Honourable Members, Chair of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, allow me to introduce myself. I am Dr. Ba Ngoc Dao, and I have been the president of the Vietnamese community in Canada for the greater Montreal area for four years. I was the president of the association of Vietnamese physicians of Canada from 2005 to 2009.

It is a great honour for me to represent the approximately 30,000 members of the Vietnamese community in Canada in the greater Montreal area—there are 42,500 in Quebec—and to speak to Bill S-219.

We will never forget the participation of the Canadian Forces in the International Commission of Control and Supervision of the armistice and the 1973 Paris Peace Accords. Despite the armistice, South Vietnam was invaded by communist troops from the north. The war ended on April 30, 1975, and from that day onward, the increased terror, repression and atrocities carried out by the new regime against the South Vietnamese led to many more refugees.

We will never forget the words broadcast on the BBC or the VOA, sometime around 1980–1983, of a 75- to 80-year-old Vietnamese man: “If these electric rods and sticks could walk they too would flee the country.”

I invite you to listen to the story of a prisoner of war who witnessed the situation from 1975 to 1985.

Before April 30, 1975, this man was a medical officer in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam. We can all agree that the role of the doctor is to alleviate human suffering, no matter the politics, location, time or the patient's race. It is a noble and fine profession.

With the takeover by the communist regime, he had to report to brainwashing concentration camps like so many other soldiers, officers and government workers. Almost all southerners were found guilty, and many were considered to have blood debts to public. Doctors were especially guilty because they healed and relieved the suffering of members of the People’s Army. The doctor in this story made a very big mistake. He saved the lives of members of the People’s Army, who were very moved, quit the army and sought political asylum in the south.

In the concentration camps, he performed forced labour: planting food crops, cutting down trees for wood to be sold for frames, writing self-critical texts, and attending lectures steeped with revenge and jealousy. Camp changes were frequent. After two and a half years in the brainwashing camps, he was released, but continued to be closely watched by managers, police and local authorities.

He was forced to work in a hospital for sick children under the control of poorly educated, non-professional administrative staff or go to the new economic zones, which were deserted regions with little or no resources. He had to stay with friends. At the slightest suspicions, the local authorities would often knock down doors at night to take people away to undisclosed locations.

Faced with this dangerous situation, he had no choice. He had to leave the country at any cost. He tried to seek freedom and flee with his wife and his 10-year-old and 11-month-old sons as boat people. He tried 13 times but never succeeded.

Finally, through some dealings involving the black market for gold bullion, his family caught a plane in March 1985, and fulfilled a promise that his brother-in-law, a student in New Brunswick and Montreal, made in February 1975.

He is but one—

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