A Conservative critic says Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s decision to rename a prominent government building in Ottawa is “whitewashing” history.
Former Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) Paul Calandra is taking issue with Trudeau’s renaming of the Langevin Block to the Office of the Prime Minister & Privy Council.
Trudeau made the announcement Wednesday, dubbed National Aboriginal Day in Canada. Hector-Louis Langevin, for whom the building was originally named, was a father of Canadian Confederation but also a noted proponent of the Indian Residential School System, which has since been pilloried for its objective of assimilating natives into Canadian culture.
“Look, I’m obviously sympathetic to how our First Nations feel, but at the same time, I think we have to understand that Langevin is an incredibly important figure in Canadian history, he was a father of Confederation, a giant when it came to helping ensure that the French culture, language and customs remained intact in a unified Canada,” Calandra told CBC Thursday.
Calandra suggested we can’t judge history though the dominant opinions of the present day. “The last [Residential] school was closed in 1996. We were still taking children out of their homes through the ’60s and ’70s. So there is a lot more that we have to learn about this and there are a lot of people, who through the years, had a role to play in this. And I think that by trying to forget or whitewash from history the good and the bad of our history, we do a disservice,” he said.
“We certainly have to do a better job of understanding the positive things that Mr. Langevin brought about for Canada, but at the same time, we can reflect on the things that weren’t so right for Canada, when viewed through the prisms or the lenses of today. Look, I’m an Italian-Canadian. Are we supposed to forget about Mackenzie-King because he interned Italian-Canadians in the war? No. We learn from those mistakes,” Calandra maintains.
Calandra was asked if he could “see a time when perhaps [former prime minister John A.] Macdonald’s name will be challenged on plaques, buildings and our currency?”
“You raise an interesting point,” he said. “This brings up so many different discussions. Through what lens will we judge people and their contribution to this country? Forty years, 50 years from now, people might be looking back at some of the decisions we made today, and they might look pretty stupid.”
“The last school was closed in 1996. We were still taking children out of their homes through the ’60s and ’70s. So there is a lot more that we have to learn about this and there are a lot of people, who through the years, had a role to play in this. And I think that by trying to forget or whitewash from history the good and the bad of our history, we do a disservice.”