When Stephen Harper became Canada’s Prime Minister in 2006, one of the things his government set out to do is to change how Canadians saw themselves as a nation. He believed that it was a role of government to form the nations’ identity by propagating an appropriate historical narrative.

In his view, past Canadian governments had done everything wrong. He had quietly announced, among friendly ultra-conservative audiences, that he intended to change Canada -- permanently. As prime minister, Harper was known to be a "one-man show", controlling everything. He was going to get his way.

The prevailing concept of Canada as a diverse and peacekeeping nation was offensive to him. Canada was not loyal enough to its British roots and to its American neighbour. Having a strong military was central to his concept. Canada should have “principles” and be in a position to enforce them militarily. To Harper, "principles" often meant being virulently anti-communist, even 20-odd years after the cold war was over. The past was very important to Harper.

His “target” identity was for Canadians to see themselves as a “warrior nation”, formed through many wars fought defending the nation’s British origins. Fighting communists in the US style was also a principle to be maintained. Immigrants were expected to adopt this identity; the concept of multiculturalism was to fade away.

The Harper government was politically far to the right of any previous Canadian government. This concept of Canadian identity was a sudden and drastic change that would be hard to put over on Canadians. Nevertheless, Harper had supporters in the form of various conservative groups around the country. He thought that immigrant groups would turn out to have conservative leanings and let multiculturalism go. So, Harper pressed on.

These ideas were central to his political agenda while he was in power.

Another obsession that Harper had was with cold-war style anti-communism. He expressed it often and, as some critics pointed out, without any regard to the atrocities that were committed in the name of anti-communism. He was an admirer of the way the US had handled the cold war.

Related to this, he also had a strong contempt for Pierre Trudeau for several reasons. One of them was that he felt Trudeau had a tolerance for communists, and in his anti-communist speeches Harper sometimes made oblique references to Trudeau without naming him.

We mention these particular interests of Harper because these are the ones that led him to take an interest in the Vietnam war and the Vietnamese boat people. As far as we know he rarely expressed that interest personally, but between 2008 and 2015 his government invested considerable time and resources into it, and the everything the Harper government did it did under his direction.

Refer to the bibliography section at the end of this page for additional reading.

In 2009 the Harper government published a history that was widely distributed and was intended to radically redefine Canadian identity. (Canada Citizenship and Immigration, 2009).^[467]

Harper’s history enumerated all the wars that Canada had involved in, even before confederation. He redefined Canada as a warrior nation, defending its British roots alongside Britain and the US. Much of the brief history was devoted to wars and military, and the country's British origins. Immigration got one paragraph.

He did not convince Canadians. It was too radical a change, too right-wing politically. Most commentaries declared his project to be a failure, although it was loved by a few conservative groups. (McKay, 2011).^[465]

But it wasn’t a total failure.

On page 24, two selected refugee projects got half a paragraph. The first half of that paragraph was about Canada opening up to Asians. The second half mentioned two refugee projects that were presented as contributions to the effort to fight communism. One of those was a reference to Vietnam.

In the 21 words devoted to the Vietnamese refugees there were 3 implied changes to the history of that event:

"With the victory of North Vietnam in 1975, many Vietnamese fled from Communism, including over 50,000 who sought refuge in Canada." (Canada Citizenship and Immigration, 2009, p. 24).^[467]

The three changes are: the date of the refugee event, the cause of the refugee event, and the number of refugees.

Interestingly the number 50,000 refers to a commitment made by a previous Conservative government that was not fulfilled.^[1] In the event, 201,000 refugees were admitted, but mostly by Liberal governments. Harper was inventing a new group of 50,000 to meet his identity preferences, and 'disappearing' the original 201,000.^[4]

As this refugee program was the origin of Canada's Vietnamese community,^[2] it was clear that something substantial was up. As it happens, the year before Jason Kenney had informed the Vietnamese community and anyone else who was paying attention what was up.

Even before the publication of the 2009 history, the Harper government had informed Canada's Vietnamese community that change was coming.^[3]

Harper intended to change the entire history of Canada's involvement with Vietnam. This was an ideal target for Harper, because with this example he could set what he considered to be the ideal identity for Canada: a militant nation fighting communism alongside its US ally.

As part of that change, 162,000 boat people had to be erased from Canadian history and replaced with 50,000 militants from Saigon.

Historically, Canada had never perceived the Vietnam war as a fight against communism and had not aligned with the US. Canada had acknowledged the right of the Vietnamese people to overthrow the Saigon regime. Harper fixed all that in his rewrite of history.

Harper undertook a massive project to establish his rewrite as the permanent conventional wisdom. The project extended from 2008 to 2015. Considerable government resources went into the project, including funding for non-government groups and institutions that supported his project.

Harper intended to make this a permanent change to Canada's history.

One of Harper's stated political goals was to change Canada permanently, so the successor governments would not be able to undo what he did to Canada. The one area where he succeeded was in his rewrite of the origins of Canada's Vietnamese community.

Harper was successful in making his rewritten history ubiquitous. Canadians now believe that Canada fought in the Vietnam war as an ally of the US, fighting communists. Canadians now believe that Canadians of Vietnamese origin are Harper’s concept of model Canadians – warriors who fought communists.

To make sure that Canadians believed all this, Harper passed it in a parliamentary bill in 2015. Canada now recognizes the former Saigon military regime as a legitimate nation. It’s the law.

Passage of the bill created a hostile environment for Canadians of Vietnamese origin. it enabled other people to get into the act of “enforcing” the desired identity on the Vietnamese community by pointing to the law when they found “offenders”. This got all levels of government throughout Canada into the act and contributed to the project's longevity.

Harper also used another strategy to make it last.

By redefining the origins of Canada's Vietnamese community at the beginning, Harper was able to position all his other pro-Saigon policies as pandering to the Vietnamese community. This made it acceptable to always refer to the community with partisan references to the Vietnam war, as if that was what the community would want. That added to the hostility that the community feels.

Harper's overall efforts to rewrite history and change Canadian identity were too radical for Canadians and were soon forgotten by the media. But this strategy protected Harper's Vietnamese revisions and policies from further scrutiny.

Harper's only failure is that Canadians of Vietnamese origin have not accepted the identity he tried to impose on them, even with a fair bit of intimidation. Nevertheless, many or most do believe, as do all Canadians, that their community’s origins lie in the fall of Saigon. No one is going to overcome Harper's changes to history until they overcome that belief.