By Canadian Press

QuickList: some of the federal government apologies over the years

Nov 27, 2017 | 12:45 PM

OTTAWA — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will apologize Tuesday in the House of Commons for a number of historical unjustices perpetrated by the federal government against members of the LGBTQ community. It’s only the latest in a long list of Canadian mea culpas that date back almost 40 years. Others include:

1988: Then-prime minister Brian Mulroney apologizes in the House of Commons for the internment of Japanese-Canadians during the Second World War.

2001: Ron Duhamel, then the minister of veterans affairs, apologizes in the House of Commons for the executions of 23 Canadian soldiers during the First World War and says their names will be added to the country’s book of remembrance.

2006: Then-prime minister Stephen Harper apologizes in the House of Commons for the head tax imposed on Chinese immigrants between 1885 and 1923.

2008: Harper apologizes in the House of Commons for Canada’s residential schools system, which more than 150,000 First Nations, Metis and Inuit children attended from the 1840s to 1996.

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2016: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau apologizes in the House of Commons for the Komagata Maru incident, in which a shipload of immigrants from India was turned away from Vancouver in 1914.

2017: Trudeau apologizes in Goose Bay, N.L., for abuse and cultural losses at residential schools in Newfoundland and Labrador, saying the gesture is part of recognizing “hard truths” Canada must confront as a society.

Quote: “I do not think it is the purpose of a government to right the past. It cannot rewrite history.” Former prime minister Pierre Trudeau in 1984, rejecting a proposal from Mulroney about an apology for Japanese Canadians.

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