Chinese-Canadian head tax redress: Just compensation or containment?
By Machael C.K. Ma
The Canadian government has a long and disgraceful history of racist policies and practices. One of these was the entry tax imposed on Chinese immigrants to Canada between 1885 and 1947. Commonly known as the head tax, and imposed exclusively on Chinese immigrants, the question of redress of this injustice has recently taken centre stage in the political arena.
A couple of months before the recent federal election, the Liberal government signed an agreement in principle with the National Congress of Chinese Canadians (NCCC) to address the long-standing call for head tax redress. The arrangement was for a one-time payment of $2.5 million to the NCCC for a commemorative process to memorialize the history of the head tax. This fell far short of the original demand for full redress – one that included a formal apology and direct compensation to head tax payers or their families. Those involved in the original demand did not agree to these terms, but the NCCC is a compliant organization that willingly accepted the agreement. And they were prepared to sell it to the Chinese-Canadian community as a redress victory.
Then, the January 2006 federal election campaign got in the way. Community organizations hounded the Liberals about real redress and the Chinese-language media took up the issue. Full head tax redress galvanized into a community flashpoint and, suddenly, it became a real issue for many Chinese Canadians – and a key election issue in ridings with large numbers of Chinese Canadian voters.
Late in the election campaign, with the Liberals seriously faltering, Paul Martin suddenly became quick to apologize to anyone who would listen. Whether this 11th-hour personal apology would have amounted to real government action on the issue we shall never know. With the chips down, it was easy for Martin to offer an apology which carried no financial commitments or official policy repercussions.
So, what happened? How did the Liberal government – a government that had helped usher in multiculturalism – become embroiled in fights over Canadian heritage and history? Why was it disputing claims for redress by elderly head tax payers and their families and uppity grassroots organizers? Why did the government want the head tax issue to be contained and dealt with by Heritage Canada? These critical questions all relate to the manner through which the policy of multiculturalism has been used to depoliticize the nation’s racist practices and to contain uncooperative groups. But first, some background history to contextualize the issue.
Chinese immigration to Canada began around 1858 in response to the B.C. gold rush, but the largest group, 15,000 Chinese labourers, came between 1881 and 1885. They were recruited to work on the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Once the railway was completed, the government began restricting Chinese immigration. In 1885, the first anti-Chinese bill was passed. This bill levied a $50 head tax on all Chinese immigrants. No head tax was levied on any other migrant group. The head tax was increased to $100 in 1900, but this did not deter immigrants and so it was raised to $500 in 1903 – the equivalent of $30,000 today.
Still, Chinese migrants continued coming to Canada, and in 1923 Parliament passed the Chinese Exclusion Act which effectively stopped all migration. In 1947, the Act was repealed. But during this shameful period, the Federal government collected $23 million from head tax payers while simultaneously denying these resettled migrants their Canadian citizenship.
Fast forward to the present day and you have an incredibly long-standing and complex historical wrong that needs fixing. Over the last few years, it fell on the Liberals to deal with it. Did they try to settle redress in an equitable and respectful way? Did they approach the issue in good faith? No. Rather, they attempted to twist it into a question of social inclusion to be dealt with by Heritage Canada. The term “social inclusion” refers to the policy of attempting to resettle newcomers not just geographically but socially as well. Social recruitment is meant to provide immigrants with a sense of social connectedness, civic engagement and citizenship.
But to present redress for the head tax as merely a question of social inclusion was a duplicitous form of containment operating instrumentally within the purview of cultural politics. How did the government use the promise of redress grants to deflect criticism? How did the politics get drained away as it became an issue of culture and heritage?
First, the Liberal government directed negotiations so that the NCCC was selected and presented as the only legitimate organization representing the Chinese-Canadian community. Given that the Ontario Coalition of Chinese Head Tax Payers and Families; the B.C. Coalition of Chinese Head Tax Payers, Their Spouses and Descendants; The Chinese Canadian Redress Alliance in Montreal and The Chinese Canadian National Council have worked together on this issue for many years, their exclusion from the government’s final consultation is no less than a silencing of criticism. By doing this, the government hoped to shift the redress issue away from a formal political and legal process and onto politically safer ground. The handpicking of a community representative friendly to the government’s notion of “redress” – no compensation, no apology – is their way of turning the demand for social justice into an exercise in political newspeak and incorporation. This creates a system whereby Chinese Canadians must remain compliant and subordinate in a process reconstructed for them by the Liberal government. Raising protest means being expelled from the consultation.
Second, by appearing to deal with a past historical legislative injustice, the Liberals gave the appearance of embarking on a just cause and acting with empathy to the past suffering of Chinese-Canadian pioneers. As well, the optics of redressing past racism has the effect of painting contemporary political practice as being beyond past problems. Racism gets framed as a thing of the distant past and represented as a long-defeated relic that has been replaced with the modern policies of diversity and multiculturalism. The Liberal government’s acknowledgement of racism was a win-win situation for them, but for head-tax payers any redress without apology or compensation is little more than an empty political gesture.
Third, the government strategy used the demand for head tax redress as a way to manage the political mobilization of the Chinese community. It was an opportunity to co-op the demands of Chinese-Canadian community organizers who were trying to do two things with the head tax issue.
On the one hand, organizers sought an official apology and the direct compensation of head tax payers and their families. On the other hand, organizers sought to raise consciousness around the issue of social justice and anti-racism. However, in order to deflect and control this situation, the federal government chose the tried-and-true tactic of divide and conquer. It picked an organization, the NCCC, that agreed to accept a “redress” with neither apology nor direct compensation. In this way, responsibility for the sell-out is shifted onto the NCCC as the deputized agents of the government.
Fourth, by endowing the NCCC with the funds and responsibility for a modified redress, the government was tactically downloading the issue onto a community organization. Indeed, if the NCCC had been able to successfully convince the Chinese-Canadian community that an historic memorial is an adequate compensation for the injustices of the head tax, then the government would have succeeded in changing redress from an issue of political and legal justice to an issue of historical education and cultural awareness. But if the NCCC had not been successful, then the blame would be shifted by the government onto Chinese Canadians and their inability to coordinate an already-determined form of redress. In either case, the government would succeed in shifting responsibility for head tax redress onto the ethno-racial community, which they can claim has gained a “huge” settlement. And those who continue to press for a just redress are represented as self-indulgent complainers who are engaging ethnic in-fighting. In this way, a further layer of racialization is created.
And finally, rather that acknowledging head tax redress as an issue to be dealt with through the Department of Justice, the Liberal government passed it off to Heritage Canada. This action suggests that racism and its historical precedents are but multicultural issues to be commemorated but not meaningfully addressed as a living injustice. In fact, the $2.5 million dollar agreement-in-principle signed with the NCCC was part of the Liberal government’s Acknowledge-ment, Commemoration, and Education (ACE) Program. This three-year program, first announced in the February 2005 budget, was designed to “acknowledge the historical experiences of ethno-cultural communities” and thus “help build better understanding among all Canadians of the strength of our diversity.”
During this whole process, redress claims morphed into the government goal of promoting diversity and tolerance. Redress became merely an historical, cultural sensitivity-training exercise. The $2.5-million agreement-in-principle that the Liberals signed with the NCCC specified that the money be used for educational and commemorative projects relating to the head tax. None of the funds were to be used for compensation and no apology would be issued. As Minister of Multiculturalism, Jean Augustine, succinctly stated, “Canada decided to put closure to the issue and that being no financial compensation for historical acts.” For Augustine and the Liberals, the present day government should not shoulder a burden belonging to the past.
The fact that the Liberal government found it appropriate to deal with the head tax as a cultural issue makes it clear that they never believed this to be a legitimate claim nor one worthy of apology for historical wrong-doing. Nor was it seen as an issue worthy of financial compensation – unlike the case of Japanese Canadians who were compensated for their unjust internment and theft of their property during World War Two.
Considering that Canada was one of the first countries to introduce a multiculturalism act to promote, protect and recognize cultural and racial diversity, one might ask: why has the Canadian government been unwilling to budge on the issue of head tax redress for so long? Perhaps the answer is that multiculturalism itself was created precisely in order to manage race and racism and to diffuse dissent around racial injustice into the appearance of harmony through cultural diversity.
The Liberal intention to divert redress into educational reconciliation and historical preservation fits directly with a multiculturalism policy that deflects political issues of race and racism to the cultural realm. It is easiesr to deal with the history of head tax through the no-fault realm of setting up a museum or monument to commemorate this period of Canadian history. This equally historicizes and deadens the issue by making it something that is part of a distant and disconnected past. Rather than being an historical issue of contemporary relevance, it becomes a dead-and-buried one acknowledged only through commemoration. It is interesting to note that the National Film Board and federal and provincial arts councils have funded documentaries on the head tax and related issues. It is okay to have educational programs, heritage moments, and TV shows but it is not okay to acknowledge and apologize for racist government practice, even if it happened over 50 years ago.
Finally, it should be noted that, although full redress should be supported and fought for, it is still not a perfect solution. Despite the direct benefit of monetary compensation and the importance that a full apology would play in providing head tax payers with a sense of justice and closure, redress can be a double-edged sword. Redress demands that Canada admit to wrong doing, but that apologetic Canada is the “white and normal” Canada of which Chinese-Canadians are not members. It inadvertently suggests that Chinese Canadians will always be a hyphenated group who are not fully part of Canada. They will forever be understood as a special interest group outside of mainstream Canada. In this sense, redress helps retain and re-mark the borders of race and make Chinese Canadians seem to be only partial citizens who are demanding special compensation that no one else receives. In a strange way, the situation of redress frames Chinese Canadians as not being entirely Canadian because it is “white” Canada who must apologize and compensate – not the present day Chinese Canadian. Thus compensation inadvertently foments the very relations of racial ruling that the act seeks to change.
Still, it is far better for Chinese Canadians to obtain apology and compensation than for head tax payers and survivors to remain unacknowledged. This would publicize the history and honour those who experienced it. It would indeed be a travesty of justice if head tax payer demands were morphed into the managed multicultural museum of indifference envisioned by the federal government.
