Where his Prime Minister father, the late Pierre Trudeau, wasn’t a fan of state-issued apologies, our rueful leader appears quite comfortable doling them out. The PM has made a series of official apologies addressing various historical wrongs since he took office in 2015. The MS St. Louis was forced to return to Europe, where 254 of its passengers were later murdered in the Holocaust. “When Canada denied asylum to the 907 German Jews on board the MS St. Louis,” Trudeau said in a recent statement, “we failed not only those passengers, but also their descendants and community. It’s for this reason that I find it difficult to object to a perfectly harmless government statement that might, even if it doesn’t heal any wounds, inspire an uninformed Canadian to Google “MS St. Louis.” It’s a sorry thing to say, but formal apologies may be most useful not for the oppressed, but for the clueless.

Source: thestar May 09, 2018 23:15 UTC