Pot Pourri: This Story Is Not An Eoisode of Loveboat; Air Quality In Southern Ontario vs. Immigration; Martin Loney’s “From Asia With Malice”
PRESS RELEASE
Immigration Watch Canada provides reactions to a number of recent stories:
(1) Canadian media flippantly reported the proposal by a major American software firm to re-furbish a luxury ocean liner and to locate it off the coast of Southern California. The firm would hire large numbers of Chinese and East Indian software designers and pay them three to four times the wages they would receive in their home countries. The firm involved would save the major costs involved in commuting long distances to supervise their “offshore” operations and in having to deal with foreign cultures.
Immigration Watch Canada notes that the report did not mention that the hiring of cheap labour from China and India would probably mean that Americans would lose job opportunities or would be displaced from their current employment. As with many similar stories in Canada, the reporters involved seem not to have grasped most of the serious implications of this proposal. The luxury ocean liner was jokingly referred to as a “sweat ship”.
The reporters seemed to think that this was a humourous matter. Immigration Watch Canada asks this question: How would these reporters have reacted if they had been the ones to be displaced?
(2) A federal NDP spokesman noted that changes the NDP had caused the governing Liberals to make to the budget would improve the air quality of the Greater Toronto/Southern Ontario area. He noted that about 6000 premature deaths in the area are attributable to poor air quality.
Immigration Watch Canada congratulates the NDP for getting environmental protections added to the federal budget and for pushing the government into meeting some of its Kyoto obligations.
But Immigration Watch Canada notes that federal immigration policies have brought about 3 million new people to the Southern Ontario area over the last 15 years. Also, strange as it may sound to some ears, Immigration Watch Canada notes that people are the ones who are causing the pollution. Continuing to add more of them (as the NDP and other federal parties advocate in their current immigration policies) will negate any gains made in improving air quality.
(3) Dr. Martin Loney (Canada’s expert on and greatest critic of equity employment) notes that the appointment of former Ontario Premier Bob Rae to advise the government on whether or not to hold an inquiry is a mistake. He states that “the source of the (Air India) tragedy lies in muddled multicultural and immigration policies”. He points out that Mr. Rae and many other elected officials have consistently pandered to ethnic constituencies, ignored the consequences of poorly-conceived federal policies, and compounded the mistakes already made. He draws connections between Sri Lankan/Sikh refugee claimants and their involvement in criminal/terrorist activities in Canada.
From Asia, with malice
Martin Loney
National Post
April 28, 2005
On Tuesday, Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan appointed Bob Rae as the man who will advise the Canadian government on the merits of a public inquiry into the 1985 Air India bombing. The former Ontario premier is the wrong man for the job: Like many Canadian leaders, Mr. Rae has consistently looked the other way when confronted with violence and militancy within our minority communities.
The roots of the Air India tragedy lie in our nation’s willingness to provide refuge to Sikh militants who sought to pursue their campaign for Punjab independence from Canadian soil. Sikh moderates tried in vain to warn the government that many of those being admitted in the years prior to the bombing were dangerous. Ironically, it was precisely the newcomers’ claim of membership in the extremist Sikh organization Babbar Khalsa that was offered as the pretext for granting asylum.
Once in Canada, the militant Sikhs made no secret of their agenda, setting up supposed consulates for the future, independent nation of Khalistan in major Canadian cities. These men also fought to take over Sikh temples, intimidating and on occasion killing their opponents.
The Sikh militants clearly understood that Canadians, ever fearful of accusations of racism, and led by politicians who could be counted on to pander to ethnic constituencies, would do nothing. When one of the militant leaders, Talwinder Singh Parmar, arrived at Toronto’s airport in July, 1984, a large crowd of sword-carrying Sikhs greeted him. Had the sword carriers been white, does anyone suppose they would not have been arrested?
The pattern would be repeated in the late 1980s and 1990s, as tens of thousands of Tamils moved from Sri Lanka to Canada. It was precisely those young males most likely to have served with the terrorist Tamil Tigers who were most successful with their refugee claims. Many of those granted asylum not only retained links to the Tigers but were ready to engage in other criminal enterprises. Their victims were often other Tamils who had a genuine desire to flee Sri Lanka’s violence.
Bob Rae was premier of Ontario in the early 1990s. Rather than blow the whistle on the settlement of large numbers of trained terrorists in Toronto, the Rae government provided generous funding to the Federation of Associations of Canadian Tamils (FACT), an organization identified by the U.S. State Department as a front for the Tigers. Tamil Co-operative Homes Inc. received some $5-million between 1990-93, and the Tamil Eelam Society, which has acknowledged its links to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), received millions of dollars in provincial and federal funding for immigrant settlement services, multicultural and social programs. The National Post’s Stewart Bell has reported that the World Tamil Movement, which openly fundraised for the Tigers, received an annual $19,000 grant from the province to pay for a volunteer co-ordinator. The Toronto-based Mackenzie Institute has documented an even broader pattern of public funding for Tamil organizations linked to the Tigers. Today, Toronto’s Sri Lankan community continues to bear the legacy of misguided policies championed by Mr. Rae.
If Canadian leaders are to explain what went wrong to the relatives of those killed in the Air India tragedy, they will have to acknowledge that the source of the tragedy lies in muddled multicultural and immigration policies. But there is little evidence any of them will face up to this fact. Indeed, even now, there is a rising tide of gun violence in Toronto’s growing Jamaican community, something no one dares speak of for fear of being branded insensitive.
This, too, bears Mr. Rae’s imprint. While premier, he responded to the problem of black-on-black violence by defining the problem as one of discriminatory law enforcement, setting up the Commission on Systemic Racism in the Ontario Criminal Justice System. As the name suggests, the commission had the advantage of reaching a conclusion before it even started its investigation.
The idea that this same Mr. Rae should now advise the federal government on the similar follies that led to the largest terrorist act in Canadian history is absurd.
National Post 2005
Martin Loney is the author of The Pursuit of Division: Race, Gender and Preferential Hiring in Canada, McGill-Queen’s
