may 4, 1885 - JA Macdonald's Speech
in the House of Commons
Description:
"In a speech in the House of Commons, on May 4, 1885, Prime Minister John A. Macdonald argued for the exclusion of the Chinese from Canada, despite having earlier supported their presence during the building of the CPR."
“'When the Chinaman comes here he intends to return to his own country; he does not bring his family with him; he is a stranger, a sojourner in a strange land, for his own purposes for a while; he has no common interest with us,' Macdonald intoned before his fellow parliamentarians. 'A Chinamen gives us his labour and gets his money, but that money does not fructify in Canada; he does not invest it here, but takes it with him and returns to China . . . he has no British instincts or British feelings or aspirations, and therefore ought not to have a vote.'”
"Macdonald’s comment, and misrepresentation of the intent of many Chinese immigrants to stay and settle in Canada, coincided with national debate on the “Chinese question” and the ongoing Royal Commission on Chinese Immigration (1885)."
"While much of the testimony recorded by commissioners Justice John Hamilton Gray and J. A. Chapleau focused on racialization of the Chinese and their popular characterization as 'perpetual foreigners,' the commissioners also interviewed the Chinese consul-general in San Francisco, representing the Chinese Imperial court."
"The commissioners also decided to embark on a fact-finding mission to California to study the American experience with the Chinese, with the full knowledge that the United States had passed its own Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882."
https://open.library.ubc.ca/collections/chung/chungpub/items/1.0056515#p3z-7r0f:
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BIPOC Oppression & Resistance in Canada & the US
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