Our Community on Internment Redress: The Need for an Endowment

By Lubomyr Luciuk, PhD, Andrew Hladyshevsky, QC, Paul Grod, LLB

The Ukrainian Canadian community has designated representatives from the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association (UCCLA), the Ukrainian Canadian Foundation of Taras Shevchenko (UCFTS), and Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) to represent its views on the development of commemorative, educational, research and cultural initiatives recalling Canada’s first national internment operations during WWI.

These projects should be funded by establishing the contemporary value of the internee’s forced labour and of that portion of their confiscated wealth that was never returned and which remains in the government’s coffers to this day and then, negotiating symbolic redress for this historical injustice.This symbolic amount will be significantly less than the contemporary value of what was taken from the internees and therefore represents no burden for contemporary taxpayers, for redress represents only the return of a portion of the wealth extracted from internees under duress.

No apology has ever been sought by the community, only an official recognition or acknowledgement of what happened.

Consistently, the community has asked that these funds be placed into an endowment managed by the Ukrainian Canadian Foundation of Taras Shevchenko (established by an Act of Parliament in 1963) rather than having these funds administered through a government program or ministry.

The community has already demonstrated that it has an ability to efficiently and expeditiously partner with other NGOs (e.g. the Spirit Lake Camp Corporation - La Ferme and YMCA, Montreal), local municipalities (e.g. Fernie, British Columbia and Kapuskasing, Ontario) and private businesses (eg Amherst, Nova Scotia). Our volunteers have a proven track record of nearly 20 years of work and achievement in this area. The proposed endowment would allow for the development of even more comprehensive commemorative, educational and cultural programs having to do with Canada’s first national internment operations, well into the foreseeable future.

Furthermore, the community’s representatives are determined to complete as many of these initiatives as possible while the last known survivor of the internment operations, the Honourary Chairwoman of UCCLA’s National Redress Council, Mary Manko (98) is still able to bear witness to an honourable and timely settlement.

Recognizing that other Europeans were also interned and subjected to state-sanctioned censures during this period, the community’s designates reaffirm that any Canadian, regardless of ethnic, religious or racial heritage, can propose projects the Shevchenko Foundation and all applications will be afforded exactly the same consideration. The only exceptions will be projects proposed by surviving internees, or their descendents, whose applications will be given priority attention in acknowledgement of the more direct impact which the internment operations had on their lives and those of their families.

The organized community can be far more creative, responsive and efficient than federal officials (e.g. the Orange Revolution, 2004 and 2006 UCC Election Observer Missions in Ukraine). The community also notes that there have been many occasions on which the federal government has set up and endowed foundations of various sorts, or established endowments within existing foundations. There are, in other words, precedents for the remedy here proposed.

The Ukrainian Canadian community seeks a distinct remedy for our claims, on the basis of the precedents established first by the Japanese Canadian Redress Settlement and more recently by the resolution of the Residential Schools and Chinese Canadian Head Tax issues. Our position has been, and remains, that what happened to Ukrainian Canadians during this country’s first national internment operations was unique, and that this historical experience of injustice should be dealt with directly, rather than co-mingled with those of other ethnic, religious or racial minorities that experienced discrimination or wartime injustices.

Regardless of how other communities’ cases are addressed, the fact remains that the Government of Canada is legally obliged to negotiate a Ukrainian Canadian redress and reconciliation settlement given that Bill C 331 – The Internment of Persons of Ukrainian Origin Recognition Act received Royal Assent on November 25, 2005.

N.P.: On behalf of the Ukrainian Canadian community, Lubomyr Luciuk (UCCLA), Andrew Hladyshevsky (UCFTS) and Paul Grod (UCC) are ready for negotiations immediately with the Government of Canada on recognition, restitution and reconciliation. They are prepared, if necessary, to substantiate further or elaborate upon the points made about our position on the need to redress and reach settlement on the WWI Internment of Ukrainian Canadians.