Canadian government budget gives green light to redress for internment (03/27/05)

Canadian government budget gives green light to redress for internment

by Christopher Guly
Special to The Ukrainian Weekly

OTTAWA - A two-decade-long campaign for redress regarding the internment of thousands of Ukrainian Canadians during the first world war because of their Austro-Hungarian citizenship could soon be resolved as a result of the recently released federal budget.

Within the 431-page document, delivered to Parliament last month, is a $25 million (about $21 million U.S.) commitment over the next three years "for commemorative and educational initiatives" directed to Canadian ethnocultural groups that carry "troubling memories ... as a result of events that occurred in Canadian history during times of war, or as a result of immigration policies of the day," which so far have been "unacknowledged."

Both the Ukrainian Canadian Congress and the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association welcomed the announcement, though the amount allocated will have to be shared among several ethnic groups - including Canada's Chinese, Italian, Indian, German and Jewish communities - which all claim to have suffered some form of historic civil rights injustices.

And whatever monies the Ukrainian Canadian community will receive falls short of a $30 million request formally presented to the federal Liberal government in December 2002 by the Ukrainian Canadian Internment Committee, chaired by Ukrainian Canadian Foundation of Taras Shevchenko President Andriy Hladyshevsky with UCC First Vice-President Pavlo Grod and UCCLA Research Director Lubomyr Luciuk as members.

Still, Edmonton-based Mr. Hladyshevsky, who has been flying back and forth to Ottawa to lobby Cabinet ministers for redress, told The Weekly that if the government offered his group "$12 million, we'd take it."

However, he said his committee insists that the budgetary provision specifically targets the Ukrainian Canadian community.

"The civil service is trying to create this into a generic kind of program about civil rights and past wrongs, and we've already sent a letter to the prime minister [Paul Martin] that we want a community-specific solution," explained Mr. Hladyshevsky, 49, who also serves as second vice-president of the UCC.

He said that the Ukrainian community wants any financial assistance received to be directed toward commemorating and educating Canadians about an event that found over 6,000 Ukrainian Canadians held at 24 internment camps across the country as "enemy aliens" along with about 70,000 Ukrainian Canadians who were issued identity cards and stripped of their citizenship right to vote between 1914 and 1920 - two years beyond the conclusion of World War I.

"The community's position is that we want recognition of this event as a true historical fact," said Mr. Hladyshevsky, a commercial lawyer with the North American firm, Fraser Milner Casgrain, LLP.

"We don't want compensation for pain and suffering, because the only survivor is Mary Manko Haskett."

Now 93 years old and living in a nursing home in Hamilton, Ont., Ms. Manko Haskett was 6 years old when she was interned with her family at the Spirit Lake internment camp near Amos in northern Quebec.

The Ukrainian Canadian Internment Committee also doesn't want an apology - a claim once sought by the UCCLA, but one that the federal Justice Department, along with any request for compensation, has rejected, according to Mr. Hladyshevsky.

However, he added that the government "must set aside an endowment" and return monies "confiscated" from Ukrainian Canadians during the country's first national internment operations as part of a comprehensive redress fund to be administered by the Ukrainian Canadian community.

A Price Waterhouse (now known as PricewaterhouseCoopers) report, commissioned by the UCC over a decade ago, estimated that the federal government took between $5 million and $6 million (in today's dollars) from Ukrainian Canadian internees, and estimated that this group sustained a further $22 million in lost wages and other economic losses (for example, internees had to pay 80 cents a day for room and board while only receiving $1.10 for working in labor camps).

Mr. Hladyshevsky said that while descendants of internees won't receive compensation, they are to be represented on a steering committee that will determine where the government funds will be directed. "The money will be used for publications, research, developing exhibits and educational materials for Canadian schools," he explained.

Mr. Hladyshevsky said he also hoped a new prize to be awarded by the Shevchenko Foundation next year could go to an author who writes about Ukrainian Canadian internment.

Next March, the foundation will present the first biennial Kobzar Literary Award (named after the Shevchenko work that highlighted the centuries-old tradition of storytelling through music by the kobzars of Ukraine) for a submission in either Ukrainian, English or French with a Ukrainian Canadian theme in one of four categories: non-fiction, fiction, children's literature or a play. The winning Canadian author will receive $20,000, with another $5,000 given to the publisher of the work.

Mr. Hladyshevsky indicated that a children's book on the internment could be in the running.

A human rights museum, to be built in Winnipeg, will also feature a remembrance to Ukrainian Canadian internment as will the soon-to-be-opened new Canadian War Museum in Ottawa.

And, the Ukrainian Canadian Internment Committee plans to work with the Department of Canadian Heritage to commemorate each of the 24 internment-camp sites, over half of which now have trilingual (English, French and Ukrainian) markers.

"Some markers are fairly nondescript, so we would like to enhance the commemoration at each site with more of a storyboard to tell the history at each location through interpretive panels," Mr. Hladyshevsky said.

According to Dr. Luciuk, a "place of gathering, memory and reflection" is planned for Banff National Park in Alberta, where two internment camps, (at Castle Mountain and Cave and Basin,) were once located.

And some historic sites desperately need attention.

"The entire cemetery in Amos, Quebec, hasn't been properly commemorated," said Mr. Hladyshevsky. "There are internee graves on a farmer's land and we have to ask the farmer for permission to visit. That's unacceptable. "Several hundred internees died in the camps and we want to make the land hallowed where these people were buried."

Equally unacceptable, in Mr. Hladyshevsky's view, is the absence of any significant mention of Ukrainian Canadian internment within the country's educational system.

"There shouldn't be anybody who comes through a Canadian school that doesn't understand Ukrainian Canadian internment during the first world war. It's a story that just isn't told."

But, while the government has yet to determine how much money will be directed toward redressing Ukrainian Canadian internment, Mr. Hladyshevsky's committee appears to have a strong ally from within the federal Cabinet regarding its claim.

Mr. Hladyshevsky said that Minister of State for Multiculturalism Raymond Chan - whose Chinese Canadian community is seeking redress for a $500 head tax imposed on Chinese entering the country in 1885 and a 1923 federal law that prevented Chinese immigration to Canada all together - told him that he wouldn't have agreed to head the government ministry had he not been "allowed to try and get a solution to redress."

After meeting with Mr. Chan twice since the budget was delivered on February 23, Mr. Hladyshevsky said that he and the minister both interpret the government's $25 million commitment "as a green light for him to negotiate with us."

The government may have no choice but to reach a strong settlement with Canada's Ukrainian community, thanks to a private member's bill introduced by Conservative Member of Parliament Inky Mark, who also is of Chinese descent and has presented another bill - this one dealing with redress for the Chinese Canadian community - to Parliament.

Bill C-331, also known as the Ukrainian Canadian Restitution Act, calls for the federal government to acknowledge and provide restitution for Ukrainians who were interned. Federal funds would be used to create a foundation that promotes education and tolerance, essentially the same idea proposed by the Ukrainian Canadian Internment Committee.

The bill has already received support from MPs representing all four parties in the House of Commons.

Though it's rare for a private member's bill to be passed into law, Mr. Mark's proposed legislation - coupled with the redress provision cited in the recent federal budget - places the government in "a bit of quandary," said Mr. Hladyshevsky.

"The Ukrainian community has put the government in a very awkward position," he explained. "It's going to have a problem if [Liberal MPs] are going to try and vote this down. If federal law mandates the government to talk to our community and resolve the issue, we will have the force of law on our side."

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