The origin of Canada's Vietnamese community lies in a series of well-defined events that occurred between 1975 and 1997.

The essence of the story is what Canada's responses to those events were in 1975 to 1997 and why Canada made those choices. Those choices have a lot to say about who Canadians of Vietnamese origin are today, and that is the whole point of our work on this story. Naturally there is a lot of context around those events that are needed to help us understand why things happened the way they did. That context becomes critically important when there is a debate around the interpretation of those events.

It is not hard to discover that the history of those events as it is understood by most Canadians today does not agree with historical records and personal memories from those days. This ought to be unsettling to those who realize that those events form part of their Canadian identity.

Why does this difference exist? Is there a legitimate debate over the history of the Vietnamese in Canada? Were those changes made in the interests of clarity for the Vietnamese migrants, or did they have some other, perhaps hostile, purpose?

Historians have a couple of definitions that guide the work of analyzing changes to the historical record:

Historical negationism is the falsification or distortion of the historical record to serve partisan or ideological purposes in the present.

Historical revisionism refers to newly evidenced, reasoned academic reinterpretations of history, intended to improve our understanding of history.

In the topics that follow, we will outline our case for historical negationism.^[1] The conclusion determines how we handle certain entries in our bibliography.

Our case comes to these conclusions:

• the history of the arrival of the Vietnamese in Canada has indeed been revised, and

• there were specific ideological and partisan motives for that revision, and

• the motive was, in part, to redefine who Vietnamese Canadians are today.

It is this last point that makes it necessary for us to examine the revisions to the historical narrative. It is not a remote academic exercise, but something that has a real impact on Canadian lives today.

To assess the motives that led Canada to revise the history of the Vietnamese in Canada, we must first look at another historical debate.

There is considerable debate in the West over the nature of the Vietnam War. In many quarters, this is considered legitimate debate, that is, historical revisionism. Most of that debate concerns the legitimacy of the Southern regime in Vietnam, the Republic of Vietnam (RVN).

The RVN presented itself as a sovereign and independent state in command of all the Vietnamese people. Likewise, the DRV in the north also presented itself as a sovereign and independent state in command of all the Vietnamese people. That's an over-simplified definition of the Vietnam war and the debate today is over the legitimacy of those claims.

In Canada, the governments in power throughout this period from 1945 to 1975 did not enter into that debate. Canada felt it had no interests at stake and had no business getting involved in Vietnam's civil conflict. Canada, to the extent that it held an opinion, held to the Paris accord of 1954 which contradicted the RVN claims. That was the default view one had to hold if one was to remain uninvolved in Vietnam.

It was that view that drove Canada's response to the events of 1975 to 1997. Canada did not respond to the evacuation at the fall of Saigon in 1975, but waited until 1979 when it became evident that the refugee problem emerging at that time was not directly related to the war. Canada then admitted refugees on a non-partisan basis, without reference to the war.

Something else that turned out to be relevant about this period is that all of the important decisions were made by Liberal governments. Liberals were in power for 70% of the time from 1945 to 1997. They made their decisions based on their concept of Canada's longstanding national identity as a peacekeeping nation that did not impose its principles on other nations by force.

Things changed in 2006.

In 2006 a newly-formed political party came to power who had some exceptionally strong ideas about what was wrong with Canadian identity. In the fashion of right-wing political parties, it was a matter of "principle": it did not matter what Canadians thought. The new government firmly believed that Canada needed a new historical narrative, one designed to create a new national identity for Canada as a "warrior nation", and one designed to reject everything that Liberals stood for.^[2]

This party held extreme, dogmatic anti-communist views so one of the things they were compelled to tackle was Canada's role in the Vietnam war. In this they did not go half way: they formally recognized, in law, the RVN as a legitimate nation that is in command of all Vietnamese people, and a military ally of Canada.

They did not leave it at that. The other issue they had to tackle was that this new take on the Vietnam war meant that Canada had admitted the wrong people in 1975-1997 -- almost 200,000 of them.

With their dogmatic views of the Vietnam war, there were only two options for the Vietnamese people: you were either a dedicated national of the RVN or a communist. This created a bit of a problem, because the natural choice for most people, including those Vietnamese now in Canada, was the same as what Canada had chosen before -- neither of those options.

Harper had a two-step solution.

Firstly, Canada's history was rewritten to make the original boat people disappear from Canadian history, to be replaced with the leaders and military of the RVN.

Secondly, Harper applied pressure to the Vietnamese in Canada to force them to identify as nationals of the RVN.

This hostility was not out of line with Harper's overall ideology. It had become clear to Canadians that Harper also had an aversion to non-European immigration. The admission of the Vietnamese had marked the first big increase in this.^[3] It would make the Vietnamese in Canada somewhat more acceptable if they would now identify as a military force that had been busy fighting communists with Canada's support.

For Stephen Harper's government, his concept of Canadian identity was a matter of principle. He intended to permanently change Canada's identity whether Canadians wanted it or not. Canada's national identity had been consistently developed by Liberal government since 1945, they had made it popular, and it was not going to change overnight.

Nevertheless, Harper did have allies who helped him out. This is one of the reasons that the negationist history dominates years after Harper is gone. In assessing historical information today, it is important to look at where it is coming from. The source of negationist histories cannot necessarily be traced back to Harper.

Harper's assistance came from two main groups who had partisan and ideological motives:

1. The former government and military leaders of the Republic of Vietnam.

   Since the whole issue that the negationist history addresses is the legitimacy of the RVN, of course these people gave their support to Harper's efforts. Although small in number in Canada, they are very well organized and politically astute. They also get help from their counterparts in the US, and this group includes Canadian Senator Thanh Hai Ngo.

   It is also important to know that these people were at work long before Harper came along. Harper did not create the negationist history -- it already existed. What Harper had to do was make it official government policy. Up until Harper came along, their work was mostly confined to the Vietnamese community and all conducted in Vietnamese language. Canadians in general could not have become aware of it. That's what Harper changed.

   The motives of this group are painfully obvious, so it is not hard to identify their work, despite the fact that they insist on calling themselves "The Vietnamese Canadian Community".

2. Conservative groups who were ideologically inclined to go along with anything Harper did.

   Part of Harper's ideology was that national identity is constructed through historical narrative. Among the conservative groups in Canada who are ideologically inclined to go along with Harper, there are two that are specifically organized around creating historical narratives. They are Historica Canada, the publishers of, among other things, the Canadian Encyclopedia and the Heritage Minutes. The other is CIHS, the Canadian Immigration Historical Society. The CIHS in particular entered into partnerships with the RVN political faction and government to produce negationist material, and they have published a book and web sites promoting it.

   As a secondary issue, one must be aware that most of the print media outlets in Canada today are conservatively-inclined. They will not go looking for stories that conflict with conservative ideology, and they will gladly print conservative-leaning stories that are handed to them.

   The motives of these groups are more subtle so one needs a reliable baseline history from which to assess their output.

Harper's negationist history of the Vietnamese in Canada is today the dominant historical narrative in Canada. It is the only one to be found on popular websites and in in-print publications. Is is starting to appear as the basis for new academic works.

This negationist history is an expression of hostility toward most Canadians of Vietnamese origin. It incorporates offensive stereotypes that now appear in every government reference to Vietnamese Canadians. These hostile elements are not understood by most Canadians because much of it is concealed in dog whistles, so the negationist narrative seems intuitive and natural. No one has cause to question it.

For these reasons, it is necessary for us to be clear about what is legitimate history and what is negationist. Our narratives include the whole story of why and how the negationist histories were developed. That in turn means that they are part of our bibliography.

Since we want people to understand what is real and what is negationist, the bibliography must clearly identify negationist material.