In the 1950’s, the US had tried to make an anti-communist statement by getting involved in Vietnam. The US was warned, by Canada among others, that their perceptions of the situation in Vietnam were not the same as the perceptions of the Vietnamese people. The US was advised that Saigon could never win a war because the enemy it was fighting was the Vietnamese people, not international communism. That’s why Canada did not join the US in Vietnam.^[2]

Although Canada's humanitarian policy on Vietnam was popular at the time, there was always a small Conservative undercurrent in Canada that felt that Canada should have perceived the Vietnam war as the US did in the 1950's -- as a war against international communism.

When Stephen Harper became Prime Minister, that undercurrent rose to the surface. Stephen Harper was a virulent anti-communist, in the style of the American McCarthyism of the 1950's. Harper also had some ideas about re-shaping Canada's national identity to be more like that of the US. He saw the idea of putting Canada into the Vietnam war as an ideal opportunity, even 40 years after the war was over. Harper was a great admirer of the past as a way to shape the present.

In 2015 the Harper government passed a parliamentary bill re-framing the Vietnam war in much the same way the US had in the 1950’s. In the bill, Canada declared that it had been a war between two nations – Saigon vs. a communist nation, and that Canada was recognizing the Saigon regime as a legitimate nation and an ally.^[3]

In this manner, Harper brought the Vietnam war to Canada.

Will Canada fare any better than the US did? The US eventually gave up because the Saigon regime had no legitimate claim to power in Vietnam and the US decided that they would never change their approach to governing.

Harper took some other measures to help them win in Canada ...

One thing Harper understood about rewriting this history was that Canada's Vietnamese community would no longer fit. He was going to have to re-shape Canada's Vietnamese community to fit his new historical narrative about the war.

his narrative includes a new origin story for Canada's Vietnamese community. He made the original boat people disappear from Canadian history and replaced them with the former ruling elite of Saigon.^[6]

This led to the second part of Harper's pro-Saigon policy that was incorporated into the bill: a hostile environment for Canadians of Vietnamese origin. Harper did not have to invent a way to do this -- there was already a political faction in Canada that was hostile to Canada's Vietnamese community. He just incorporated the political faction into the bill -- as "Canada's Vietnamese Community" .

This gave Harper great cover for his hostile policy. To most Canadians it looked like Harper was pandering to the Vietnamese community, which would be a perfectly normal thing for Canadian politicians to do. Harper's hostile policy was hidden in plain sight.

Every year, Canadian politicians attend a ceremony where the national flag of the Saigon regime is formally recognized as the flag of Vietnamese-Canadians and the Saigon military now in Canada are formally recognized as the refugees that were the origin of Canada’s Vietnamese community. The original boat people have been erased from Canadian history. This event is to remind them of that.

Bill S-219's statement that the present government of Vietnam is not legitimate can be interpreted as nothing other than foreign policy. If Canada's Foreign Affairs people had actually adopted it, it would have embarrassed Canada.

We don't know why it wasn' adopted. Perhaps it was because Harper's foreign affairs minister resigned just as the bill came up for debate. (Payton, 2015)^[234]

Canada and Vietnam are still good friends.(Canada, 2018)^[292] The Canadian ambassador in Vietnam describes the formal recognition of the Saigon regime in the bill as "a domestic issue".

In terms of anti-Vietnam policy, Harper moved cautiously without reference to the bill. He buried his anti-Vietnam initiatives inside other initiatives such as the memorial to victims of communism and the ambassador for religious freedom. These initiatives did not last past the end of the Harper government.

Under the Liberal government, Stephane Dion did make one small, slightly blundering effort to continue with an anti-Vietnam policy. (Dion, 2016)^[206] This was something the Liberals had never done before and he did not last long as Minister of Foreign Affairs.

The bill, nevertheless, has the potential to affect Canada's Vietnam policy and turn it negative in the future.

One of the things Harper did in preparing for bill S-219 was appoint a former Saigon government official to the Senate.^[7]

Senator Ngo spends a lot of time and government money on efforts to discredit the Vietnam government. (Ngo, n.d.)^[192] The Senator is a one-man foreign policy. Although his efforts are funded with government money, they do not constitute official government policy.

If another Conservative government should be elected in Canada, it will undoubtedly respond to the Senator's efforts.

There is another way the bill affects Vietnam.

The bill very effectively endorses the various anti-Vietnam political factions that exist in Canada. It gives the license to conduct their activities from Canada, and they do.^[11]

Canada indirectly supports them by enabling people who get into trouble in Vietnam to come to Canada as "refugees".^[10] Quite a number were admitted while Harper was in power, and we are not sure that the practice has stopped. Senator Ngo also likes to bring such people to public attention. (Ngo, 2019).^[472] It seems to be OK with Canada if people wish to violently overthrow the government in Vietnam -- just don't try it in Canada.

Bill S-219 most definitely has a domestic policy component.

The bill created a new national day, which was in fact an old military memorial that the former ARVN perform world-wide every April 30 to commemorate their defeat in Vietnam. Among other things, the memorial expresses hatred toward those who do not accept the on-going legitimacy of the Saigon regime. In Canada, that would be most of the Vietnamese community.

To save Harper's credibility in the next election, the bill redefined Canada's Vietnamese community as consisting of former ARVN, thus leaving no one to be the object of hatred.

The message that Harper delivered to 400,000 Canadians of Vietnamese origin is this: "identify as nationals of the Saigon regime (via the national flag) and as victims of the fall of Saigon, or else you will be labelled a communist threat to our honoured refugees who are frightened by the possibility that there might be communists in Canada."^[8]

The bill was not successful in getting anyone to identify as a national of the Saigon regime, but it was very successful in marginalizing those who do not, by making them disappear from Canadian history and by limiting their ability to express their heritage and culture in public.

The ubiquitous display of that national flag at events at prominent government locations and wrapped around the neck of Canadian politicians (see photographs above) is a constant reminder that the government is hostile to those who do not conform to the pro-Saigon policy.^[9]