Federal ministers cross Canada to consult on head-tax redress

VANCOUVER (CP) - How does a government apologize for the racism of charging one ethnic group a discriminatory tariff to come to Canada? How does a government compensate men who had to leave school early to pay off debts incurred by paying the tariff, or apologize to families thrown into years of debt because of it?

The heritage minister will be asking Chinese Canadians these questions in a series of meetings across the country this week aimed at devising a fair redress package.

The exercise is stirring up painful memories for many head-tax victims.

Yew Lee, a descendant of two generations of head-tax payers, says it brings him back to a time when some white Canadians thought it was OK to walk into a Chinese restaurant, order a steak dinner, savour it and then butt their cigarette out in the scraps.

"They'd say, there's a cigarette in my food, I'm not paying," says Lee who lives in Chelsea, Que.

"It was OK because this was a society where the government sanctioned discrimination against Chinese people. It allows people to treat parts of our society like sub human."

Yew's 94-year-old mother lives in Ottawa. She's immobile and won't be able to get to any consultation with government ministers she's too cynical to have faith in anyway.

She sits with memories of being kept out of Canada by a law that barred Chinese people from immigrating at all.

Her husband paid the head tax and wasn't allowed to bring Yew, his mother and three brothers over and the family was separated for 14 years.

"How that affected me, I'm still trying to figure that out," says Yew.

The tax has been acknowledged as a dark period in Canadian history for its blatant racism.

Chinese immigration to Canada began around 1858 in response to the Gold Rush in British Columbia. Immigrants also were brought in from China to help build the Canadian Pacific Railway.

But the federal government subsequently tried to restrict Chinese immigration, passing legislation that initially imposed a $50 tax on immigrants. That later rose to $500.

About 81,000 Chinese immigrants paid $23 million to enter Canada under the head-tax scheme between 1885 and 1923. The Chinese Exclusion Act followed, barring Chinese immigrants altogether until it was repealed in 1947.

Victor Wong, another descendent who lives in Toronto, said you just can't compensate people for what happened.

He wants the government to act by July 1 and provide a redress package, money and an apology to victims and their spouses while they are still alive.

Wong said descendants can be addressed later.

Victims have suggested the government could apologize to the wider Chinese Canadian community by creating a day to remember that would be marked each year.

Others are still just amazed that the government wants to talk about it at all.

"It's pretty unprecedented. No government has really done that before," says Sid Tan, a Vancouver resident and volunteer with Association of Chinese Canadians for Equality and Solidarity.

"I wish my grandma was alive to see this. Wow."

Heritage Minister Bev Oda and Jason Kenney, parliamentary secretary for multiculturalism, will be attending meetings this week in Halifax, Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver to consult with Chinese Canadians touched by the head tax.

Kenney said the consultations will help the government come up with a fair redress package that could be rolled out this spring.

"We just want to give people a chance to speak their minds. Once consultations are done, minister Oda and I will be making recommendations to the cabinet about the way forward and we hope that sometime this spring there will be a formal apology for the head tax in Parliament and an announcement about what kind of redress would be offered."

The government first wants to hear how victims were affected and people like Sid Tan will be at the meeting in Vancouver to tell his story.

His is similar to Yew's.

His grandfather paid the head tax. His grandmother was kept out by the Exclusion Act of 1923. The two were apart for 25 years.

Tan remembers his grandmother was fearful when her grandson took up the cause of getting redress for head-tax payers 20 years ago.

"She told me not to. She said 'What if the police come, what if the green coats (immigration officials wore green then) in the middle of the night, what if they tie you up, throw you in the river. No, no, where would we be, these things, never mind.'

"I knew she was so intimidated by the forces of government. She would be gratified to hear the government talking about these things now."

Tan said he's feeling really good about how the stories are coming out. Communities are talking and the government is listening.

"Our Chinese forbearers not only had to overcome the geography and environment and the climate, we had to overcome the people. And I think we have. Now, I think Chinese people are accepted as part of the Canadian mosaic," Tan says.

Few people who actually paid the head tax in the early 1900s are still alive. Four elderly men live in Vancouver.

Tan is helping to organize carpools for head-tax payers, their families and widows to get them out to the meeting with the federal ministers in suburban Richmond, B.C.

He says some of them don't want anything from the government other than acknowledgment of their story.

Tan will ask the government to return the $23 million it collected in head-tax.

Ted Tan, vice-president of the Chinese Society of Nova Scotia, said he has no opinion on whether or not compensation should be paid out to individuals or to the Chinese community, but he welcomed Ottawa's willingness to discuss the issue.

"Those who were directly affected are old, or have passed away, and really it would probably would be better to have this issued resolved while some are still alive," he said in Halifax.

© The Canadian Press, 2006