mr. Martin stated that Ukrainian Canadians "were treated in a manner which today we see as inconsistent with and offensive to the values that underpin Canadian society and our democratic way of life" and underscored that the AIP is "a statement of resolve on the part of the government of Canada, in collaboration with the Ukrainian Canadian community, that such actions will never happen again."

His words no doubt pleased the last known survivor of the internment operations, Mary Manko Haskett, who was 6 years old when she was sent to an internment camp with her family and today is 97 years old. In the January 30, 1994, edition of The Weekly she wrote: "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."

The agreement in principle announced on August 24 is a an honorable first step toward rectifying these grave injustices.

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