Who is Canada speaking to?
Vietnamese heritage and culture in Canada has become a partisan statement about the Vietnam war that is intended to portray Canada as a participant in that war.
The government never makes a reference to Canada's Vietnamese without including some reference to Saigon or other partisan symbols of the Vietnam war.
The government does this to spread a mythical origin story for Canada's Vietnamese community that was invented by the government for political purposes.
Canada is not speaking to the Vietnamese community, but to certain conservative groups who believe that Canada ought to have taken part in the Vietnam war. The purpose behind it is to change Canada's history and Canada's national identity. Canada's Vietnamese community is being exploited and marginalized to facilitate that change.
The invented origin story says that Canada's Vietnamese were admitted to Canada because they lost the Vietnam war. That implies they came from the south and were associated with the Saigon government and military. As an origin story, it erases the real boat people from Canada's history and replaces them with the former Saigon ruling elite.
The story is also a dog whistle which is intended to be heard differently by Canada's Vietnamese. Its purpose is to instruct Canadians of Vietnamese origin that people who do not fit the new origin story must disappear from public view. The former Saigon ruling elite now rules the Vietnamese community in Canada, and government cultural and heritage resources now go toward advancing their political agenda.
Further reading
Read the Government section of the web site for the full story on why and how the government made these changes.
Can the government do that?
When you are the government it is possible change your nation's history. That does not make it right.
If you are a national government then it is possible for you to change your nation's history. All nations do it -- some people refer to such revised histories as political propaganda.
Whether it is a morally correct thing to do is another question. The purpose of revisionist histories is often to marginalize some group of people. That was the purpose in this case, and the target group was Canada's Vietnamese community.[1]
If Canadians understood what the government has done, it would not likely be tolerated. The government took elaborate measures to deceive Canadians about what it was doing.