Between 1979 and 1996, Canada admitted 165,000 refugees from all over Vietnam without asking them what their opinion was on the Vietnam war, which was then long over.

Subsequent immigration has brought in another 50,000 Vietnamese from all over Vietnam, and second and third generations born in Canada have probably doubled the number of Canadians of Vietnamese origin again.

Canada ought to accept a moral obligation to live with the diverse Vietnamese community that ensued from these policies.

Today, Canada denies that obligation and is trying to re-shape Canada's Vietnamese community to serve a new political agenda that came into effect in 2015.

Today, the former refugees are universally stereotyped by government as "victims of the fall of Saigon", grateful to Canada from being rescued from their fate. This implies that Canada had a political motive in admitting the refugees and that they consist of Saigon's former ruling elite. Some politicians decided that this is what Canada ought to have done in 1975.

Canada now expects all Canadians of Vietnamese origin to give the appearance of conforming to that origin story by identifying as nationals of the Saigon regime. Among other things, government resources that are normally available for expressions of heritage and culture are withheld from Vietnamese people who do not agree to include the required political content in their activities.

This is a constraint on their political freedom and freedom of expression.

Furthermore, assigning anyone to a political faction based on their ethnicity is an insult to Canada's reputation as a haven for refugees. If this got out of hand it could change the nature of Canadian society.

And that's only part of the problem.

There are Canadian politicians who think that the Saigon regime should have won the Vietnam war, and that Canada should have been sympathetic to the plight of Saigon's ruling elite when their regime collapsed in 1975. Such views also happen to be held by a small political faction in Canada's Vietnamese community -- the former Saigon political and military elite.

These are views that people in Canada are free to hold and express in Canada -- that's freedom of speech.

It's a different matter when the government adopts such views as policy. That raises some difficult moral questions in regard to the former Vietnamese refugees.

When Canada decided to adopt a new partisan policy on the Vietnam war, it had a choice. It could identify the policy as forward looking and accept that the Vietnamese community had diverse opinions on it. Alternatively, it could made the policy "retroactive" and require all Vietnamese to accept it or be marginalized as "un-Canadian" -- people whose admission to Canada was a mistake

The government chose the latter approach.^[4]

In 2015 Canada's parliament unanimously adopted the pro-Saigon policy. The policy retroactively declared Saigon to be a legitimate nation and ally of Canada and re-cast the former refugees as escapees from the fall of Saigon.

The real boat people disappeared from Canadian history. They are no longer legitimate Canadians and they are not allowed to appear in public unless they pose as victims of the fall of Saigon. The government renews the hostility every year when it delivers its annual reminder in the form of Journey to Freedom Day.

The policy divided Canada's Vietnamese community into "legitimate" Canadians who accept the Saigon regime as a legitimate government, and "other". The "other" group amounts to nearly all of the refugees as well as all of the other Vietnamese immigrants admitted since then, and all of the second and third generation descendants born in Canada. Canada has declared most of 400,000 people to be no longer "legitimate" Canadians.

In addition, the contributions of thousands of other Canadians who help the refugees or otherwise contributed humanitarian assistance to Vietnam has in effect been discredited.

Read the detailed story of how the origin story was changed and formally adopted as law in the Government section of the web site.

When the government was preparing to bring bill S-219 to parliament, it was aware of the problems that it would cause with the Vietnamese community. The government therefore took extreme measures to prepare the ground for the policy before it was tabled in parliament. The preparations extended over seven years prior to tabling.

These measures involved changing Canada's history, deceiving the public about what it was doing, and exploiting the Vietnamese refugees in order to carry out that deception.

The core of the deception was the revised origin story for Canada's Vietnamese community. The Harper government took elaborate and successful measures to change Canada's history. The real boat people, who were known to Canadians and had our respect, were replaced with the Saigon's former ruling elite, who had not earned the respect of Canadians. Considerable government time and resources were devoted to this effort, it was not done haphazardly.

This substitution enabled the government to present the formal recognition of the Saigon regime as a nation as being equivalent to an homage to the refugees. This obscured rational discussion and debate about the Saigon regime with clouds of pathos and emotion. It also served to humanized the former Saigon leaders. Finally, it enabled the government to present the whole issue as an "ethnic" issue rather than a political issue.

Read the detailed story of how Canada's history was changed in the Government section of the web site.

When we talk about "fixing", we must be clear about what we are identifying as the problem to be fixed.

First of all, we are talking about the behavior of Canadian politicians and not anyone else.

Secondly, if government and others want to have a policy that recognizes the Saigon regime as a legitimate government, and if they want to express sympathy with the regime's military for their loss at war, that is not a problem. That is freedom of speech.

The problem is the behavior of politicians when they equate a partisan political movement with an ethnic community. The problem is compounded when they take steps to enforce that equivalency -- to force the ethnic community to conform to the favored political agenda. Those are the problems we are talking about fixing. It's about political freedoms and respect for diversity.

Are politicians interested in fixing the problem?

Politicians tend to be motivated by two things: voting constituents who come and talk to them and public reaction to things they are doing as reflected in the news media.

Although the problem was created by a small group of politicians who had an interest in changing Canada's history, it has since been adopted by all of the major political parties. Many politicians from all parties make themselves visible by making statements in support of the Saigon policy and by participating in Journey to Freedom day.

Politicians are aware of the controversies surrounding the policy, but this does not stop them from participating. The deception initiated by the Harper government has been so complete, that the Canadian public believes that participating politicians are paying homage to one of Canada's ethnic groups and expressing support for Canada's refugee programs. The political specifics of the policy beyond that do not matter -- know one will look into that. It is therefore in every politician's interests to participate.

A politician who openly refuses to participate could be characterized as unsympathetic to Canada's ethnic communities and unsympathetic to Canada's refugee programs.

The lesson here is that any fight to defeat the policy must be fought on the principles, not the substance.

Is the Vietnamese community interested in solving the problem?

The only people that have been personally affected by the government's actions are those involved in the arts -- those who want to go out and publicly express their culture and heritage. The government tries to put a stop to such things unless they contain the required political content. This has the effect of reducing government funding for cultural activities so the community is more dependent on self-funding than most.

No one else wants to get involved in the politics of the Vietnam war, which is what this looks like to the community. Furthermore, stopping Canadian politicians from misbehaving will not stop the Vietnam war politics that already exist in the community.

This is probably an issue for young second and third generations of Canadians of Vietnamese origin who what to see their diverse cultural heritage respected by Canadians, and not have it represented by an invented political story.

Simplifying the problem

When bill S-219 was debated in parliament, everyone understood that the bill was controversial, but no one could pin down exactly what the problem was. The media reported that the controversy existed but could not define it.

The Vietnamese political issues at stake are far too complicated for the media and most politicians to handle. Harper's historical deception has made it even more complicated. The issue must be simplified.

The simplifying trick might be just to point out that there are political issues at skate, but not ones that is not related specifically to the Vietnamese community. Don't argue the political issue, argue the principle.