Statement from the office of Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree on July 14 in response to questions about two letters the MP wrote to the Canada Border Services Agency in 2016 and 2023 in support of Senthuran Selvakumaran, a Sri Lankan citizen who had applied to immigrate to Canada but was denied on the grounds he had been a member of the Tamil Tigers.
It would be inappropriate to comment on any specific matters that remain before the courts. That said, there are important matters to clarify. As Minister, I have never sent a letter seeking Ministerial relief in an immigration matter. When I was appointed Minister in July 2023, I instructed my constituency staff to no longer provide such letters. The letters in question here date from before I entered Cabinet. Some important context on that. My office in Scarborough-Guildwood-Rouge Park handles hundreds of immigration matters annually, over 9,000 since I was elected in 2015. That is the nature of representing a diverse riding in the country’s largest city. That a constituent, a Canadian citizen, with a Canadian child, would want to reunite her family in Canada is not unusual. And we have created processes by which people can challenge administrative decisions. MPs from all parties provide letters of support for constituents as a routine matter. As a Tamil Canadian, active for decades in my community, I have faced innuendo and whisper campaigns that question my allegiances to Canada. Those are scurrilous and wrong. I am a proud Canadian and proud of my Tamil heritage. I denounce terrorism in all its forms. I decided one way to deal with these allegations was to recuse myself from any decisions related to the listing process under the Anti-Terrorism Act for the Tamil Tigers (LTTE), or the World Tamil Organization. In the discharge of my duties as Minister, I cannot, and will not, make decisions on any matter wherein I advocated for a constituent. This includes Ministerial relief and stays of removals. And I have already placed a screen to recuse myself from matters that involve the two listed entities mentioned above. The questions sent to me by Global News infer something that no other Minister has to face: their premise is that I somehow support a terrorist organization and would make decisions that would favour a terrorist organization. That is false.
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