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Social exclusion in Canada refers to the multidimensional acts that form social detachment and oppresses individuals and groups to lose participation from mainstream normative rights. Examples include the use of immigration policies to prefer Anglo-Saxons and limit the entries of Asians, and the justification of racial alienation of Japanese-Canadians through World War II propaganda:"Canada’s immigration policies have historically constituted a social practice of exclusion that privileges the hegemonic project of one social identity over that of another, namely the capitalist state over other social relations in society."The deprivation of basic civil rights of minority groups will cause affected individuals unable to actively contribute to society, leading to low socioeconomic statuses and other social inequalities.

War Measures Act
Canada declared war on Japan in 1941 and relocated all Japanese-Canadians to remote camps with mandatory curfews and traveling restrictions. The Canadian federal government transformed sparsely populated locations including underdeveloped regions and ghost towns into incarceration camps to remove Japanese-Canadians from the coast, and therefore urban settlements and business districts. Regardless of Nationality, individuals of Japanese descent were considered as “enemy aliens,” and their rights were disabled under the War Measures Act. Communication devices, such as radios and cameras, and travel vehicles were expropriated by the government with the establishment of transportation and communication limitation policies.

The Pacific Coast Relocation
The removal of Japanese-Canadians within 100-mile distance along the Pacific Coast was announced by Mackenzie King by means of security and defense. Military representatives of Pacific Coast security refused to execute their given tasks as they responded it would cause a waste of labour and resources to remove “law-abiding local members of the population." A civilian organization named the British Columbia Security Commission was then established to enforce the evacuation of over 22,000 Japanese Canadians from their residence along the coastline. Many of them were relocated to internment camps in British Columbia, or lived in crude farming areas in Alberta and Manitoba.

Lower mainland Japanese Canadians in British Columbia were transported to Vancouver and became segregated from the city’s population. During the construction of internment camps by the British Columbia Securities Commission, Women and children were separated from men, and were detained for months while inhabiting livestock stalls. Individuals who resisted internment were transported to Ontario and put into a prisoner-of-war-camp.

Property Rights
To cover the expenses of Japanese-Canadian internment, all belongings that were confiscated and kept by the Custodian of Enemy Alien Property were sold by the Canadian government. The property owner’s right to sell their personal assets were abolished, and incarceration camp settlers were required to pay for food and rent in their given environment and conditions by finding job positions near their living area.

Large Scale Relocation
The social exclusive acts against Japanese Canadians were administrated continuously after Nagasaki and Hiroshima were bombed in 1945. Japanese Canadians were arranged to distant settlements where local residents accepted limited numbers of Japanese people. Large scale relocations were enforced by transporting them through ships to Japan, despite many of them are Canadian born citizens.

Post-war Redress
Japanese-Canadians regained full citizenship and suffrage four years after the war. The redress movement started in the 1980s, where the amendment of the War Measure Act was proposed by the National Association of Japanese Canadians. In 1988, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney provided an official apology and financially compensated surviving Japanese-Canadians who survived wartime exclusion camps. The Nikkei Internment Memorial Centre in New Denver was opened in 1994 to remember the history of wartime incarceration camps.

Chinese Head Tax
Canada’s first Chinese migration wave was caused by the discovery of gold mines in British Columbia’s Fraser Valley in 1859. The demand for Chinese workers peaked during the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway from 1881 to 1885. When the project was completed, the federal government introduced the Chinese head tax in order to control the number of Chinese migrants that were entering the country. The required amount started from $50 and eventually increased to $500 in 1903. The policy restrained family unions, resulting in the decrease and delay of raising second generation Chinese-Canadians.

Chinese Immigration Law
Following the establishment of the head tax, the 1910 Immigration Act was established, containing policies that restricted specific individuals to enter the country based on their racial background. Anglo-Saxon farmers were particularly favoured by the federal government, where “non-preferred” Asian and Eastern European workers were strictly selected:"the combination of the Immigration Act and numerous regulations constituted a social practice of exclusion that produced a hierarchy of preferred and nonpreferred source countries of immigrants to Canada."When the Chinese Immigration Act in 1923 was put into effect, it successfully prohibited the entrance of Chinese immigrants. Every individual of Chinese descent, regardless of nationality or citizenship, are required to register an enactment from the federal government within a given period of time to enter or leave the country. Chinese individuals who are leaving Canada for more than 24 months will be declined re-entry despite their registered status. The act was effective, as Chinese entries were completely stopped, and migrants already in the country lost multiple rights that were still available to other communities.

Exclusion Laws
Between 1875-1923, the British Columbian government established laws to prohibit the Chinese population to have equal civil rights as the host society. Chinese migrants were unable to obtain Crown lands and apply to public work and higher paying jobs. Thus, by 1931, 40 percent of Chinese within Canada has been “…servants, cooks, waiters, and laundry workers.” In addition, their act of voting was also disqualified.

Chinatown and the Chinese stereotype
One of the main reasons for the Chinese people to stay within Chinatowns is the intentional isolation created by White mainstream culture. The Chinese were frequently depicted as temporary residents and is unable to assimilate into Western standards. The Xenophobic propaganda was successful as the Chinese community was perceived as a threat to Caucasians. Thus, in consideration of personal safety, much of Chinese migrants concentrated in urban Chinatowns to avoid living in extremely racist neighbourhoods.

Locally restricted property laws also encouraged the development of Chinatowns. Before the 1930s, Vancouver controlled the distribution of Chinese households by restricting their right to purchase land outside of the Chinatown area.

To support each other during the exclusion period, the Chinese formed multiple organizations that voluntarily assisted their community. Many of these communities became governing forces of Chinatowns, and were responsible for communicating to the outside world.

Post-war immigrant exclusion
The legal exclusive acts were eventually abolished after the end of World War II. However, the Chinese waited until 1967 to have the same immigration criteria as other racial groups.

However, Chinese students are still found to be facing exclusion and alienation in education systems:"Chinese immigrant children aged 8–13 have reported experiencing discrimination in the classroom mainly on the basis of racial and linguistic differences"The difficulty to integrate into Western standards, and the amount of discrimination occurring in classroom environments due to racial and cultural differences resulted in a “weak sense of belonging to Canada." These resulted outcomes are affected academic performances and lack of self-esteem. New immigrants are also more likely to be living in poverty, as their resettlement requires them to dedicate a great amount of time and effort to establish themselves both economically and socially.

Indigenous Exclusion
Starting from February 2007 to May 2008, Quebec had one of the largest public consultations in the province’s history. 809 written briefs were submitted to be presented at community forums and focus groups, with high media coverage of the commission. The movement was led by Gérard Bouchard and Charles Taylor, and was praised by Quebecers as a progressive act towards inclusiveness, where reasonable accommodation in relation to cultural differences was debated by diverse communities within Quebec. However, exempted from this discussion was the indigenous people, who were the original accommodators of the land.

Commissioned briefs excluded the importance of aboriginal issues by reinforcing beliefs that aboriginals lacked progress and modernity to be considered as the founding peoples of Quebec. Others discussed aboriginal communities’ contact and intermarriage with European migrants were forms of immigration, without the mention of the colonial history of indigenous people.

In response to the majority of aboriginal-related commissions, and Bouchard and Taylor’s choice to “exclude dissident perspectives from their final report”, Grand Chief of the Huron-Wendt Nation, Max “Oné-Onti” Gros-Louis, submitted a brief to address the importance of education and reconciliation within Quebec:"The First Nations cannot be regarded as mere Quebec ethnic minorities to be accommodated by a Quebec majority. We are those who were here before any other and who welcomed you, who accommodated you…. Our territory has little by little become the lands of the Crown and someone somewhere has decided that our laws, our governance and our citizenship were no longer good and that their laws would be superior…. [Quebec] must learn that it is in our home, that it lives on our territories and it exploits our resources…that it cannot declare itself the stronger without first taking into account our particular rights."Bouchard and Taylor did not include Gros-Louis’ and other authors who shared similar arguments in their 2008 final report. In response to the controversies in relation to aboriginal exclusion, they believe “it is not clear that they [Aboriginal peoples] are stakeholders in the society”

Inequality between Aboriginal people and other Canadians
The aboriginal people has experienced multiple changing legal laws and policies throughout their demographic change. Their improvements in health, income, and education have increased starting from the 1980s. However, when compared to the changes experienced by other Canadian populations, aboriginal people still experience a gap in terms of social and economic statuses.

During the 2000s, the overall income for First Nations remained almost constant, whereas the average income for other Canadians experienced significant rises. Similarly, a larger gap exists between the two populations in terms of university education. These patterns suggesting that inequality between Aboriginals and other populations are worsening evokes “important questions about the policies that might prevent the social, economic, and sometimes physical exclusion of Aboriginal peoples from continuing.”