Madam Speaker, it is with regret that I will be voting against Motion No. 382.
My reasons for doing so are twofold. First, I feel that this motion is based on a faulty premise, that being that guilt can be collective and can be passed on from one generation to the next. Second, despite the good intentions of those who drafted it, the motion seems to attribute ultimate responsibility for the expulsion of the Acadians to the Crown, which is not an accurate reading of the events of 1755. A more historically accurate reading would lay blame with the colonial governors of New England and the pioneers they represented.
I will begin with the historical argument and then come back later to the philosophical one.
Many of the facts surrounding the deportation of the Acadians are unchallenged. In 1755, the colonial authorities began a process of uprooting and deporting that part of the Acadian population which had settled on British lands, beginning with the centre of the Acadian colony along the east shore of the Bay of Fundy.
Nova Scotia's Governor Lawrence, and Governor Shirley, commander in chief of the British forces in New England, began by seizing colonists' firearms to prevent them from using force to resist. Then they took a large number of adult males hostage in order to guarantee the docility of their families at the time of deportation.
In the years that followed, approximately three-quarters of the total Acadian population, or 13,000 people, were deported. Some of these people were sent to New England, others to Louisiana, and still others were returned to France.
Although we know with certainty the degree of suffering caused by the deportations between 1755 and 1763, it is much more difficult to pin down the historical responsibility for them. One thing is certain and that is that governors Lawrence and Shirley were at the heart of the decision making and must bear ultimate responsibility. But nothing proves that they acted with the approval of the Parliament of Westminster.
According to the most commonly accepted version of events, Lawrence acted with the authorization of the local council in Nova Scotia, and parliament and King George did not take part in the planning of the deportations.
More recently, Roger Paradis, a professor of history at the University of Maine, has uncovered documentary evidence suggesting that the authorities in London were involved. He cited a bill, sent to London in 1758 by Governor Lawrence, listing the expenditures incurred for the deportation. He also revealed the existence of a circular sent by Lawrence to governors of the New England colonies, which presumes that those governors were, at the very least, aware of the events taking place in Acadia.
However, what strikes me is that even in this revisionist interpretation of history the colonial authorities in Acadia and New England take on the primary responsibility for the acts committed, while the Crown has only a secondary responsibility. Moreover, it is obvious that the first ones to benefit from the military security that was increased as a result of ethnic cleansing in Acadia were the New England pioneers and specifically those living in the portion of the colony of Massachusetts then known as the “District of Maine”.
I emphasize that I will not support the notion of a collective or hereditary guilt, but even if I did support it, I think that the first collective excuses that should be conveyed to the Acadian people should come from the Government of Maine.
It is therefore interesting to know that on April 13, 1994, the Maine Legislative Assembly passed a resolution regarding the deportation of the Acadians. It was carefully drafted in such a way that the blame is laid exclusively on the British, and it never hints at the fact that Maine, a sovereign state, or its predecessor, the English colony of Massachusetts Bay, could have been involved in any way. I think the best we can say about this statement is that it comes from a serious misinterpretation of history.
Unfortunately, the motion before us today is based on the same mistake. The motion calls on the Crown to “recognize officially the wrongs done to the Acadian people in its name”. However, the fact that the deportation was ordered in the name of the British Crown does not mean that the Crown itself was the primary culprit, even in 1755.
Similarly, history is full of outrageous act committed in the name of various religions, or in the name of the people of a territory or another, while the authority named had very little to do, if any, with the harm that was done in its name. A more historically accurate motion could demand official apologies from the legislative assemblies of each of the New England states for the harm done in their interests and with their complicity.
I should be clear about the fact that I would oppose this too. I do so because I do not accept the notion that an institution can maintain a heritage of collective guilt which is imposed upon successive generations of those who become members of that institution or who fall under its protection.
It seems to me that some participants in the debate over this motion and in similar debates that have occurred in the past have contemplated two quite different concepts. The first concept is the expectation, which I regard as legitimate, that all participants in the public life of a civilized society should adopt a moral attitude toward the past. A moral attitude involves recognizing and embracing those past actions which are regarded as good and just, and rejecting those which are regarded as unjust or monstrous.
The second concept is the idea that guilt for a past injustice can be passed on, institutionally and collectively, in precisely the same way that the residual effects of that wrong continue to have some impact on the descendants of those who suffered the initial wrong. This is simply untrue.
The adoption of a moral attitude by an actor in political life allows us, as potential voters or as potential political allies, to assess how that individual might act in the future should he or she be a decision maker in some similar future circumstance. Such a calculation is necessary in a system of representative democracy because it is always conceivable that one can win an election in a time of peace and then find that his or her mandate extends into a period of unexpected turmoil or war. After the events of September 11, I think we can see the utility of such expectations.
By contrast, an attitude of collective guilt or responsibility, or worse yet, of expecting others to assume a mantle of guilt or responsibility for acts in which they themselves did not take part, strikes me as being of no utility at all.
A debate similar to the one taking place today took place in this House 17 years ago on Pierre Trudeau's last day as Prime Minister. He was asked by Brian Mulroney in question period to issue an apology for the wartime internment of Canadians of Japanese descent. Trudeau's response revealed a subtle grasp to the distinction that I am attempting to draw here today. He said:
I do not see how I can apologize for some historic event to which we...were not a party. We can regret that it happened. But why...say that an apology is much better than an expression of regret?...I do not think that it is the purpose of a government to right the past. It cannot re-write history. It is our purpose to be just in our time--
This does not excuse us from a responsibility to adopt a moral attitude of condemnation toward this great wrong any more than we can adopt an attitude of moral neutrality toward the monstrous evils of recent times.
Therefore, let us vote against this motion in its present form, but let us vote for it if it is reintroduced in the House in a form that allows us to express, without apology, our sorrow over this past wrong and if it allows us, without condemning others, to indicate our determination that no such wrong will ever in the future be tolerated on Canadian soil.
