the CanadaVisa Team - 22 July, 2015
On June 22 of last year, Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized to the Chinese Canadian community for Canada's past immigration policies and the head tax once charged to newcomers from China. Survivors or their surviving conjugal partners have been offered $20,000 in symbolic payments.
The Ontario Legislature passed a resolution to recognize June 22 as Chinese Canadian Head Tax Redress Day, to acknowledge the federal government's apology for the Chinese head taxes of 1885, 1900, 1903, and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1923. Ontario Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, Mike Colle, recently observed the first Chinese Canadian Head Tax Redress Day with surviving head tax payers and their families. "Today's commemoration is a celebration of victory of conscience and recognizing a profound injustice," he told them in his address.
"You can't go back in time and take away people's suffering," explains Jason Kenney, secretary of state for multicultural and Canadian identity. "All you can do as a government is demonstrate though meaningful symbolic actions, serious regret for what happened in the past." The Canadian federal government is presently in consultations with several other ethno-cultural groups to reach similar agreements.
