Holy Vendettas

Do we need them, do we really need them? Yes, we do, it would appear. Kinda. Canada needs immigrants to beef up its population base. Home-grown couples simply aren't that fixated on having big families. If two people aren't committed to reproducing themselves, we have a population base in stasis. That's no way to grow an economy. So, we continue the long-hailed immigration route, and it's done us in good stead, for the most part.

But then, all of a sudden, Canada can boast it enjoys the largest expatriate number of Sri Lankans and a little problem raises its antsy head. Canadians of Sri Lankan Tamil heritage begin to fund - or are coerced into doing so - the Tamil Tigers. Canadian Tamils, with their great ethnic numbers presenting as juicy bloc-vote potentials, are noticed and followed and flattered by Canadian politicians. Who appear to see no evil.

Even when conventions Canadian politicians attend to curry favour espouse Tamil separatism in Sri Lanka, and photos of Tamil Tiger guerrillas are given full honours, and the flag is hoisted high; one country of refuge allowing violence-supporting immigrants to celebrate and to fund a vicious separatist-terror group against another country; very poor optics indeed.

Until finally, another political party in governance put the Tigers where they belonged - on a formal outlaw list.

Canadians of Jewish extraction suffered a dreadfully long period of official and unofficial anti-Semitism until the present era, when the public and the politicians became more sensitized to egalitarianism and equality in a mature society, and official multiculturalism helped to stem that ugly pathology. And then somehow racism seeped back into the picture with the more latterly-occurring wave of Muslims from the Middle East becoming citizens.

Some, like the Sri-Lankan Tamils, brought a foreign conflict and a religious antipathy toward a fellow religion into full play, creating a distance between the two communities and importing glowering blame and bitter rivalries into an entirely different country, far divorced from the Middle East. Using Canadian Jews as fodder for their searing hatred for the State of Israel's hold over territory once in trust for Islam, that pathology spread here too.

All unfortunate enough, but Canada has also absorbed a huge number of emigrants from India. And, among them, hundreds of thousands of Sikhs. Who, like ordinary Sri Lankans and Middle Easterners came to the country to live decent, secure lives, and most of whom have no real motivation nor interest in pursuing the vengeance-filled violence they left behind in their native countries.

(Indira Gandhi was murdered by two of her Sikh guards; her son Rajiv assassinated by Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam ...)

But for the troubling fact that many of the violently militant Sikh separatists left India to settle in Canada. So that, while the issues leading to violence in the name of Sikh separatism in India have settled in that country, it has seethed and grown in incidence and violence within Canada. Hugely unsettling the Sikh community itself, taken over in large part, by the violent assertions of the fanatic Sikhs who agitate for "Khalistan".

We have that violent aggression to thank for the Air India bombing where 329 people were blown up over Ireland in Canada's first mass and horribly devastating terror attack for which no one has yet been held accountable. Although that issue may yet be re-visited, and re-opened for another trial which may, in the end, be more successful than the failed one. In the meanwhile, Sikh separatists are presenting a danger to the larger Sikh community.

Violence has broken out in many gurdwaras, where the militants are intent on taking over administration of the temples to ensure the installation and control of their extremist views. And which would also afford them the opportunity to administer huge sums of money collected from the faithful. Threats from the militants to the moderates offer a severe affront to Canadian law and security.

Along with the fact that elected members of both provincial and federal parliaments have been directly threatened with violence because of their very vocal criticism of Canada's violence-addicted Sikh separatists. Canada needs to have a serious conversation with itself, about how it will address this issue and those others which have been presenting themselves on the public forum.

The unfortunate thing about all of this is that it is highly likely that official government-led multiculturalism has been involved and in large part responsible for this deleterious situation. Encouraging immigrants to the country to live within Canada as they did elsewhere, instead of insisting those same immigrants leave behind them the unwanted baggage that inspired them to leave their countries of origin to begin with.

Migration is usually undertaken out of necessity. Whether to obtain an upgraded social and financial and career advantage in another country that promises to advance such personal agendas, or to escape civil wars, or oppressive governments, people go elsewhere to find a better life for themselves and their families.

They will not find that better life by degrading the society, the culture, the values and politics of the receiving country.