Do unto others

By Allen Myers

Do unto others as they do unto others. Especially when the first others are the US government. This is evidently the sound reasoning of two Canadian Liberal MPs, John Godfrey and Peter Milliken.

Godfrey and Milliken, like a great many people around the world, are upset by the US Helms-Burton law, which is directed against Cuba and those who trade with it. (The Helms of Helms-Burton is 312-year-old Jesse Helms, the conservative Republican senator for North Carolina, the CIA and the tobacco corporations, not necessarily in that order.) Canada is Cuba's biggest trading partner.

One provision of Helms-Burton allows former Cuban citizens and their descendants in the US to sue for compensation against foreign corporations that do business with Cuban companies which they owned before they were nationalised by the revolutionary government after 1959.

The principle involved deserves to be applied more generally, say the Canadian legislators, both of whom are among an estimated 3 million Canadians descended from 80,000 residents of what is now the United States who fled northward during the US revolution of 1776-83. Loyal to the lawful government of George III, these "Tories" lost most or all of their property. It's time to reclaim it, say Godfrey and Milliken.

Milliken, according to an Associated Press report, says their bill would allow him to claim his ancestors' property in the Mohawk Valley of New York state. Godfrey has his eye on a forefather's home in Virginia. At least 100 other Canadians have contacted the MPs to inquire about claiming compensation for lost property.

And where the Canadian MPs have led, can Mexican legislators be far behind? Surely there must be lots of Mexicans descended from people who lost property when what is now the US south-west was taken from Mexico in the 1840s.

From GLW issue 253