Mr. Chairman, I'm looking forward to appearing before the heritage committee when it reviews Bill C-302 to discuss this at greater length.
Mr. Calandra is right that in November of 1990 Prime Minister Mulroney said, at an event of the National Congress of Italian Canadians:
On behalf of the government and people of Canada, I offer a full and unqualified apology for the wrongs done to our fellow Canadians of Italian origin during World War II.
In my capacity as Secretary of State for Multiculturalism, I was pleased to work with representatives of Italian-Canadian organizations in trying to find a resolution to their outstanding requests for some form of symbolic redress for the injustices done to Canadians of Italian origin during the Second World War with respect to internment, when I believe some 680 Canadians of Italian origin were interned for a certain period of time.
We discussed various possibilities for funding, commemorative projects within the context of the community and national historical recognition programs. I do recall their request was to have an endowment established. We had officials look at the possibility of that, and the platform the organizations were suggesting as the basis for an endowment didn't have a sufficient financial track record to qualify for endowment status, based on the terms and conditions the government has had in place for a very long time.
As an alternative, what we came up with was to offer $5 million of project funding, to be administered through the community historical recognition program, out of the multiculturalism program of our ministry. We have appointed a distinguished expert panel of three highly recognized Canadians of Italian descent to help review the applications that come in for commemorative educational and research projects. That's because what we want to do isn't to forever dwell on the sins of the past; we want to learn from them. We want to ensure they are not repeated.
That's why the program we've introduced is in a sense, yes, focused on the events as they happened, but also on teaching current and future generations. What motivated these events? How can we avoid these things happening in the future? I think it's a very sound approach, and I think it's one that the vast majority of people think strikes the right balance between acknowledgement and focusing on the future.