Canadian Heritage Committee on Nov. 24th, 2009

[Nino Colavecchio]

As you know, it is very easy to label people. Earlier on I gave the example of one Canadian, Mr. Capobianco, who was working for an MP and was nevertheless interned. Labelling people in that way is dangerous. We are talking about people, workers, retailers and professionals who worked within the Italian community and were members of community associations. There was no politics in these groups.

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Sciascia, would you like to say anything?

[Antonio Sciascia]

Look, this is fantasy. Most of these people, as Mr. Forcucci has already stated, were Canadians of Italian origin. For the most part, they were workers, people—

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

... who were not concerned with politics.

[Antonio Sciascia]

You also have to take into account the context that existed at that time. From 1936 to 1940, who was in power in Italy? Sir Winston Churchill was a great admirer of Mr. Mussolini, that is what history tells us. All of this has to be put into context. We must not forget that the government in power at that time was Mr. Mussolini's.

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Cucciniello, do you wish to speak?

[Ciro Cucciniello]

My first-year law professor was Professor Cotler, who happens to be my member of Parliament today. Coincidence happens. We learned a little about the Charter of Rights and Freedoms as students and we tried to apply that later in life.

I think freedom of conscience, freedom of belief, is something that you should have. I think our nation has evolved from the principle of labelling someone and associating someone with a label, and I don't think what someone is called is what we're here to discuss today. This bill deals with an apology. It deals with trying to bring closure to the past and moving on, things we've done in other communities.

Gentile Dieni, who was on our board, had fascist beliefs. I sat next to him at many meetings. He was still a good person who believed in family, who believed in work, who believed in many aspects of the Canadian community and the Canadian reality. He may have had a different political belief. I think we all respect other people's political beliefs; at least, I hope we do in this building. If we label someone a fascist or otherwise, we should remember that we've probably had communists walk into this building in the past and be greeted probably right in Parliament. I don't think putting labels on people is the object of what we're trying to do here.

We're trying to get an apology that is justly due to families that represent more than one million Canadians today. The labelling aspect, I think and hope, is something of the past. Someone's beliefs are someone's beliefs. I think that by passing this bill, we're going to capture the central issue, which is to bring an apology, get closure, and then deal in a dignified and proper manner with the issue of restitution. That's what this is about.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you. We have to move on.

Mr. Angus.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Thank you very much.

It's great to have you gentlemen before us. I will echo what my Liberal colleague said at the beginning, and I'd have to make an addendum to it-. You probably do represent a cross-section of the most credible Italian organizations in the country, except the Dante Club in Timmins isn't here, so I want to put that on the record, because they've been representing our community since the war, and many of those families were involved at the time of internment.

My colleague asked what there is to apologize for. It wasn't just internment. They were subject to physical harassment. We had militia going through the streets pulling people out of their homes, beating them up. That's a historical fact. People were fired from their jobs. The time has come, so let's get it done.

Now, that being said, I have to admit, and you have probably figured this out, I'm just a mangia-cake from northern Ontario, so I don't know all the groups. I'm trying to work out the problem with this bill. I read the bill. It seems fairly straightforward. My Conservative colleague read a statement from Brian Mulroney, and I think that's great, we're all done. But then they start saying this is divisive and this is an attempt to divide the community. Then I see unanimity here.

So I want to make sure everybody here is on the same page.

Mr. Sciascia, you wrote a letter on March 31 to Jason Kenney, Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, and you said: “Your plan of action announced...under the Community Historical Recognition Program has no legitimacy and simply does not make any sense.”

You went on further to explain your attempts to have this issue addressed through the years:

Unfortunately, after years of negotiations the Government chose to cancel the ACE Agreement and replaced it with a new program .... For all of the above we submit that by-passing the legitimate community organizations who have been negotiating with the Government in good faith is simply misguided and unacceptable. We sincerely hope, Mr. Kenney, that you legitimize the process by dealing with those who represent the community and have been working for over 20 years on the issue of internment. In default thereof, we will have no other alternative than to urge the NCIC to mobilize our community from coast to coast and take all the necessary measures to denounce this unacceptable program proposed by the CHRP.

Clearly, those are strong words. Do we have unanimity?

[Antonio Sciascia]

Yes, they are. For your information, many letters of protest were sent to Minister Kenney from all parts of the country, from all the chapters of the National Congress of Italian Canadians, from the east to the west. They all sent letters to the minister and never received a reply.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

No reply.

[Antonio Sciascia]

I have not received any reply.

Misguided? Yes. We considered very seriously taking action against the government on the breach of the ACE agreement. For reasons that would be too long to explain, we decided not to because it would seem to be a political move against the government, and most members of the committee decided that it would not be wise to sue the government on the breach of the ACE agreement.

A draft of the action was prepared, but we chose not to proceed with it. We chose to continue the negotiations with the government, with Minister Bev Oda, with Minister Kenney, only to be insulted, only to be put aside when they came up with this program, which had never been discussed, had never been approved by anyone, with people on this consultative committee. I have to mention, one of the members of this committee is a professor. He was here, I believe, on Thursday. This particular professor Roberto Perin wrote a book called Enemies Within. For him, these people who were arrested were enemies of Canada, and he suggests they were all fascists and perhaps they deserved the treatment they received. This is the person who is being placed on such a committee? That's a double insult to the Italian community.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Thank you for that explanation. I was, again, confused.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Very short, Mr. Angus.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

My friend Mr. Calandra suggested this was some kind of Liberal conspiracy to make the government look bad in a minority Parliament. Now, I love Liberal conspiracies as much as the next guy, but I've seen from your letters that you were involved in this long before this group of guys came along. So you're telling me you have a long legitimate history, you've been involved in negotiations, and they just walked away on it?

[Antonio Sciascia]

Absolutely, yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you.

Mr. Del Mastro.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate it.

Thank to you to our witnesses.

I guess I'll start with a little bit of a recap, because I think some of what has gone on has been factually challenged. Statements that were made about my position and that of my government are in fact not accurate.

I want to be clear. My family's history in Canada began at Pier 21 in Halifax in 1927. My grandfather got a job with CP Rail. They moved him to a little town called Britt, near Parry Sound. That's where my father was born. He suffered a severe accident working in sub-standard working conditions, because they weren't given the good jobs, they were just given jobs. He lost one leg and nearly died. He came back from that through the use of a prosthetic limb and worked as long as he could there. He repaired locomotives, but he had to get a different job because he was physically incapable of doing it with his prosthetic limb. He passed a test in English that he was forced to take in order to become a porter. He didn't have a lot of formal education. He was not fluent in English from a literary perspective. In fact, my wife would tell you that his English was pretty tough to understand. I got it. He did that and he passed it.

He became a porter and worked until he was seventy years old and cried like a baby the day they made him retire. The only other time I ever saw him cry was when my grandmother died. They lived through this. They lived through this mess. My father's name was Enrico Giuseppe. I never knew it until I was twelve years old and saw his birth certificate. I thought his name was Henry Joseph, and he went by “Hank.” My family lived this stuff. It matters. What happened to the Italian community was wrong. It was wrong.

The fact that it happened in this country is remarkable, but this country is not perfect. We've made a lot of mistakes, and frankly we have never adequately acknowledged that. Growing up as a kid, I didn't have that understanding. I think the immigration guide that new immigrants to Canada now have to read reflects this fact. The test they will now have to pass reflects the fact that this country is not perfect, that this country has made mistakes.

This was a major transgression. I want to make that clear.

I want to go to a couple of comments that were made.

Mr. Campione, you said that the Italian community is proud and united, but Mr. Sciascia, you indicated that the members on CHRP do not represent the community, that there's no support from the main groups for CHRP. So how can we reconcile that the Italian community is proud and united? By the way, the Italian-Canadian community is most certainly proud to be Canadian, and most certainly proud of its roots. How can we square that circle and say that we're united, but these groups over here, this is an insult that these Italian Canadians have stepped up to represent us, because they don't represent Italians? How can we make that distinction?

[Antonio Sciascia]

Mr. Del Mastro, if you look at the three members that were before you and you look at their curricula vitae, and you look at what they have done for the community for the last 35 years, you will have your answer.

These people have never dealt with this issue, with the exception of Professor Perin, who wrote a book, as I mentioned before. I think you should read the book. From the history of your family that you are telling us, you will not be very proud to read that book.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

What I'm asking is how can these two things both be true? How can you say you're united behind these issues, but don't listen to these people, because they're not part of--

[Antonio Sciascia]

You have at this table the major organizations that represent the Italian-Canadian community. You have them at this table, Mr. Del Mastro. What you had the other day I don't think had the same representativeness. The only one that was here that represents part of the community, the business and professional members, is the CIBPA, and the CIBPA is part of the four people that signed the agreement.

[Nino Colavecchio]

Perhaps I may add something.

I'm not here to judge the qualities of the people who are on that committee, but notwithstanding that, the biggest problem was that in the midst of negotiations with the government, of meetings that were being held with ministers on a regular basis, someone decided to do an end-run against the organizations that were involved in the process. They turned around, created a program, and named three people who had had nothing to do with this process, to supposedly handle these funds.

This is where the insult is to the community organizations that have been working for the community for 25, 30, 40, and in some cases 75 years. This is where the insult came from the government--that we're negotiating, we don't seem to be getting where we want to go with this, so let's do an end-run and find other people to negotiate with.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

I have to move on to Ms. Minna.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

First I want to say a couple of things, and I think this is important. We all know people who were interned. One I knew was a professor at the University of Toronto until he retired. Many of you would know Johnny Lombardi, the radio broadcaster. Johnny went to war. This is the weird stuff, right? Johnny was born here and he went to war for Canada, but when he went he was asked where he came from. He said Canada, that he was born here. They insisted that he tell them his origins, and he said his parents were of Italian origin. They said that in that case he was Italian. His comment to me was that he went to war as an Italian born in Canada. He couldn't be a Canadian—that was not acceptable. That shows the kind of weird stuff that was going on.

Mr. Del Mastro talked about former prime ministers. Yes, they were wrong, but two wrongs don't make a right. I think we need to say that clearly here. I never have misgivings about that.

The other thing was about the first at the table. It was Paul Martin with $12.5 million. The fact is that the agreement was made, the election took place, and that didn't happen. But this government had the choice of continuing to negotiate with the community and chose to break it off.

We all know that you can go into any community and identify two or three people who are not connected and encourage them to divide and conquer. You can always do that. That's easy to do. We all know that around this table. Let's not mince words. The reality is the government chose to ignore the community and to go to a group of people who did not have the history or the ability to manage. Of course, the money is not $12.5 million.

Mr. Stante, were you part of the negotiations on the $12.5 million? Was there a clear understanding that this was a commitment on the government side?

[Michael Stante]

There was a commitment of $12.5 million to be disbursed over a period of five years.