Slowly the reunification of families and the orphan resettlement scheme began to bring a few DPs into Canada. But it was the bulk-labor program that remained the biggest challenge. Here the Jewish community focused its efforts and finally won a partial victory.
The Canadian clothing manufacturing industry, the sixth largest industry in Canada as a result of wartime expansion, was dominated by Jewish interest. Jews represented the bulk of industrialists and workers. Even the unions involved were Jewish unions. In a rare co-operative effort of capital and labor in a very fractious industry, a charade was concocted. They fabricated a labor shortage as a pretext for bringing Jews into Canada. Industry spokesmen, in cooperation with the Canadian Jewish Congress, approached the government under its bulk-labor program, for the admission of 2,000 tailors and their families to allegedly waiting jobs in Canada. Behind the application stood individual manufacturers pledged to take on their quota of workers whether they were needed or not, and an agreement from the unions to cooperate in every way in the process.
The government had little choice but to agree. The request from the clothing industry fit all the criteria of its overall bulk-labor program. But the government was not about to be bested by the Jews - at least not without letting the industry know where real power still lay. Too much was at stake, especially with the larger labor recruitment program still underway. The government was not prepared to have any labor scheme, even that of the clothing manufacturers, be seen as a back door for admitting Jews. While a joint labormanagement team was on its way to Germany to select tailors for the scheme, government officials notified the industry that no more than 50 percent of those selected for their program could be of any one religious group. This was a blow. For the clothing industry, which needed no labor and had only dreamed up the scheme as a plan to bring desperate Jews into Canada, the government proviso caused consternation. But in the end, half of the loaf was better than none.
The process of selecting workers from the DP camps for the clothing industry was not easy. Of course, there was no difficulty in finding Jews who would come to Canada. But the selection team still had its priorities. It was supposed to select the best qualified tailors. In truth, with only 1,000 Jewish family admissions possible under this scheme, the selection team was determined to make the best use they could of their quota. The selection made age and size of family a priority, and some of those Jews who eventually arrived in Canada actually did not know one end of a needle from the other.
Source: Gutman, Yisrael and Saf, Avital (eds.), She’arit Hapleta 1944- 1948, Rehabilitation and Political Struggle, Proceedings of the Sixth Yad Vashem International Historical Conference, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, 1990, pp. 282-283.
