NEWS AND VIEWS: We came together to honor an MP (07/04/04)

NEWS AND VIEWS

We came together to honor an MP

by Dr. Lubomyr Luciuk

Tellingly, the press didn't show in Toronto on June 14. We invited them, repeatedly. It didn't matter. For the parliamentarian we came to laud was Inky Mark. He represents a rural Manitoba riding, Dauphin-Swan River-Marquette. You could almost hear Toronto's media mandarins snorting "who cares."

That the event was staged in Chinatown and co-sponsored by two of Canada's largest ethnic communities, Ukrainian and Chinese, not normally seen together, gave clues that we were up to something different, even important. The nabobs missed those hints.

A briefing note might help: Over 2 million Canadians are of Chinese or Ukrainian heritage. Most live in urban ridings, particularly in Ontario and western Canada, constituencies where a few hundred votes will make the difference, be the incumbent a mere backbencher or even a Cabinet minister. And Ukrainian and Chinese Canadians have decided to collaborate, during and after the June 28 federal election.

What united us was Mr. Mark's work on redress. He introduced two private member's bills aimed at securing official acknowledgment of the wrongs endured by Ukrainians during Canada's first national internment operations and by Chinese immigrants discriminated against with the now-infamous Head Tax.

Cynics will point out that Mr. Mark's riding has the highest percentage of Ukrainian voters in Canada and recall that his father and grandfather paid the head tax, dismissing his motives as political, personal or both. Wrong. Mr. Mark's Ukrainian constituents are generally not interested in redress. Internees taught their descendants how unwise it was to publicly identify oneself as a Ukrainian in Canada, insisting conformity is a safer stratagem. Many changed their names and otherwise hid their ethnic identity.

Though today some may be proud of their culture, few know much about how the community was crippled when Ukrainians were branded "enemy aliens," had what little wealth they had confiscated, were forced to do hard labor and were disenfranchised. They were told to forget all that, to avoid entanglement in anything deemed "too political." So Mr. Mark finds few votes because of what he does for Ukrainian Canadians. And there are not many Chinese in his riding.

Why does he persist? It's because of the kind of Canada Mr. Mark wants. He's out for a country that remembers, a nation with the courage to recognize past injustices, then atone for them.

Just over a decade ago that seemed to be the Liberal vision. As leader of the Opposition, Jean Chrétien promised his and his party's support for redress to the Ukrainian community. Inexplicably, once elected, he broke his word. No Liberal has ever explained why. So, recently, all candidates were asked if they would endorse Mr. Mark's initiatives. For all the right reasons, and across party lines, the New Democratic Party (NDP) and the Bloc Quebecois did. So did many in the Green Party. Resolving the Ukrainian and Chinese Canadian redress issues is also an official Conservative Party commitment, confirmed by its leader Stephen Harper. Disappointingly, only a handful of principled Liberals sided with Mr. Mark, as their party disgorged yet another bromide on this subject, apparently in preference to a straightforward response.

Now we did not gather in Toronto in June to endorse a political party. We came to thank Mr. Mark. He accepted a bronze plaque depicting Ukrainians in the Castle Mountain concentration camp, engraved with a simple phrase, "For Justice," in English, French, Chinese and Ukrainian. The name of internee No. 1105, Mike Melnyk, a fellow Manitoban, was also inscribed on this medal - lest we forget.

None of this was reported. Instead, the media seems determined to hear from "visible minorities," especially from people spouting alarming forecasts about Mr. Harper's supposed plans for undermining the Charter. Meanwhile the good news about his pledge on redress isn't told. I will not apologize for apparently being invisible. And I do recognize how fear-mongering about a "right-wing" agenda remains a trendy pastime.

But why aren't Liberals ever asked why they lied to Ukrainian Canadians? They had a decade to do the right thing, and didn't. My kind of Canada prefers to talk about what is, rather than harping about bogeymen who might be.

Please don't think me naive. Assurances given in elections often are, as Ontarians have learned, fibs. What's different this time is that the NDP, Bloc Quebecois, many Greens and even some Liberals have committed to redress. And so has the new Conservative Party. In the next Parliament, whichever way the election goes, a majority of MPs will have already pledged themselves to our calls for recognition and reconciliation. I prefer to believe they aren't all liars. In fact I'd like to think most of them will be just like my friend, Inky Mark - a Canadian politician who keeps his word.

Lubomyr Luciuk is a professor of political geography at the Royal Military College of Canada and author of "Searching For Place: Ukrainian Displaced Persons, Canada and the Migration of Memory" (reprinted 2001, University of Toronto Press).

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