Harper's Agenda

When Harper undertook to drastically reshape Canada’s national identity, he knew that he was going to face resistance from Canadians.

Canada had for a long time identified as a diverse, multicultural nation that did not get involved in wars, even those of its closes ally, the US. This was precisely the opposite of what Harper wanted it to be.

Harper was also very much a “one man show”. He was not about to make his change by spending years gently convincing Canadian to change. He was going to do it quickly, and deception was the way to expedite things. The Harper government quickly became known for its “all propaganda, all the time”.^[1]

Harper published his new identity for Canada in 2009, but he was already at work on things like changing Canada’s immigration system and on marginalizing some of his favourite targets – Muslims, left-thinking people, people who thought Canada was a peacekeeping nation, aboriginals, Quebec, and so on. He was meeting public resistance as expected but was at least delaying the reckoning with various deceptions.

The reckoning came in the 2015 election over Muslims. No one had ever caught on to what he was doing to the Vietnamese.^[2]

The Vietnam war

When it came to his Vietnam war file, he could anticipate some resistance. His ideas about that went against just about every conception that Canadians had about their identity. Furthermore, he had 162,000 former boat people and many more of their descendants in Canada who were going to be betrayed by his plan. Canadians would not tolerate that.

Harper got lucky when he was able to recruit a political faction in the Vietnamese community to his side. These people were former military from the defunct Saigon regime. One thing that they had learned from their defeat in war was that propaganda is everything. Jason Kenney understood this too. So together they set to work.

As a result of their work, Harper was able to achieve something that he aimed for but missed in all of his other changes – permanence. Harper’s reframing of the Vietnam war and the boat people is today a permanent feature of Canada’s identity.

Canadians today are living in an alternate reality where Canada has a moral obligation to respect the former Saigon military and the boat people have disappeared from Canadian history and Canadian society.

Harper's reframing of the Vietnam war was a betrayal of the 162,000 boat people that Canada had welcomed on a non-partisan basis. This had to be hidden from Canadians. He had to do it without hiding the pro-Saigon policy itself, otherwise there would be not point in the policy. It had to be hiding in plain sight.

With help from his ARVN propaganda experts he successfully pulled it off. Six years after his government was defeated his pro-Saigon policy is still in force and has never been publicly questioned by anyone.

The disappearing boat people

When Harper rewrote the history of Canada and the Vietnam war, he had to write the boat people out as well. If Canada had been an ally of the Saigon regime as Harper imagined, Canada would never have admitted 162,000 people from all over Vietnam without asking them what their role had been in the war.

Having written them out of history, Harper needed to make the real people disappear from Canadian society, too, since sending that many people back 30 years later was out of the question. The alternate reality that he created enabled him to do this with just a bit of hostility. The hostility was concealed from Canadians with some dog whistles, which we cover in another topic, below.

The reappearing boat people

Harper had already found an ally in a political faction within the Vietnamese community that consisted of former ARVN military people. Since he had to make the boat people disappear, all of the sympathy and support that Canada had given to the boat people was now available. Harper gave it to the ARVN political faction. They became the new boat people.

Harper wrote a new origin story for Canada's Vietnamese community that had them coming to Canada in 1975 after the fall of Saigon. This turned his ARVN allies into "the Vietnamese community", something they quite happily posed for. The political faction became an entire ethnic community. This suited Harper very well because the ARVN people conformed to his ideal Canadian identity.

His dog whistles enabled him to hide the pro-Saigon policy in plain sight. His recognition of the ARVN regime was now "pandering to the Canadian Vietnamese community", something that was perfectly routine and normal for Canadian politicians.

A dog whistle enables a politician to say one thing that is heard differently by two different audiences.

To any observer who is paying attention, there can be no doubt that Harper's pro-Saigon policy is intended to import the Vietnam war into Canada. His purpose was to change Canada's national identity. Parliamentary bill S-219 was, to anyone who could read it, quite explicit on declaring an alliance with the Saigon regime in the Vietnam war and declaring the war to be unresolved.

Harper made the symbolism around this declaration explicit and highly visible. Journey to Freedom Day has politicians at all levels of government attending and speaking at formal flag-raising ceremonies that involve former Saigon military men in uniform raising their national flag on prominent Canadian flagpoles. That national flag also appears regularly in many places, most prominently draped over the shoulders of members of parliament sitting in the Canadian House of Commons.

How did Harper get Canadians to accept this idea of bringing the Vietnam war to Canada, 40 years after it was over?

It was simple in concept -- he told Canadians that all of these symbols were cultural symbols of the Vietnamese refugees that Canada has admitted. Bill S-219 also changed the history of Canada's Vietnamese community to make that a plausible assertion. Harper's government consistently addressed the Canada's Vietnamese community as if they were all "victims of the fall of Saigon", that is, Saigon's ruling elite.

All of these symbols are dog whistles.

Harper convinced Canadians to go along with his absurd and unpopular re-framing of the Vietnam war by convincing Canadians that this all represented the wishes of Canada's Vietnamese community and that we must respect them because Canada has a moral obligation to do so. Canadians believed that he was pandering to the Vietnamese community.

Harper knew what these symbols meant, but the meant something else to Canadians. That's a dog whistle.

Consider what Harper accomplished with his propaganda. He convinced 162,000 former boat people and their descendants, perhaps as many as 400,000 people in total, that they needed to either identify as nationals of the Saigon regime or disappear from public view.

He convinced all Canadians not to object to a pro-Saigon policy that formally recognized a defunct military dictatorship as a legitimate government and a military ally of Canada.

He convinced Canadian politicians of all parties to enthusiastically demonstrate their support for his policy.

The answer is, he did it with an alternate reality and some dog whistles.

The boat people

This group presented a number of problems for Harper:

• They were a diverse group that came from all over Vietnam between 1979 and 1996, thus in conflict with Harper's story that the origins of the community lies in the fall of Saigon and the Saigon military.

• Most likely to be upset by Harper's reframing of the Vietnam war and would tell the conflicting stories about what had caused the Saigon regime to collapse.

• They knew the true meaning of the symbolism that Harper was using to hide his pro-Saigon policy and were likely to reveal that to the media.

Luckily for Harper, this group was as vaguely attuned to what Canada's reaction had been to the fall of Saigon as were other Canadians. And as with other Canadians, they were familiar with the story of how the US and responded. Harper successfully convinced them that his revised history of the boat people crisis was true. He put them into an alternate reality were they were no longer refugees in Canada's eyes, while the former Saigon military were legitimate refugees.

Even in normal circumstances many would have been ambivalent about speaking out against Harper's pro-Saigon policy, but this alternate reality made it impossible for them to do so.

Harper enhanced the discomfort of the former boat people with a little hostility and intimidation.

All of those symbols that we described above as dog whistles have another meaning to Canadians of Vietnamese origin.

They read them as direction that they must identify as nationals of the Saigon regime or else there status as Canadians will fall into doubt. Vietnamese understand the symbolism of the Saigon regime because it has existed since 1955 and it has the same meaning today as it had then: identify as a loyal national of the regime or disappear. It gained new strength coming directly from the government of Canada.

Just in case the younger generations did not "get it", Jason Kenney had made the message quite explicit in 2008, and that message has been repeated often by Harper's supporters.

There is a striking demonstration of how successful Harper's deception of the former boat people has been.

Occasionally a former boat person, or family of one, has been determined enough and articulate enough to speak to politicians about the government's hostility toward Canadians of Vietnamese origin. They never succeed because the adopt they posture that Harper's myth has created for them: that of a minority speaking out against the government's pandering a distinct cohort of former refugees to whom Canada has a moral obligation. No politician will touch their complaint when it is framed that way. Harper knew what he was doing.

No one will get the attention of a politician until they firstly self-identify as a legitimate refugee or family and secondly describe Harper's favoured group as a "political faction". Government can legitimately and effectively be criticized for adopting a small political faction as representative of all Vietnamese -- failing to acknowledge the diversity of Canada's Vietnamese community.

In addition, the government is not pandering to any Vietnamese group. The government is using the Vietnamese to change Canada's national identity to a nation of communist-fighters. There is no part of Harper's program that is not offensive to all Vietnamese.