moved:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government, on this 60th anniversary of the "On to Ottawa" Trek, should offer an unequivocal and official apology for the government of the day having perpetuated the following:
(1) having caused, through the use of violence as administered by the combined police forces of the Regina City Police and the RCMP the termination of the trek in Regina, Saskatchewan on July 1, 1935, with attendant loss of life, injury and imprisonment;
(2) having contributed to, rather than detracted from the plight of the unemployed by:
(a) forcing many unemployed young men into work camps,
(b) having prevented all the trekkers from coming to Ottawa to express their democratic right for better conditions in the work camps,
(c) abrogating its responsibility of providing the necessary leadership in a time of high unemployment which would have created decent and rewarding full time employment;
(3) displaying a total lack of policy initiatives which would have provided meaningful work and wages for the unemployed, and for the violent attack on the participants of the "On to Ottawa" trek.
Mr. Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I have this opportunity to present the motion in the House today. This year marks the 60th anniversary of the "On to Ottawa" trek. This motion calls for an apology, which is 60 years overdue.
In Regina we have an historic marker set in front of the Regina city police station. On it appears the following:
At 8.17 p.m. July 1, 1935, rioting erupted here in Market Square when RCMP and city police arrested the "On to Ottawa" trek leaders as they addressed trekkers and city residents. Rioting then spread to the 11th Avenue and Scarth Street area. Ending near midnight, it left extensive property damage, numerous injuries, and a city policeman, Detective C. Millar, dead.
The trekkers were single men en route to Ottawa from B.C. to demand better conditions in relief work camps set up for the unemployed. They were stopped in Regina on June 14 by the federal authorities, who feared a revolution if the trek reached Ottawa. At a meeting between trek leaders and the federal cabinet, mistrust grew, and trekkers were prohibited from advancing or going home. To break the deadlock, Ottawa ordered the leaders' arrest. In the furor of the resulting riot, the frustration of the trek's failure and years of unemployment were released.
The next day the provincial government arranged for the trekkers to return to their homes.
Signed by the Government of Saskatchewan in 1979, the text on this marker refers to the tragic events known as the Regina riot. The text is short and temperate and barely explains why the provincial government signed an epitaph commemorating a riot. I will attempt to do that.
Facts will show that the riot was planned and provoked not by the trekkers but by the police on direct orders of the federal government, which in so doing illegally usurped the authority of the provincial government, which was in the process of negotiating a settlement with the trekkers.
The riot was the climax of a strike of the relief camp workers begun on April 4, 1935, in British Columbia. With a set of demands adopted at a meeting of the relief camp workers' union in Kamloops on March 10, 1935, the strikers stayed for two months in Vancouver and then started east to Ottawa to put their grievances before the government of Prime Minister R.B. Bennett.
Before arriving in Regina, the trek's ranks were augmented with new recruits. By the time the trekkers reached Regina the numbers had swelled to 2,000. Unbeknownst to the trekkers and the Saskatchewan government, Regina was their ultimate destination, not Ottawa.
Having stopped them in Regina, Prime Minister Bennett arranged to meet with a few representatives. He obviously did not want the entire trek to arrive in Ottawa, with however many more who would have joined along the way.
Unfortunately the meeting with the Prime Minister was unproductive. Bennett offered a temporary camp near Lumsden, Saskatchewan, where the trekkers would go until arrangements were made to return them to the permanent camps and the same inhumane conditions they had left. All along the only option the federal government was prepared to give the trekkers was no option. The status quo is the operative word.
When the trekkers' representatives returned to Regina from Ottawa, they attempted to undo the deadlock the Prime Minister's offer had presented by developing a revised proposal. They worked diligently to set up meetings with all the authorities. The trek leaders also decided to hold a public meeting to inform the citizens of the result of their meeting with the Prime Minister. Posters went up, and it was known that only a few trekkers would attend the rally.
Early in the morning on July 1, the trek leaders initiated negotiations with both the federal and the provincial governments in the hope of obtaining an agreement for an early withdrawal. One of the trek leaders, Arthur Evans, requested a meeting of federal, provincial, and trek representatives. The chief federal representative in Regina refused to meet with provincial officials but agreed to meet with the trek representatives at 10.30 a.m.
At this stage federal officials in Ottawa refused an excellent opportunity to reach a peaceful compromise. They refused any compromise whatsoever. But the trek leaders did not give up. They went to Liberal Saskatchewan Premier Jimmy Gardiner, who promised them a reply the following morning. The premier had arranged for a cabinet meeting that evening.
The fact is, when the trekkers were conferring with Gardiner the federal government was preparing warrants and strategy for the arrests of Evans and six other leaders of the trek. At the public rally that evening a crowd of 2,200 had gathered to hear a report of the trekkers' delegation to Ottawa. In this crowd there were no more than 300 trekkers, as most had already been informed and were slated to attend a ball game elsewhere. In other words, it was a known fact that the meeting was for citizens rather than trekkers.
Why the choice was made to arrest the leaders in front of a mass meeting of their supporters raises serious questions. Why they did not wait until after the meeting, after the crowd had left, to make the arrests has never been fully explained. However, it does not
take a rocket scientist to understand that it was the nature of the arrangements and the means by which the police carried them out that provoked the Regina riot. A more discreet and less provocative arrangement could have been devised and the arrests could still have been carried out successfully.
The riot that resulted from this action left plainclothes detective Charles Millar of Regina city police dead, scores of trekkers, citizens and policemen injured, and several trekkers and Regina citizens hospitalized with gunshot wounds. Downtown Regina was left in a shambles.
The riot began as the Premier of Saskatchewan and the provincial authorities were considering the trekkers' proposals. The provincial government had not been informed of police intentions. Premier Gardiner wired the Prime Minister late that night, both protesting the police action and offering to disband the trek under provincial auspices. It is not difficult to understand how this marked the beginning of a dispute between the federal and provincial authorities. Gardiner was fearful that the intransigent federal attitude would lead to a resumption of hostilities and he demanded the federal authorities take a more reasonable position.
The federal government had taken over provincial jurisdictions, starting with control of the RCMP, which had moved to organize the Regina city and railway police forces. Preparing for a showdown, the federal government also moved into other provincial areas, namely transportation, blocking the trekkers from access to roads and allowing them to leave only if they agreed to go to the camp near Lumsden.
The federal authorities had obviously taken it upon themselves to instruct the RCMP in Saskatchewan in the enforcement of the ordinary criminal law and not merely in matters under the Railway Act. This represented another violation of provincial jurisdiction.
Based on the exchange between the Bennett and the Gardiner governments, it is more than fair to say that the Premier of Saskatchewan placed the responsibility for the tragic end to the trek in Regina squarely on the shoulders of the federal government of the day. The premier was not by any means alone in believing that.
Ten years ago, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the "On to Ottawa" trek, I presented a similar motion in the House. At that time I had the benevolent support of one of our colleagues who now sits on the other side of the House. She said: "We should say that we are sorry. While it may not mean much in terms of individual compensation for the agony suffered by those people who lived through the Depression, it would certainly be a first step on the road to clearing the record". This is quoted from the Commons debate of October 7, 1985, when the present Deputy Prime Minister supported an official apology to the trekkers and the citizens of Regina.
She also stated: "And we, both as members and as the government, should apologize to the unemployed workers who were forced to take to the streets to seek their own rights, which they should have been given by the Prime Minister at the time, who abdicated his responsibilities in this respect".
Like our colleague in 1985, I now challenge the government to listen and redress this pivotal event in our Canadian heritage. I want to believe this government is different from the previous one. History need not repeat itself once again.
Ten years ago the Deputy Prime Minister and member for Hamilton East accused the Mulroney government of taking the same attitude as the Bennett government of taking a hands off approach to solving the unemployment crisis. She said: "It does not want to be involved in the creation of jobs because somehow Conservative governments see something distasteful in direct government job creation. In fact, the Bennett solution at that time was to send the workers off to work camps, where they lived in intolerable circumstances and in fact were not ever able to have the dignity of a democratic election in those particular camps".
The tables have turned. The hon. member now sits in power, where she can actually do something to ensure there is not only democracy but also employment, social justice, and a future for our young people.
This government started its term with job creation and the infrastructure program, but something terribly wrong has happened. This government has been hijacked by some group with another agenda.
The motion I have placed before the House might merely be regarded as a footnote in history were it not for the fact that history has a tendency to repeat itself. Since this year's budget, instead of jobs we got cutbacks and massive decreases in provincial transfers. Jobs, we are told, are not for the governments to create; they will appear out of market forces-as if Prime Minister Bennett has been resurrected one more time.
By leaving the provinces in the lurch, some of the provincial leaders are quickly turning the country's clock back to the 1930s. The present government still has an opportunity to make good on its election promises and the hope they offered. The federal government does not need to starve the provinces by abandoning its responsibility to the people. The deficit reduction plan does not need to be inhuman.
I agree with the endorsement from the member for Hamilton East of my 1985 motion, when in reference to the apology she suggested that "that act of good faith and goodwill on the part of the government would begin to restore the credibility this government has lost in insisting upon measures that are anti-worker, anti-family, anti-labour, and anti-union. Work must be done or the government's word cannot be believed. Now is the chance for the
government to win back some of the credibility it has frittered away since"-to which I add, the end of October 1993.
Let this government show us that it is not just another job eliminator party. The Liberal government has its chance to stand up and finally set the record straight by making to these people, the strikers, a general, all-encompassing public apology.
The Deputy Prime Minister further stated 10 years ago: "If it"-meaning the Mulroney government-"is truly sincere about beginning to gain back the confidence of young working people, young unemployed people, older working people, and older unemployed people to realize that the time has come for it to endorse an all-party resolution which calls for an apology to redress an event which occurred 50 years ago and which is indicative of the type of Conservative mentality which has led all Canadians to realize that Tory times are tough times".
The sad fact of the matter is that history, as I have just outlined, is in many ways and places across the country repeating itself. Many of the problems for which the trekkers sought solutions in the 1930s have returned in spades in the 1980s and continue in the 1990s. Once again we have massive unemployment. Once again we are faced with widespread business failures, farm foreclosures, personal bankruptcies, food banks, user fees, head taxes, and policies that are reminiscent of an era we had hoped to have surpassed.
The political repercussions and the legacy of the trek have a lot of parallels with today's environment. The National Council of Welfare's 1995 report on the last government budget states: "The policies of the 1990s will take us back to the 1950s". Recent statements and actions from at least two provincial governments would confirm that. In a 1987 article in the Canadian Review of Social Policy by Duncan Rogers, a former deputy minister of the Alberta Social Services described the 1950s period as "the remnants of the old relief days of the 1930s". He goes on: "It was not uncommon for children, particularly from larger families, to be apprehended as neglected and become wards of the crown simply because there was insufficient money available to the family".
The Liberal government is often accused of continuing the Tory legacy, while at the same time promising initiatives which will create jobs and opportunities for all Canadians. With nearly 10 per cent of our population unemployed, unemployment has become a chronic condition. Youth under employed is still worse, at 18 per cent. The rate for Canadians aged 15 to 24 years is nearly double the national average and costs the economy at least $4.5 billion per year.
However, that is not the dearest price we are paying. Canada now has the third highest rate of teen suicide in the world, which has increased fourfold since 1960. The social and economic conditions under which kids are living are creating a social phenomena described as existential despair. Is that the best country the world?
Will more jails and longer sentences deter the problems? They will do nothing if there is no hope for a future that brings rewards and fulfilment.
I acknowledge the tremendous financial debt this country and the public sector faces due to the gross mismanagement of previous governments. I acknowledge the challenge that lies ahead for all of us to begin to solve our financial problems. Surely we must find ways of dealing with our problems other than on the backs of the old and the poor.
As a Stats Canada study has shown, it is not increases in government expenditure that has created the debt. In fact, only 6 per cent of the debt is due to increases in public expenditure. The rest is due to loss of revenue and increases in interest rate payments. Of that 6 per cent increase in government expenditures, only 2 per cent is due to increases in social programs.
It is not the social programs which have created our debt. Yet it is our social programs that are paying for it. It is the cutbacks in health services, in unemployment insurance, programs to help train and create jobs for young people. That is where the burden is being placed to rectify the terrible, physical mistakes that past Conservative and Liberal governments have made.
We are in a period of declining standards of living. Recently, Stats Canada issued a report that in 1993 the average family income in Canada declined by some 3 per cent, inflation factored in. The decline for single parent families in that one year was 8.3 per cent. We are in a downward spiral.
New challenging solutions are needed. But the solutions of R.B. Bennett did not work then and will not work now. I challenge the government to come forward with new imaginative proposals to give hope to our young people, to give employment to our young people and to give young people a future.
I urge the House to adopt the motion to extend an apology for how those strikers were treated in 1935 in Regina some 60 years ago. They wanted to come to Ottawa to express their hope for a new future, to express their desire to work. They did not want welfare. They did not want the dole, they wanted jobs. Today the mass of unemployed young people are looking for work. They do not want handouts, they want a future.
I urge the House to adopt the motion as a symbolic gesture to our young people that we are concerned about their future.
