Canadian Cabinet minister meets with Ukrainians on redress issue (04/13/97)

Canadian Cabinet minister meets with Ukrainians on redress issue

by Andrij Kudla Wynnyckyj
Toronto Press Bureau

TORONTO - Thanks to the pressures of an election year, and to the occasion of a joint Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) and Canadian Jewish Congress-sponsored roundtable on Canadian unity, a senior Canadian Cabinet minister finally met with the community's representatives to discuss the matter of redress for the internment of Ukrainian Canadians in 1914-1921.

Despite promises to resolve the matter by both the previous federal Progressive Conservative (1984-1993) and current Liberal governments, in the eyes of Ukrainian Canadian community leaders neither has dealt appropriately with the fact that hundreds of citizens were interned in camps as enemy aliens and that in many cases their assets were confiscated.

On March 13 President of the Privy Council and Minister for Intergovernmental Affairs Stéphane Dion met in Winnipeg at the College Universitaire de St. Boniface with UCC President Oleh Romaniw, UCC Saskatchewan Provincial Council (UCC-SPC) President and National Governmental Relations Committee Chair Adrian Boyko and committee member Prof. Bohdan Kordan.

Mr. Boyko hailed the meeting as "very significant." The UCC official told The Weekly on March 24, "This was the first time that Minister Dion had asked for the participation of the Ukrainian community, the Métis community and other aboriginal communities, the French Canadian community and the Jewish community in a meeting that brought everyone together to talk about the issue that concerns all of us as citizens: the country's unity and our sense of our participation in it."

According to Mr. Boyko, in terms of the brief 25-minute session with Minister Dion following the roundtable, "participation" boiled down to two major issues: redress for internment, and an appropriate response to the UCC's proposal to the federal government concerning Canadian unity issues and the role of multiculturalism (submitted in April 1996 and since unacknowledged).

As suggested in a UCC press release of March 14, its representatives made it clear that the redress issue is a stepping- stone to larger concerns. "It was emphasized that internment was of importance to the community," the release reads, "and that only by dealing with the issue seriously could the Ukrainian Canadian community move forward as full participants in Canada's future."

Mr. Boyko was quoted as saying, "The principle is simple: Ukrainian Canadians were unjustly interned, the government took property from the community, and we want it back."

Mr. Boyko told The Weekly on March 24 that the Ukrainian Canadian community is not seeking to "correct history," but to "prompt the government to do what is right" in returning monies taken from Canadian citizens earlier in the century and applying them to the needs of present-day citizens.

The UCC governmental relations chair said that "no matter how you look at it, the government has our money sitting in the Canadian treasury." He added, "We might not agree to whom this money belongs, but certainly any reasonable person would agree it doesn't belong to the jailers."

The UCC representative said all funds received would be applied to civil liberties and citizenship promotion projects and research centers for work across the country. Mr. Boyko said this would amount to a symbolic satisfaction of grievances that would also advance the cause of "tolerance, justice and unity."

In its March 14 press release, the UCC "applauded [Minister Dion's] recent personal intervention to remove from display in Regina's Royal Canadian Mounted Police Museum the rope that hung [19th century Métis leader] Louis Riel. [UCC officials] appealed to the minister to show the same sensitivity on Ukrainian internment by helping to [resolve] the long-standing issue."

In fact, Saskatchewan University political science Prof. Kordan raised this issue, and added some stronger incentive for the government to consider a political solution to the problem. Prof. Kordan told The Weekly on March 25, "I informed them that the UCC had received money from the Federal Court Challenges Program to proceed with a suit concerning the redress issue, to clarify the situation regarding the government's confiscation of assets."

Mr. Boyko remarked that "this should not be made out to be more difficult than it actually is," and expressed the UCC's conviction that "we feel we can work with Minister Dion in finding a constructive solution to this problem."

Mr. Boyko also told The Weekly he came away from the meeting with the sense that Minister Dion had realized "multiculturalism must play a significant part in keeping Canada together." In a March 14 UCC press release, the UCC-SPC president is quoted as saying, "We understand that this places the government in a ticklish position with those who are opposed to multiculturalism in Canada, who see this as one more issue that divides. But this is precisely the challenge the government must face and overcome."

"We are prepared," Mr. Boyko concluded, "to assist the government in finding a constructive solution to this problem."

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