In June 2015, just before an election, Harper passed a bill called “Zero tolerance for barbaric cultural practices “.^[1] Many deduced from this that Harper saw political advantage in an attack on Muslims.

An election ensued and Trudeau made an in-your-face election promise – to admit 25,000 Somali (i.e., Muslim) refugees to Canada. He won his political point, even though it turned out to be hard to find 25,000 Somalis who wanted to come to Canada.

Trudeau was copying a trick that his father had pulled against Joe Clark in 1980, only in 1980 it was the Vietnamese instead of Somalis.

To spell it out:

• In 2015, Harper marginalized Muslims, Trudeau 2015 got elected by promising to bring Muslims to Canada, and he did.

• In 1980, Clarke marginalized the Vietnamese, Trudeau 1980 got elected by promising to bring Vietnamese to Canada, and he did – 162,000 of them.

The irony of this is, if Canadians had understood in 2015 what Harper had done to the Vietnamese, Trudeau could have come even closer to repeating his father’s trick. Harper’s attack on the Vietnamese in April, 2015 was an attempt to compensate for what Clarke had failed to do in 1980 – keep the Vietnamese out.

As you read about these events, try to imagine what Stephen Harper would be thinking about them. He was a virulent no-compromise anti-communist, in the paranoid American style. Canada's leaders at this time were, on the other hand, inclined to make rational judgments about Canada's interests.

1975

In 1975, Trudeau refused to respond to the fall of Saigon and admit former ARVN to Canada. Instead, he initiated a special family reunification program that anyone from Vietnam with family in Canada could qualify for, even if they were still in Vietnam. There were no political criteria, and it was a small program because there were not many Vietnamese in Canada at that time.

Some Conservatives did not like it – they wanted the Canada to rescue the ARVN – but Trudeau’s approach was popular with Canadians and consistent with past Vietnam policy. Canada has a long history of refusing to support the numerous military regimes that the US set up to fight communists because Canada thought that good government was a better way. Some conservatives, on the other hand, put fighting communists above all else.

1978

In 1978 the boat people were starting to arrive in SE Asian refugee camps. Trudeau made all the preparations to bring boat people to Canada. He stirred up public support for private sponsorships with the Hai Hong incident at the end of the year. Most importantly he made provisions in law that the boat people would be brought in as economic immigrants, technically not refugees. That meant there were no favours for the ARVN -- he was not going to open the door for the ARVN to claim refugee status in Canada, but they could come a part of an immigration program that was open to all Vietnamese.

These policies were all toxic to the more right-wing Conservatives in Canada, but they were popular with the public. Conservatives wanted to see the ARVN coming to Canada and no one else.

1979

In early 1979 there was an election and Clarke, a Conservative, came to power by a small margin. The public support that Trudeau had stirred up for the boat people was overwhelming, so Clarke immediately went to Geneva and promised UNHCR that Canada would admit 50,000 boat people.

When he found out later what Trudeau had set him up for, he de-funded the project. He also killed Trudeau’s family reunification program. These are little-known facts today. The commitment of 50,000 was only partially fulfilled, mostly by private sponsors. The issue was that the UNHCR program was non-partisan – we were going to bringing in people from the north, not just ‘communist-fighters’ from the south. The US was compensating by running parallel programs for their former allies, but Clark could not get time or money for that -- there was no public support for it. Canada had only one program.

1980

Clarke lost power after only 9 months, so Trudeau was handed another opportunity. He promised to restore the boat people program and to add 10,000 to the quota. He won the election. The boat people project did not end there, it went on for 18 years to fulfill the UNHCR objective to empty the refugee camps. There was no political screening of refugees coming to Canada. Canada was very happy to get the entrepreneurial elite of Vietnam and made a point of searching out entire families – even if they were still in Vietnam, which is why not all the ‘boat people’ came by boat.

Further reading

These events are covered in detail in the first section of the Community page entitled Coming to Canada: a History

2006

When Harper came to power in 2006, he set out to compensate for what had happened to Clarke, as well as everything else Canada had done in Vietnam since 1945.

It was well known that Harper’s ideology included a belief that that the state should construct a historical narrative for the nation that reflects the state’s desired identity for the nation’s people.^[2] It was also no secret that Harper’s desired identity for Canadians was military and virulent anti-communist – the ARVN that Trudeau and Clark had failed to admit to Canada were a perfect fit.

And so, Harper rewrote Canadian history to replace the boat people with the ARVN. Thanh Hai Ngo and ARVN-associated political groups, as well as some other conservative groups like CIHS, were his willing partners.^[3]

The purpose of Harper’s revised history was not only to glorify the ARVN but also to marginalize the other 300,000+ Canadians of Vietnamese origin. Harper had a major problem, as did Clarke, with the knowledge that the boat people were not being screened politically. What if Canada had admitted 162,000 former Vietnamese communists?

Journey to Freedom Day (originally called Black April Day) was always a statement of hate against the Vietnamese people. Harper made it Canada’s hate project.

While he was at it Harper passed a parliamentary bill declaring that the Saigon regime was and is still a legitimate nation.

Further reading

These events are covered in detail in the first section of the Government page entitled Developing Canada's "Vietnam policy"