WHITE CANADA

Hokitika Guardian, 10 May 1928, Page 1

WHITE CANADA

BARRING ORIENTALS. VANCOUVER, April 2. By a. curious coincidence Canada is following in the footsteps of legislation in Australia and New Zealand in an attempt to bar Orientals from landing in British North America, and Canada’s first Minister to Japan will bo furnished with a man’s size job if British Columbia’s nationwide campaign to curb the influx of Orientals results in action by Ottawa. He will ho required, should that action be taken, to negotiate with Japan for the repatriation of Japanese until the number of that nationality now in Canada bears the same proportion to Canada’s population as do Canadians in Japan to the population of the Nipone.se Empire. Furthermore, if the Dominion Government adopts British Columbia’s pica, passed in the closing hours of the legislative session at Victoria, the Canadian envoy will have a still more complicated task in opening similar dealings with the ‘’Government or Governments of China” with the same end in vow.

That is the upshot of weeks of manoeuvring by the British Columbia legislators on the tangled Oriental problem. It is the most drastic motion over adopted on the subject by the Legislature. It has been sent to the Dominion Government and the Governments of all the provinces ol Canada-. It asks, in short, for "more than exclusion,” and for revision of the Anglo-Japauese Treaty to give British Columbia, power for all time to decide who sliali and who shall not settle within its boundaries.

The .campaign does lint stop there. It is to he a publicity drive to tell the people of all Canada how British Columbia feels on the question; that this feeling is unanimous, as represented in its Legislature, and that the problem here finds no parallel in any other province in Canada. RAPID INCREASE. British Columbia has more than 40,500 Orientals; 11,000 are employed in its industries, another 3000 or more are in business “on their own. and the remainder constitute their families. That is according to the latest figures available, and the number is constantly increasing. Tlie Japanese birth-rate in this province is •10 per 1000, as compared with the general average of IS per 1000. In three years the number of Japanese school children increased by 74 per cent to a total of more than 4000. British Columbia absorbs SO per cent of the Chinese and nearly 100 per cent of the Japanese who come to Canada.

Faced with this situation on the one hand, and on the other with the

Federal Government’s opposition voiced by Premier Mackenzie King to any action which would injure the good relations between Canada and the Orient, British Columbia has chosen a way which it behoves will get results, and at the same time preserve harmony. By revision of the treaty made between Britain and Japan in 1911, and partly ratified by the Dominion Parliament in 1913, the province asks that it he given the right ; to legislate property and civil rights under the British North American Act. It also asks that the negotiations for repatriation agreements be undertaken at once. Possessing as it- does possibly the biggest Chinese c-o Tony outside the Orient, the business of Vancouver’s Chinese quarter has spread into various parts of the city, and especially along Alain street, where Orientals are doing a flourishing retail business in the sales of foodstuffs. Many of these shops, which are generally up-to-date in appointments, have distinctly British names emblazoned over the portals, and the casual customer when entering the store is surprised to discover that it is an Oriental establishment, although boasting the name of John King and Company, and such appellations. These Chinese grow their own vegetables on a large scale and retail them at top priced delivering the goods frequently in high-priced motor-trucks. gaily painted in bright hues. The Chinese elitoy a first-class business in selling fish and flowers, sometimes cutting the prices in order to prevent white competition. The so-called “gentleman’s agreement” has proved useless, for women have landed in British Columbia from the Orient in surprising numbers and have greatly outnumbered the men, showing that a “woman’s agreement” is also desirable.