Editorial: Canada's PM should leave history to historians
"It's also very important to put in place educational materials so that it never happens again and so that Canadians know what has happened," Prime Minister Paul Martin told a sympathetic radio audience of Chinese-Canadians this week. He was referring to one of his latest campaign spending promises: $2.5 million to increase awareness of the infamous poll tax imposed on Chinese immigrants.
It's hard to believe in this politically correct age that many Canadians remain unaware of this odious tax, first levied in 1885 and superseded in 1923 by the total exclusion of Chinese from our borders. It has become a pillar of postmodern Canadian history, probably as familiar to students as the Last Spike and the Klondike and well known to citizens who have never heard of reciprocity or the King-Byng affair.
The real purpose of the payout is to avoid issuing a formal apology to poll-tax-payers and their descendants and opening the door to costly litigation. But a better use of the money, 58 years after the Chinese exclusion clause was revoked, would be to educate Canadians on the strides these and other immigrant communities have made in the most welcoming and grateful country in the world.
Perhaps such a program would be of benefit to the prime minister himself, who appears to be sufficiently addled by the campaign to suppose that Canada is a country in which something as outrageous as a racial poll tax could ever happen again.
But better yet would be no money at all for pre-election "education" programs. The history of Canada is a matter for historians to deliberate, in collaboration with their peers and the broader Canadian public for whom they write. The prime minister and other members of the cabinet should busy themselves with current events, not history.
It's hard to believe in this politically correct age that many Canadians remain unaware of this odious tax, first levied in 1885 and superseded in 1923 by the total exclusion of Chinese from our borders. It has become a pillar of postmodern Canadian history, probably as familiar to students as the Last Spike and the Klondike and well known to citizens who have never heard of reciprocity or the King-Byng affair.
The real purpose of the payout is to avoid issuing a formal apology to poll-tax-payers and their descendants and opening the door to costly litigation. But a better use of the money, 58 years after the Chinese exclusion clause was revoked, would be to educate Canadians on the strides these and other immigrant communities have made in the most welcoming and grateful country in the world.
Perhaps such a program would be of benefit to the prime minister himself, who appears to be sufficiently addled by the campaign to suppose that Canada is a country in which something as outrageous as a racial poll tax could ever happen again.
But better yet would be no money at all for pre-election "education" programs. The history of Canada is a matter for historians to deliberate, in collaboration with their peers and the broader Canadian public for whom they write. The prime minister and other members of the cabinet should busy themselves with current events, not history.