On September 22, 1988, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney stood in the House of Commons and apologized to Japanese Canadians for their forced removal from the British Columbia coast, internment, dispossession and deportation during and after the Second World War (see Unit 3). The apology came with a redress agreement, won after years of campaigning by the National Association of Japanese Canadians: 21,000 dollars for each eligible survivor, a community fund, pardons for people convicted under wartime orders, and restored citizenship for those who had been deported. Survivors who had lost homes, fishing boats and farms decades earlier heard the government admit it had been wrong. Since then, Canadian governments have issued many apologies and recognitions. Why would a government apologize for actions taken by leaders long dead, and what difference does it make?
Ways of acknowledging the past
| Type | What it involves | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Formal apology | A government states that a past action was wrong and expresses regret, often in Parliament | Residential schools apology, June 11, 2008 |
| Redress or compensation | Payments, funds or legal changes to repair some of the harm | Japanese Canadian Redress Agreement, 1988 |
| Recognition by law or motion | Parliament officially names an event, often as a genocide, and may create a memorial day | Holodomor Memorial Day Act, 2008 |
| Monuments, museums and plaques | Physical places of memory and learning | National Holocaust Monument, Ottawa (2017); Canadian Museum for Human Rights, Winnipeg (2014) |
| Days of remembrance | Annual days that keep the memory public | National Day for Truth and Reconciliation (September 30) |
Acknowledging wrongs committed in Canada
| Year | Acknowledgement | The past wrong |
|---|---|---|
| 1988 | Apology and redress to Japanese Canadians | Removal, internment, dispossession and deportation, 1942–1949 |
| 2005, 2008 | Law recognizing Ukrainian Canadian internment; a commemorative fund (2008) | Internment of thousands of "enemy aliens", many Ukrainian, during the First World War (see Unit 2) |
| 2006 | Apology in the House of Commons and symbolic payments to surviving head tax payers or their spouses | The Chinese head tax (1885–1923) and the Chinese Immigration Act, 1923, which almost entirely banned Chinese immigration until 1947 |
| 2008 | Apology to former students of residential schools | Removing Indigenous children from their families to assimilate them |
| 2010 | Apology to Inuit for the High Arctic relocation | Moving Inuit families from northern Quebec and Baffin Island to the High Arctic in the 1950s |
| 2016 | Apology in the House of Commons for the Komagata Maru | In 1914, 376 passengers from British India, most of them Sikh, were refused entry at Vancouver and forced to return |
| 2017 | Apology for the LGBT Purge | From the 1950s to the 1990s, federal employees and military members were investigated and fired or discharged because of their sexual orientation or gender identity |
| 2018 | Apology for the MS St. Louis | In 1939, Canada refused entry to 907 Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany; 254 of them were later murdered in the Holocaust |
| 2021 | Apology for the internment of Italian Canadians | Hundreds of Italian Canadians were interned during the Second World War |
Commemorating international tragedies
- The Holocaust: Parliament created Holocaust Memorial Day (Yom ha-Shoah) by law in 2003; the National Holocaust Monument opened in Ottawa on September 27, 2017. Canada also adopted an internationally used working definition of antisemitism in 2019 (see Unit 3 for the Holocaust and Canada's response).
- The Holodomor: in 2008 Parliament passed a law recognizing the 1932–1933 man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine as a genocide and creating Holodomor Memorial Day on the fourth Saturday of November (see Unit 3).
- The Armenian genocide: the Senate (2002) and the House of Commons (April 21, 2004) passed motions recognizing the 1915 killing of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as genocide.
- Rwanda and Srebrenica: Canadian governments have recognized the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda and the 1995 genocide at Srebrenica, in Bosnia, both of which happened while UN peacekeepers were present (see the lesson on Canada in the world).
Recognizing international tragedies matters in Canada because many Canadians are survivors or descendants of survivors: Holocaust survivors who rebuilt their lives in Montreal, Toronto and Winnipeg, Ukrainian Canadians whose families lived through the Holodomor, Armenian, Rwandan and Bosnian Canadian communities. Recognition affirms their history as part of Canada's heritage, and it is often contested by foreign governments: Turkey, for example, rejects the term genocide for the Armenian killings, and Russia rejects it for the Holodomor. Deciding to recognize a genocide is therefore also a foreign policy decision.