Canada: Yew Lee
Yew Lee, a community development consultant based in Ottawa, was an Inter Pares Board member between 1995 and 2008. He has worked decades on social justice issues, particularly for immigrant groups and aboriginal people. In recent years, Yew has focused his energies towards local grassroots initiatives in Ottawa by facilitating community development and capacity-building initiatives. He also holds close to his heart the future of multicultural youth in Canada, and volunteers his time towards nurturing the potential of youth as fully engaged Canadian citizens.
Yew's activism has been influenced by his own family's experiences of discrimination and separation as a result of Canada's racist policies against Chinese people between 1885 and 1947. Yew has been a long-time volunteer and advocate with the Chinese Canadian National Council (CCNC) on the long-standing issue of the Chinese Head Tax and Exclusion Acts. In 1888, Canada introduced a "head tax" on Chinese immigrants of $500. The average annual income in Canada was $100 at that time, and immigrants often spent up to 20 years working off the debt.
Yew's grandfather died in Ottawa in 1916. His father paid the head tax to enter Canada in 1913. Because of the impact of the Chinese Exclusion Act, which replaced the Head Tax in 1923 and banned new Chinese immigration, Yew's father had to return to China to have a family. Canada finally repealed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1947, and at the age of one, Yew was brought by his mother to be re-united in Canada with his father in 1950. Yew considers himself a third-generation Canadian, even though his grandparents and parents were the victims of the Chinese Exclusion Act.
On June 22, 2006, Prime Minister Harper apologized to Chinese Canadians for the head tax and expressed his deepest sorrow for the subsequent exclusion of Chinese immigrants. Yew sees this apology as an important first step, but believes that it fails to truly acknowledge the burden that 62 years of government-legislated racism has had on families and the larger community. Mr. Harper provides symbolic payments for the husbands and wives - now in their nineties - who managed to outlive government intransigence. If a father or mother who paid the head tax died prior to February 6, 2006, when the Conservatives came into office, then their sons and daughters, many in their seventies and eighties, are denied the right to compensation.
Between 1885 and 1923, some 81,000 Chinese immigrants paid $23 million in head taxes. Of these, only about 500 individuals will receive symbolic compensation. Yew continues to work on behalf of the many survivor families among Chinese Canadians who bore the burden of this legislation but have been refused just recognition by the government.
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