Harper's Sorry Apology
OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada apologized formally on Thursday for a head tax it levied on Chinese immigrants about a century ago, describing it as a historic wrong and one of "the racist actions of our past." Prime Minister Stephen Harper delivered the apology in the House of Commons, in the presence of some elderly survivors of the tax, which Chinese workers had to pay before they could come to Canada.
Reuters

A fine moment for the PM. No need for personal contrition. just an occasion to emphasize his superiority to the moral pigmies that preceded him in the Prime Minister's office.

Thing is, though, in 1885, when Canada passed the Chinese Immigration Act that regulated Chinese immigration to Canada and imposed a "capitation tax" China was a foreign country. Still is, as a matter of fact, although it might well not have been had Canada accepted unlimited Chinese immigration over the course of the ensuing four generations.

Thus, when the head tax was imposed, Canada, as now, was under absolutely no obligation to China, other than the obligation of common civility and honest dealing. If Chinese citizens wished to come to Canada, they were entitled to do so only in accordance with Canadian law. Which, as it happens, is precisely the case today, just as Canadians citizens are entitled to live and work in China only in accordance with Chinese law.

Why then the fuss? Because, so the politically correct will hasten to say, the law was racist. Well so what? That was then, this is now. Ideas change. Are we supposed to apologize for the beliefs of the Druids, assuming that they may have been our ancestors? And if so, when will the Chinese apologize for calling Westerners "big noses," "barbarians," "hairy people," for trying to disrupt the opium trade, or as recently as this year, making thousands of Montreal textile workers unemployed?

In 1885 just about everyone was a racist, the Chinese included. Then, China was the only significant hold out against western colonial domination, despite the best efforts of Britain, the United States Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Russia. Hence the Boxer rebellion. To the Chinese, westerners were a horde of marauding invaders to be repelled by any means.

Here, Canadian colonists were white Europeans who would have regarded with distinct suspicion anyone who failed to recognize the innate superiority of the white race, and its right, indeed duty, to rule the world. (Rudyard Kipling's poem "Take Up the White Man's Burden," which urged Americans to take up the imperial mission in the Philippines, was presumably, duly considered and found morally acceptable by the committee that selected him to receive the 1907 Nobel Prize for literature.) Anyone, then, who talked like a present-day Tory about a community of communities, strength through diversity, and all the rest of our politically correct clap-trap, would likely have been condemned as "self-hating," had it occurred to anyone to use that term, still widely applied without apparent embarrassment by Jews of members of their own community who fail to show racial solidarity.

Race was recognized as the founding consideration in the post-WWI settlement: one nation, one state. Regrettably, the principle was not adhered to. Large parts of the German nation were incorporated into neighboring states. Hence, Germany's bitter sense of betrayal and WWII. The same notion, that ethnicity should underlie the definition of states, was adopted by the League of Nations.

So Stephen Harper may be a better man than all the European and North American statesmen that preceded him on the World stage, but his position is, nevertheless, based on sheer humbug. We still discriminate against Chinese and people of every other nation who wish to come here. Maybe we don't discriminate on the basis of race. But is it morally less offensive to discriminate against someone, as we do now, on the basis of their poverty, their ignorance, or their poor health?

And if we really do not discriminate on the basis of race, how come Immigration Canada publishes no statistics on the Country of Origin of immigrants. Could it be because such statistics would show that in some recent years there have been more immigrants from such countries as Iraq than from Britain? You know, the U.K., mostly white people, who speak our language but wiv all kinds of funny accents wot makes 'em sound kinda ignorant, although some of them, if you can understand what they are saying, are really quite intelligent.

What is saddest of all about Harper's sleazy gimmick of an apology is the evidence it provides of a near pathological deficiency in creative imagination. Of the 80,000 or so Chinese who paid the head tax, many worked as laborers in the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railroad. The construction of the railroad was, according to the Prime Minster, an engineering feat "for which the back-breaking toil of Chinese labourers was largely responsible" and without which "The Canada we know today would not exist."

Well, then, let's honor them for their contribution, not apologize for letting them come here and make it, however rough the deal. Honor them all with the Order of Canada. And by all means give them $20 thousand a piece too.

Permanent Link

The Canadian Spectator is optimized for viewing with Firefox Version 1.02.

Please address correspondence to .