The harm done by Justin Trudeau’s apology to Italian-Canadians might require an apology of its own

2021/05/04 Leave a comment

Pandering. Good and needed reminder of the historical record (recall this from my time managing the historical recognition program):

Canada interned hundreds of Italian-Canadians during the Second World War “for the simple reason that they were of Italian heritage,” Liberal MP Angelo Iacono told the House of Commons on April 14, paving the way for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to announce that Canada would formally apologize for doing so in May.

Mr. Iacono’s claim is remarkable. It suggests that Canada perpetrated a massive violation of human rights among members of that ethnic community. But if they really were interned simply because of their heritage, surely tens of thousands must have been thrown into camps – far more than the 12,000 Japanese-Canadians pulled from their homes on the West Coast and interned during the war (in addition to the thousands more forced to work on farms). There were, after all, more than 100,000 Italian-Canadians in 1940.

And yet, if we don’t count the 100 or so Italian sailors in Canada who were caught off guard by Italy’s declaration of war in 1940, the number of internees totals about 500, less than 0.5 per cent of the Italian-Canadian population. There must have been something special about them. What, one wonders, could it have been?

Fortunately, historians have studied this topic in some detail, so we have answers. Enemies Within: Italian and Other Internees in Canada and Abroad, edited by Franca Iacovetta, Roberto Perin and Angelo Principe is a comprehensive takedown of the claim that Canada waged a “war against ethnicity” when interning Italian-Canadians.

Instead, the book finds that Benito Mussolini’s diplomats in Canada aggressively promoted fascism among Italian-Canadians and met with some success – although only a small minority of Italian-Canadians were involved in fascist organizations. Such people caught the attention of the RCMP, which compiled what historian Luigi Bruti Liberati describes in the book as “a detailed picture of fascist activity in Canada, from the largest urban centres to the most distant mining camps.”

Mr. Liberati notes there are valid reasons to question the accuracy of the RCMP’s conclusions. But they were based on evidence, however imperfect, rather than on blanket assumptions about the entire community.

Mr. Liberati compiled his own biographical database of the internees. He found police had detailed dossiers indicating involvement in fascist organizations for at least 100 of them. Even 500, however, represented a small fraction of the 3,500 Italian-Canadians known to have been members of local fascist groups.

“[M]any who later professed their loyalty to Canada had in fact been fervent Fascists and had maintained their positions even during their internment,” Mr. Liberati writes.

Were some wrongly accused? Certainly, and the harm from that injustice persisted. But Ottawa’s actions were not comparable to those of a police state, he concludes. “This judgment seems to ignore the fact that fascism was well founded in Canada and that a certain number of Italian Canadians had supported it actively, not hesitating on occasion to resort to acts of violence against co-nationals and anti-fascists.”

That last detail underscores the greatest damage done by Mr. Trudeau’s planned apology. To claim that Italian-Canadians were interned because of their ethnicity suggests that they were representative of the entire Italian-Canadian community. They were not. Suggesting otherwise erases the history of Italian-Canadians who fought fascism, at home and abroad, instead of cheering its murderous advance.

Take, for example, Charles Bartolotta. During the Spanish Civil War of 1936 to 1939, when Mussolini sent soldiers to fight and die alongside the Nazis’ Condor Legion, Bartolotta left his home in Hamilton, Ont., to fight the fascists in that prelude to the Second World War. A member of the International Brigades, he was killed in action in September, 1938.

Or consider Frank Misericordia, a father of four who was working at Ottawa’s Chateau Laurier hotel during the Second World War when he was recruited by the Special Operations Executive to infiltrate German-occupied Italy and liaise with anti-fascist partisans there. Five attempts to secretly land him on the Italian coast were unsuccessful, but they took their toll, as one of his superiors noted in a 1944 memo: “In this case a pension from S.O.E. would hardly be any recompense, and I recommend that his services and the aggravation of his illness through the many courageous attempts he made to land in enemy territory be recognized by a one-time bonus when he leaves the country.”

Consider, finally, all those Italian-Canadians who joined the Canadian Armed Forces during the war. They recognized fascism for what it was and stood against it. It’s their story, and Bartolotta’s and Misericordia’s, that should be celebrated. Mr. Trudeau has instead chosen to subsume their heroism in a false, overly broad narrative of ethnic victimhood.

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-the-harm-done-by-justin-trudeaus-apology-to-italian-canadians-might/

Filed under Historical Recognition, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

How has Canada fared on resettling Syrian refugees? And government not releasing information.

2015/09/04 1 Comment

On how the Government avoids providing information that the public is entitled to:

It was clear, though, that the government had details about the number of arrivals on hand throughout the process. In December 2014, Alexander tabled in the House of Commons a written response to a question by NDP MP Paul Dewar indicating, as of three weeks previous, how many Syrian refugees had arrived and, of those, how many were privately sponsored and how many came with government assistance.

Alexander or his spokesman also made public statements in December and January updating these figures.

It stands to reason, then, that the government knows how many of the 10,000 promised spaces for Syrian refugees have so far been filled. They just won’t say.

Earlier this month, a spokesperson for Citizenship and Immigration (CIC) told me the information was “not available publicly.” The email from CIC went on to provide a link to make a request under the Access to Information Act.

This act is one of those creatively named pieces of legislation that don’t mean what their titles suggest they should. You file a request; weeks, months or sometimes years pass. What you finally receive is heavily redacted. Eventually, you stop asking. If it didn’t suggest such boggling cynicism on the part of the government, I’d swear that was the point.

I decided to play along and filed a request asking how many Syrian and Iraqi refugees have arrived in Canada since January, how many are privately sponsored, and how many came with government assistance.

Today I received a letter from CIC’s Access to Information and Privacy Division, informing me that the information I sought is excluded from the act because it concerned “published material or material available for purchase by the public.”

The letter continued: “Regulation 314 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations (attached) allows for the production of customized reports for immigration statistical data that have not been published by the Department.”

That’s right: I could buy my answer. The attached regulation informed me that the cost of processing my application for data would be $100 for the first 10 minutes or less of access to the department’s database, plus $30 for each additional minute or less of access.

Or maybe Chris Alexander could publicize that information, because he made a promise, and Canadians have a right to know what progress he’s made toward keeping it.

Given the Minister’s performance on Power and Politics Wednesday, he would be well advised to follow Petrou’s advice.

Source: How has Canada fared on resettling Syrian refugees? – Macleans.ca

Filed under Refugees Tagged with , ,

What’s driving teen girls to jihad?

2015/03/10 Leave a comment

Michael Petrou trying to find explanations where there may be no satisfactory ones: why some are attracted to joining a cult-like organization and others not:

It may be true that anger about proposed polices regarding religious dress in Quebec, or what is perceived to be Canada’s insufficient support for Palestinians or Muslims elsewhere, contributed in some way to the decision of young Canadian women to join a genocidal death cult in Syria. But they seem like inadequate explanations.

Islamic State’s most notable characteristics, after all, are not vestmental liberty or practical support for Palestinians, but filmed decapitations, sexual slavery and mass murder. These elements of Islamic State’s approach to governance are all well-publicized, mostly by Islamic State itself. And they make the Canadian woman’s assertion that her sister—“the sweetest, most innocent, timid person I know”—joined Islamic State because she wanted to do something about the injustice in the world sound hollow.

They also ignore aspects of Islamic State’s attraction that we seem comparatively more ready to accept when it draws in men: the group’s Islamic supremacism, and its fetish for gore and extreme violence. “So many beheadings at the same time. Allahu Akbar [God is great], this video is beautiful,” tweeted one Western woman cited by ISD. Another, also cited by ISD, writes: “I was happy to see the beheading of that kaffir [unbeliever]. I just rewinded to the cutting part. Allahu akbar! I wonder what he was thinking b4 the cut.”

According to Jayne Huckerby, an associate professor of law at Duke University who has advised the United Nations on women in conflict, gender stereotypes distort popular conceptions of why Western women might join Islamic State. “We do still very much operate in a world where the idea that women don’t have agency—that they must be tricked or under the influence or brainwashed or they only joined to become jihadi brides—is very much still a dominant frame.”

There may be an element of brainwashing at work, something William McCants, a Brookings Institution fellow and author of a forthcoming book about Islamic State, describes as the group’s “cult-like pull.” It also appears that skilled recruiters can strongly influence young minds. But these are forces that affect men and women. And yet it is women whom we are more likely to describe as “lost” to Islamic State, rather than as willing partisans. This is comforting, but it is also illusionary.

No Western woman with access to the Internet or daily news can claim ignorance about Islamic State’s horrors, including those it inflicts on women it has captured. But young girls from Canada and across the West are joining the group by the hundreds just the same. “Many of them are going over joyously, with eyes wide open,” says McCants, “absolutely and completely understanding what awaits them there.”

What’s driving teen girls to jihad?.

Filed under Radicalization Tagged with , ,