NDP MP Lynn Macdonald took to her feet in the Commons on this date in 1984 and asked outgoing Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau if his government would consider officially apologizing, and providing compensation, to Japanese-Canadians who had been interned by the federal government during World War II.
Trudeau refused.
“If the Honourable Member is interested in my personal opinion... I am not inclined to envisage questions of compensation for acts which have perhaps discoloured our history in the past, if other means of redress are possible,” he replied. “I am not quite sure where we could stop the compensating. I know that we would have to go back a great length of time in history and look at all of the injustices which have occurred, perhaps beginning with the deportations of the Acadians and going on to the treatment of the Chinese Canadians in the late 19th century. I do not believe in attempting to rewrite history in this way.”
“On other occasions I have personally expressed to Japanese Canadians the regret that I feel about the terrible acts which happened to them,” the Prime Minister continued. “There is no justification for them after the fact. To me, this is in the category of those who want to rehabilitate Riel. Riel stands as he stands. I do not see that there is much to gain by trying to apologize for acts of our great-grandfathers and their great-grandfathers.”
A few days later, when questioned again on the matter, Trudeau again refused. “Government’s main function is to be just in its time,” he said. “It is not to try to correct the injustices that have been done to everybody in the past.”
Within a few weeks, on the even of his political retirement, Trudeau moderated his position. He said the government would apologize, but not offer compensation.
The government of Trudeau’s successor as Prime Minister, led by Brian Mulroney, would issue a formal apology and provide compensation to Japanese-Canadians.
Arthur Milnes is an accomplished public historian and award-winning journalist. He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney’s best-selling Memoirs and also served as a speechwriter to then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as a Fellow of the Queen’s Centre for the Study of Democracy under the leadership of Tom Axworthy. A resident of Kingston, Ontario, Milnes serves as the in-house historian at the 175 year-old Frontenac Club Hotel.