The Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, officially apologized to the Italian-Canadians interned during the Second World War as considered “enemy aliens”: a designation that caused many to lose their jobs, depriving their families of a sustainable income , making their homes prone to the projects of rapacious city officials eager to expropriate them for non-payment of property taxes.
A designation that subjected everyone to police surveillance, exposed them to harassing and malicious ridicule, leading more than 700 people to be interned in concentration camps without due process. Their “crime”? Be of Italian ethnicity. Overnight, the designation had “converted” them from precious members of the Canadian federation to being labeled as fascists, Nazis, imperialists … here is the Canadian premier’s apology and the whole debate in the House of Commons, in the video below.
