We would firstly like to thank the Canadian Government and the generous hearted Canadian people for their magnanimous contribution to alleviate the mass suffering of those affected by the recent tsunami tidal waves in the Indian Ocean region.

It goes without saying that the Canadian Government and the International Charitable Organizations would and should deliver their disaster relief aid in an equitable manner in Sri Lanka and other affected countries to which the aid is destined. The Prime Minister took a great deal of pain to assure the Canadian Tamil groups at a meeting held in Scarborough on the 3rd of January, 2005, that he would ensure such an arrangement in respect of Canadian aid, and further added that a Tamil National Alliance parliamentarian in Sri Lanka and Canada's High Commissioner to Sri Lanka had intimated that relief supplies were reaching the north and east of the island. The ICRC and other aid agencies too have also confirmed the delivery of necessities by them, despite difficult road conditions in that region.

It was the pro-Tamil Tiger lobby in Canada that earlier painted a false picture stating that areas in the north and east controlled by the LTTE were the worst hit with a higher number of deaths and massive displacement, which warranted special aid to be urgently directed specifically to this region to be distributed by the LTTE's fundraising arm called the Tamil Rehabilitation Organization (TRO). The TRO has failed to gain charity status in Canada, and according to the intelligence services it is a conduit for channeling funds to the LTTE's war machine. Although the pro-LTTE lobby speaks of the north and east of Sri Lanka as being under their control, the democratically elected government is in control of the Jaffna peninsula in the north and a larger area of the eastern province where the Tamils number around 33 percent of the total population. The LTTE controls a sparsely populated swath of the Vanni jungles in Mullaitivu, Kilinochchi, and the Vavuniya districts, and a few isolated pockets in the eastern province.

The rest of the Canadian Sri Lankan community made up of the Sinhalese, Moors, Malays and Burghers at no stage sought exclusive aid for their respective communities, but in fact raised monetary and material donations to be distributed to the affected persons irrespective of ethnicity, religion or other background, through the Dharmavijaya Foundation which is the largest charity having 454 branches, adquate manpower and experience in disaster relief. Whilst the north and east was ravaged by the tsunami tidal wave, the densely populated south and south west was equally affected with a larger number becoming displaced by the destruction of their homes.

Reliable sources in Colombo have informed us that for every truck load of disaster relief sent to the south, a truck load each was shipped to the north and east as well, and there was not an iota of discrimination in the relief effort on the part of the people in the south. However, the Tamil Tigers had blocked relief aid sent from the south to regions under their control in order to handle it themselves, and make it appear as though the LTTE was looking after the tsunami victims. They have also torched a refugee centre in the northern Jaffna peninsula where the relief aid was being delivered by the Sri Lankan army.

In conclusion, we would like to once again focus on the Toronto region where the Tamil community have reported their number to Andrew Chung and Sonia Verma of the Toronto Star at 70,000, whereas hitherto they claimed their strength to be in excess of 200,000 with approximately 75,000 said to have attended their "Pongu Thamil Rally" held in the city in September 2004. We sure hope that the tsunami waves which hit South East Asia have not in any way claimed victims in the Toronto region.