TamilCanadian.com has contacted leaders of the other political parties and intends to conduct similar interviews with them pending their availability.

The following are excerpts from an interview.

Sarujan: Thank you Premier for taking the time to speak to TamilCanadian.com today.

Premier: It is my pleasure. Thank you.

Sarujan: In the first half of 2009 there were Tamil protests that filled the streets of University Street as well as Queens Park. During that time you came on public television and you indicated that you were understanding of the protesters and there was a debate in the house for a motion to be passed. It was not a popular decision at that time to support the protesters; you did it anyways. Some claimed it was a vote grab. What was the reason, why did you do that?

Premier: Well, I felt for Tamil Canadians living here in Ontario and I knew it was a difficult time for them and they had families, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, cousins and good friends who were caught up in violence and I thought if there is any country in the world where you should be able to give express to this concern; it ought to be Canada and surely must be inside my own province of Ontario. Besides that, the protests were peaceful and orderly and some people said that it well it’s creating an inconvenience. Mahatma Gandhi was a man of inconvenience, Martin Luther King Jr. Was a man of inconvenience, so I think it’s only right that we support people who find themselves in difficult circumstances, painful circumstances and who want to draw the world’s attention to something terrible that is happening in another part o the world and I think my responsibility as premier is to give expression to those good values and aspirations on the part of all Ontarians and that’s what I was doing. And I guess the other thing that made me a bit more personally kind of understanding this is you may know my daughter worked for years for Lanka just after the tsunami and she travelled the country a little bit and she fell in love with Sri Lanka. She very much enjoyed the experience there. So, it’s..We’re touched by what happens in Sri Lanka, we’re touched by the challenges faced by the Tamil community and that’s the way it should be; in Ontario we’re connected to every part of this globe and if somebody in another part of the world is hurting; we feel it. It is not an academic kind of exercise for us; we actually feel it; we have people here who are hurting. So when the Tamil community decided to they’re going to stand up and make a statement; I thought it was important for us to say “ You have every right to make that statement”. By the way, I am supporting you in that statement.

Sarujan: Thank you. A large reason part of why the protests happened was that the Tamil community felt that there were gross civilian deaths in Sri Lanka and that there were war-crimes being committed in SriLanka. So, they took it to the streets. Two years later, there has been a study released by the United Nations as well as a documentary by Channel 4 of UK that validate what these people went out to the streets for; that there appeared to be war crimes committed and that up to 40,000people may have been killed at the last stages of the war. While this is a federal issue and this is not a provincial issue- as an Ontarian how do you feel about Canada being fairly silent on this issue when countries like the United States have been more vocal even though Canada has the largest number of Sri Lankan Tamils outside of Sri Lanka?

Premier: I’m not going to speak to diplomatic relations and those kind of issues because that’s the responsibility of the federal government but I can always speak as premier of a province who is very proud of the Tamil Community presence here among Ontarians. There are outstanding concerns. Some very important and reliable objective information has been brought to light by the United Nations. I think civilised countries everywhere have a responsibility to take that into account when it comes into their dealings with Sri Lanka.

Sarujan: So, when the boat of about 500 Tamil refugee claimants came to the shores of British Columbia last year- there was quite bit of opposition by some- for these refugee claimants and while Canada has opened its door for hundreds of years; many felt that it was time that we closed these doors. [5.14 can’t understand]. A lot of these people have moved to Ontario or will be moving to Ontario- how do you feel about these refugee claimants coming here; do you think we should close our doors after having it open for so long?

Premier: I spoke out against the federal government’s position when it came to some of the language and some of the portrayals that they made of those people on those boats and I thought Canadians could be forgiven if they were under the impression that somehow these were all criminals and I recall how we had received- what were known as the “boat people” from Vietnam and I recall- I went to a funeral here in Ontario for a young man by the name of Vu Pham- he was a father of three beautiful boys- he was active in his church- active in sports for young people and he was killed in the line of duty as a police officer with the Ontario Provincial Police. He was a boat person. He came over here as a little boy- grew up here- became a police officer for us- and everyday he risked his life for us. So when we think about boat people- think about Vu Pham and what he did for us. He lost his life for us. So I think we need to be very careful about how we portray and how we caricature people who are coming here from other parts of the world. We are a country of great privilege. And my father taught me that when you are privileged- you have responsibility and I think we have got two special responsibilities:

First/One is to demonstrate to the world on a on-going basis that we are a place that proves that you can find strength in differences. We may be different but we get along because we have a lot more in common that by way of differences.

Second thing is that important to say to the world- if you need a safe place some place where you will be accepted and respected and supported- that’s what Canada is. Now- we can’t bring in everybody from all around the world every day- we simply couldn’t cope- there are some limitations. But the fact of the matter is that I wouldn’t be here speaking to you today as premier of Ontario, if 150 years ago or so my family had not been allowed here; we were very poor, we couldn’t speak English, we had no real education but we came here and we found opportunity and when we found it- then we worked hard to help build this country as well.

I think that’s one of the beautiful aspects of our country- this openness, this receptivity, this welcoming attitude that we’ve had. Now, when you come here – you got a job to do right; you have to work hard- you have to be honest- you have to raise your kids well- make sure they get a good education- you have to go to work, pay your taxes and help us build up our communities. That’s kind of the quid-pro-quo but I think we have to be very careful about sending a signal to the world that somehow we’re going to do an about-face as a country and no longer be welcoming to people who find themselves in times of need.

Sarujan: You spoke about strength in diversity- many people feel that similar to how having women in office have furthered women’s rights and have addressed some of the concerns, that we need to have a diverse group of people in office to address the multitude of challenges that Ontarians face, Canadians face and Torontonians face. In that light, during the federal election there were Tamil Candidates from the conservative party and NDP-The NDP candidate is now a MP and the Conservative candidate was very closet o winning. That time, many felt that the Liberal Party of Canada had taken for granted the Tamil Vote. Now we’re here at the provincial elections and there’s an NDP candidate and an Conservative candidate that is Tamil and there is no Tamil Liberal Candidate. Many have wondered why and wonder if the liberal party has taken the Tamil vote for granted.

Premier: Well-we have not and we’ll have to make sure that we do that next time. I am very proud of the relationship that we’ve had with the Tamil community both as a party, as a government and me personally. I am proud of the fact that my daughter spent a year working in Sri Lanka, I am proud of the statement that I made to help support the Tamil community in their time of need. I am proud of the financial support that we sent to Sri Lanka at the time of the post-tsunami cleanup that needed to be done there and the investment in new infrastructure and the like. IN an ideal world we would have representative of all our communities here at Queens Park. Maybe I should re=phrase that- it will be nice to have a representative of the Tamil community serving here at Queens Park and hopefully in the not-too distant future we will make that happen. But I think we have to be careful about assuming that only a Japanese Canadian can properly understand Japanese Canadian concerns and that only a woman can understand women’s concerns or only that a Tamil Canadian can understand Tamil Canadian concerns.

The honour of serving at Queens Park is that as elected- you have the responsibility and joy of representing everybody’s concerns. All the men, all the women, all the faiths, all the cultures, all the traditions, all the families. So, yes- we are going to keep working hard and I look forward to a day not too distant- future when we have Tamil Canadian who is running under the banner of the Ontario Liberal Party- Didn’t happen this time but I think most-Tamils will understand, if they check the record, and see the relationship we’ve had both me personally with the community and my government in terms of standing up for the community- I think they will recognize that- you’ve got somebody in there already fighting for the Tamils- he’s the Premier.

Sarujan: You’ve been in office for eight years- most of us when we been somewhere for two, three years especially after 8 years- you can look back and you can identify areas where you could of done something better. Is there any area that you feel that looking back- if you could do one thing differently- is there anything you would do?

Premier: Well- I am going to tell you a little story to answer that. When we we’re growing up- ten children at home it became obvious pretty early on to my father that his salary as a teacher was not going to be enough to feed all the family. So, we got into small enterprises ourselves. So, we shovelled snow, we cut grass- we sold firewood- we sold fruits and vegetables from a boat on a lake. We then began to buy small properties – fix them up and re-sell them. Then we bought a few properties and manage them together for the time being and then sell them. One of the things that my father did was that he decided that he was going to create a family motto for us and it was Latin and the family motto is”________________”. So one day I asked my dad “ What does that mean” and he said it means “Never Look Back”. So are there some things that I would probably preferred to have done differently? Yes. But I never spent any time looking back apart from drawing lessons and quickly turning to the future.

One of the lessons of the World Economy is: You’ve got to keep moving forward. If we stop to rest- the rest of the world continues to move forward. Another lesson of the global economy is you’re going to have to do some difficult things to grow stronger like adopt the HST, like re-build our electricity system. Not easy things to do and we try to manage all those in a way that are taken into account the concerns that families have. So we are discounting electricity bills by ten percent- every bill for example. We’ve cut income taxes by $350 for the average Ontario family. But those are the kinds of things we need to do together to grow stronger.

Sarujan: Thank you for your time Premier McGuinty. Is there any last words you would like tell the Tamil Canadians watching this?

Premier: It’s been an honour working with the Tamil Canadian Community. I am delighted to have your presence here in Ontario. I thank you for your commitment to public education. I know it’s so important- whenever I’ve had the chance to talk to moms and dads in the Tamil community- they’ll tell me how they understand- how important it is for their children to work and do well in school. Thanks for all the support that you’ve given us well to help us improve the quality of our Health Care system- every family needs more than good schools- they need good health care. You hope you don’t need it but if you do need it- you want to make sure it’s there for you! So, we’ve got better education, smaller classes, higher graduation rates, and health care, we’ve got more doctors, and the shortest wait times in the country now. That’s enabled us as a well educated population and a healthy population to strengthen our economy. Since January, we’ve created more jobs here in Ontario than we have in the rest of the country and that wealth is helping us support our schools and health care; it’s kind of a virtual circle. So, I couldn’t do that without the support of Ontarians as a whole and the Tamil Community in particular. So I am proud of the Tamil community, Proud that they’ve chosen Ontario, proud that they’re raising their families here, starting their businesses here, contributing to the quality of our life here for all of us.

Sarujan: Thank you for your time.

Premier: Pleasure- anytime!

Published on: Sep 11, 2011 4:23:35 GMT