The BC Liberals wanted to exploit the already-historically-exploited… “The BC government should never be seen to be profiting from racism. We take the view that these ill-gotten gains must be returned to the head tax families,” Victor Wong, CCNC. In actuality, Chinese-Canadians have been asking for equality since 1885, when the head tax was implemented and the right to to vote was taken away, thus disenfranchising a single racial group for 62 years, and separating families. A non-partisan, inclusive negotiation with descendants of head tax payers is the right and honourable way to an apology.
see the CCNC press release here: http://www.ccnc.ca/content/pr.php?entry=259
But now BC Premier Christy Clark is saying that she is ready to issue an official apology anyways.
However CCNC executive director Victor Wong, who is the grandson of a head tax payer, is suggesting that British Columbia’s premier shouldn’t let her current political troubles with
“the memo” interfere with delivering a meaningful apology for the policy, if it would include a financial settlement that would be significant of the “$23 million collected in head tax levies, it transferred about $8.5 million back to B.C., which would be worth upwards of $1 billion today.”
Victor Wong says. “If you say ‘genuine apology,’ then we will take you at your word. If you mean genuine apology, then it has to be an apology that we’re willing to accept.”
“If we wanted just an apology, we would have got it back in 2011 or 2012 or early 2013,” he said. “It’s been offered to us. We’ve rejected it.”
Wong pointed to the federal government apology in 2006 by Prime Minister Stephen Harper as a model for the B.C. government to follow. The Conservative government doled out payments of $20,000 to living Chinese head tax payers and to living spouses of deceased payers.