Heritage Minister Bev Oda strongly hinted at compensation in the House of Commons on Wednesday. "An apology will be made in the House and we will also be addressing appropriate acknowledgement," she responded when asked if a compensation package would be announced.

Chinese-Canadian groups say they expect Prime Minister Stephen Harper will offer compensation as well as regret when he speaks to the Commons on Thursday.

They suggest the package will include payments of $10,000 to $21,000 for surviving immigrants who paid the tax, surviving widows and first-generation children.

Some of the survivors of the head-tax era are to be in the Commons when Harper speaks.

Joseph Wong, founding president of the Chinese Canadian National Council, said he can't believe the government would invite the elderly people to Ottawa then turn them away empty-handed.

"I am quite sure there will be a compensation package," he said.

Susan Eng, co-chair of the Ontario Coalition of Chinese Head Tax Payers, also said she thinks the government will offer compensation.

"Apologies will be hollow words without substance behind it. It's important that there be some kind of token gesture while they are sill alive to see it."

As well as money for individuals, Eng said the compensation package would include money for education ad commemoration of the troubling era.

The head tax, ranging from $50 to $500, was assessed on Chinese immigrants from 1885 until 1923 when immigration from China was banned entirely. It was 1947 before Canada opened its door again to Chinese.

Chinese Canadian organizations are bitter that the head tax was only applied after the Canadian Pacific Railway was completed - with the help of thousands of Chinese labourers.

"Once they had done the work to build the link across the country, they were told they weren't wanted," said Wong.

About 81,000 people are believed to have paid the tax, although only a handful are still alive.

Wong said there are only about 35 survivors, plus about 360 of their widows and fewer than 4,000 of their children.

He said the government was asked to make payments of $21,000 to each survivor or widow and $10,000 to their children. That would be in line with the payments made to Japanese-Canadians after the Mulroney government gave them an apology and redress package for their internment during the Second World War.

Wong said the apology is important.

"On the other hand, a symbolic gesture of compensation for all those years of discrimination and suffering is mandatory to really show the sincerity.

"We are not asking for the sky . . . but it should be a dignified amount which shows in a symbolic way the regret of the government."

Eng, too, said the apology is vital.

"An apology means that there is a public and official acknowledgement that this was legislation that was unreservedly racist . . . and this is something that the government of the day has chosen, properly, to apologize for."

Some say compensation for the head tax will pen the door to other minority groups with grievances. Ukrainian Canadians have argued they deserve compensation for internment during the First World War and Canadians of German and Italian descent have complained about internment during the Second World War.