Public Service Alliance of Canada BC

Via PSAC BC Human Rights Committee

This is the office building I work in. It would be good if the Union (PSAC) or union’s EO committee could issue a statement in support of the demand for name change. If not, then UEW. - Anne Marie Sleeman, UEW 20729

Japanese-Canadians want MP’s named removed from building: Accuse Howard Green of racist remarks in ’30s, ’40s

Japanese-Canadians are demanding Ottawa change the name of a building it named after a former Conservative MP known for his racist remarks in the 1930s and ’40s.

They say that honouring Howard Green is wrong and that Ottawa should change the building’s name.
“I was pretty shocked myself,” said Prof. Roy Miki at Simon Fraser University and author of Redress: Inside the Japanese Canadian Call for Justice.

“From a Japanese-Canadian point of view, he was one of the most feared politicians in Canada because he was pretty relentless in his hatred of Japanese-Canadians.”

Public Works Minister Michael Fortier announced in September that an eco-friendly federal building at 401 Burrard St. would be named after Green. A dedication ceremony was held at the 19-storey building, whose tenants include Environment Canada and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

“Howard Green exemplifies the notion of service to one’s country,” Fortier said at the time.

But yesterday, after criticism from Japanese-Canadians, Fortier said he will ask a volunteer committee that recommended the name to review its recommendation.

Fortier, who made the final decision, was not aware of Green’s past of making racist remarks, ministry spokesman Jean-Luc Benoit said.

The volunteer committee of community representatives evaluated more than 350 names and gave Fortier a short list including Green and Rosemary Brown, a former MLA and human-rights advocate, Terry Fox, artist Toni Onley, Pierre Trudeau and W.A.C. Bennett.

Mary Kitagawa, a member of the Greater Vancouver Japanese Canadian Citizens Association for Human Rights, said she wrote to Fortier in September asking for Green’s name to be erased from the building.

“What we want to do is have that name removed from that building because to us, he is not a hero by any measure,” said Kitagawa.

The National Association of Japanese Canadians has also written to Fortier and Prime Minister Stephen Harper asking for Green’s name to be removed from the building.

Newspaper stories from the ’30s and ’40s document Green’s campaign to oust Japanese-Canadians from B.C.
“Our stand is, and always has been, that we won’t have Japs in the province,” Green said in a Province article dated May 27, 1945. “The Liberal policy is to scatter them; the CCF want to scatter them and give them the vote. If they ever get the vote, nothing more will be done about them.”

In a Province article dated April 22, 1946, Green “warned of the danger that all Japanese might again be back on the coast.”

A Vancouver Sun article on May 17, 1945, quotes Green as saying “the Japs must never be allowed to return to British Columbia.”

The Public Works Ministry said earlier Green was chosen because he was a strong advocate of nuclear disarmament. He was also a First World War soldier and the second-longest serving MP from Vancouver, elected 11 times in Vancouver South and later Vancouver Quadra.

He died in 1989 at age 93.

source: Vancouver Province, Oct 25, pg A14.