We have read the whole book, but we have only taken the time (so far) to write a review of the cover blurbs, because they are very indicative of what is inside the book. A full review would be very, very long.
The cover blurbs are very indicative of what's in the book.
In this review we will point out where history is bent out of shape to serve a political agenda, but you may have to read other articles on this web site to get the full details of those agendas and exactly why and how they distort history. Here we will just point out where the distortions are evident.
To summarize it very briefly, the primary political agenda is to validate the defunct Saigon military dictatorship by characterizing Canada's response to the boat people crisis as a response to the fall of Saigon and to characterize the boat people as "victims of the fall of Saigon". That suggests that Canada had recognized the legitimacy of the Saigon regime and helped its leaders evacuate. In other words, the boat people are exploited in an attempt to validate the Saigon regime.
The secondary agenda is to give the Clark (Conservative) government credit for Canada's response to the boat people crisis, when the Clark government's involvement was entirely fortuitous and very short-lived (9 months). One can speculate that the Clark government might have been inclined to respond to the fall of Saigon if they had been in power in 1975, but they did not come into power until 1979 and then the agenda was being set by UNHCR and by legislation and strong public support that the previous Trudeau government had developed.
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Front Cover
The subtitle of the book is "Canada and the Indochinese Refugees 1975-1980".
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Front Cover
For Canada and UNHCR, the Indochinese refugee crisis extended from 1979 to 1997.
Statements tying the crisis to 1975 are the signature of the people who have a political agenda when they tell of the story of Vietnamese boat people in Canada. The reason for that is explained above.
The 1980 cutoff is entirely arbitrary and serves a dual purpose: its an attempt to keep the crisis tied to the fall of Saigon, and is tied to the fall of the Clark government in 1980.
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Back Cover (1)
The opening words are "The fall of Saigon in 1975 resulted in the largest ... refugee resettlement effort in Canada's history.
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Back Cover (1)
Right there in one sentence you know that you are about to read a story with a political agenda. Canada and UNHCR in fact purposefully avoided responding to the fall of Saigon. Fleeing military and government are not considered refugees.[4] The refugee crisis started in 1979 for reasons completely unrelated to the fall of Saigon.[5]
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Back Cover (2)
After initially accepting 7,000 refugees from camps in Guam, Hong Kong, and Military bases in the US in 1975, ....
This sentence continues below.
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Back Cover (2)
Actually, Canada admitted 3,600 "refugees"[1]
in 1975, most because they already had family in Canada and most from US territory (Guam is US territory). Canada did it because the US asked for help, not because of the fall of Saigon -- Canada was very careful to make that clear. Canada's position was that it would not get involved in the Saigon evacuation unless UNHCR declared a refugee crisis. UNHCR did not declare a crisis until 1979, and then in response to other events.
Canada admitted a few more and 1976 and then considered the job done. The numbers admitted in 1977 and 1978 were in the hundreds, and nearly all of 1978's number was from the Hai Hong incident in December, [6] which was the signal that something new was starting to happen (Chinese expulsion from Vietnam).
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Back Cover (3)
... Canada passed the 1976 immigration act to establish new refugee procedures ...
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Back Cover (3)
This makes it sound like the act was a response to the fall of Saigon. Actually the act had been in the works for 10 years because the Trudeau government did extensive consultations and cross-party work. It was developed in response to many problems that had been identified with the immigration system and the new refugee provision was only one (relatively minor) feature of many features. The act did not come into effect until 1978, just in time for the Hai Hong incident and the UNHCR-declared boat people crisis that followed.
Ironically, the new refugee provisions in the act did not apply the the boat people. An order overriding those provisions had to be issued.
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Back Cover (4)
In July of 1979, the federal government under Prime Minister Joe Clark announced ... 50,000 refugees ... later increased to 60,000.
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Back Cover (4)
Joe Clark had come to power just one month before in June 1979 but the story actually started with the Hai Hong incident 7 months before in December 1978. Canada responded to the Hai Hong incident because of strong public support for helping the refugees. July is when UNHCR invited countries to help and Clark responded with the commitment for 50,000. Clark was out of power again by March, 1980. He had very little to do with the story.
The 60,000 commitment was for all of Indochina. About 45,000 of those came from Vietnam -- all over Vietnam, not just Saigon or South Vietnam, since it all had nothing to do with the fall of Saigon. [3]
That commitment was followed by many more until the total reached over 200,000. But by the time they were all in Canada, we were 22 years from the fall of Saigon.
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