FOR THE RECORD: Speech at site of internment camp (12/24/06)

FOR THE RECORD: Speech at site of internment camp

Following are excerpts of a speech by Andrew J. Hladyshevsky, president of the Ukrainian Canadian Foundation of Taras Shevchenko, delivered on November 15 at La Ferme, Quebec, site of the Spirit Lake internment camp.

... The Shevchenko Foundation was incorporated by a unanimous Act of Parliament on July 22, 1963, and from its humble beginnings it has contributed to hundreds of projects in Canada, both by organizations and individuals, and has become a well-known part of the Ukrainian Canadian community, all in the name of Ukraine's greatest poet and patriarch, Taras Shevchenko.

The Shevchenko Foundation benefits all Canadians by supporting the promotion and advancement of Ukrainian culture in Canada in the same way that all Canadians benefit from the support and advancement of Quebecois and Francophone culture in Canada. ...

The Ukrainian Canadian community asked for the participation of the Shevchenko Foundation in seeking a mediated settlement and redress agreement with the Government of Canada. As Dr. [Lubomyr] Luciuk has already indicated, decades of work have resulted in the Agreement in Principle (AIP), signed with the Government of Canada, August 24. That document pledged that Ottawa would work with the Ukrainian Canadian community towards a formal agreement of settlement. An initial pledge of $2.5 million was also made to us, those funds to be held by the Shevchenko Foundation through the Acknowledgment, Commemoration and Education Program (otherwise known as the ACE Program). The AIP also promised "further funding," and clearly stated that the Agreement in Principle would not be a full and final agreement, that further agreements were anticipated.

The passage into law shortly thereafter, November 25, 2005, of Inky Mark's Bill C 331 - The Internment of Persons of Ukrainian Origin Recognition Act, further confirmed that Ottawa would undertake negotiations with the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association and the Ukrainian Canadian Foundation of Taras Shevchenko toward securing a final Ukrainian Canadian Reconciliation Settlement.

It is with great regret that I must tell you today that more than a year after the signing of the Agreement in Principle, and almost a year since the passage of the statute, and some 10 months following the change of government, and despite all our efforts in between, all we have managed to do is have a few brief and inconclusive conversations with the Minister of Canadian Heritage, Ms. Beverley Oda. Following those preliminary meetings the government, inexplicably, cut off all discussions with the Ukrainian Canadian community.

This has been the case notwithstanding specific letters written to the Minister of Canadian Heritage, specific letters written to the Prime Minister of Canada, the Right Honorable Stephen Harper, and to other officials in the Prime Minister's Office with whom we were asked to deal. None of our efforts have resulted in the kinds of serious and conclusive discussions that we anticipated, given Bill C 331 and the AIP.

... let us remember that the Government of Canada unilaterally apologized to the Chinese Canadian community on July 22, 2006. On the same date, without consultation with the Ukrainian Canadian community, and certainly without the Ukrainian Canadian community's consent, Ottawa announced that the ACE Program was being replaced with "CHRP," the Community Historical Recognition Program, to provide funding for community-based projects linked to wartime measures and immigration restrictions. The government also said that it would be through CHRP that funding commitments identified in agreements signed with the Chinese, Italian and Ukrainian Canadian communities would be met and, coincidentally, that the $25 million allocated to ACE had therefore been allocated to CHRP.

Unfortunately, the government has said that finalizing all of this new program's details would take until late fall 2006. To date, November 15, 2006, the Ukrainian Canadian community has received no further details nor have we been asked to participate in the process of structuring an acceptable program.

The government has also introduced "NHRP" which is the National Historical Recognition Program. It will not be accessed by anyone in any of the ethnic or cultural communities that were affected by past government actions but will only be used to fund federal initiatives. Ottawa has allocated $10 million for NHRP. Using those monies, we are told, federal bureaucrats will "help educate all Canadians, in particular youth, about the discrimination and hardship faced by the Chinese and other communities impacted by wartime measures and/or immigration restrictions and the significance of these experiences to the communities in question. This program will be implemented by the federal government and include initiatives such as the development of public service announcements, educational tools and access to web-based archival information."

Again, our Ukrainian Canadian community has not been invited to comment on this program nor would we, nor any other ethnocultural community, be involved in overseeing the disbursement of these funds for the kinds of commemorative, educational and cultural projects we feel are most significant to our community, given our historical experience.

We are, therefore, placed in a very difficult position. As one of the designated spokesmen for the Ukrainian Canadian community I have joined my colleagues, Dr. Lubomyr Luciuk and Paul Grod, in a process of ongoing consultations with various stakeholders in our community, right across the country. We all agree that we will in no way be bound by any of these federal initiatives if that means that the contractual and legislative commitments that were already made to us are in any way abrogated or denied.

We continue to seek a final redress agreement that is both timely and honorable ... and have already begun to actively lobby not only the prime minister but other MPs as well, including Minister Oda. ... We are taking the necessary steps to remind Minister Oda and the government that we will not be dissuaded from achieving the goals we have always set before us - namely, recognition, restitution and reconciliation.

Our community calls on all interested stakeholders ... to contact every MP in every constituency in the country, to inform and talk to each parliamentarian, regardless of what political party she or he belongs to, about the ongoing injustice of there being no redress settlement.

Meanwhile, we shall not rest. We shall not slow down our efforts to achieve justice for we have an obligation to those individuals who now sleep silently in the graves not far from where I now stand, here in central Quebec, and elsewhere throughout this land. The lives of many internees were mangled and wasted by a federal government that denied them basic human rights and civil liberties. We strive to ensure that Canada will become a country that respects our Charter of Rights, respects linguistic duality and has a Constitution enshrining multicultural respect for its minorities. That is our chore because we know the high price paid for that goal not only by those who fought for Canada in wartime but also by those who were wrongly interned, not because of anything they had done, but only because of who they were, where they came from.

I have told numerous ministers of the crown that even if I do not live to see a settlement, one of my children will see to it that a settlement is achieved and ultimately respected, and if not one of them then it will be one of their sons or daughters who will see this through. We have worked for decades and will continue doing so for decades yet, if we must. We will not give up. ...

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