Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the members for Scarborough—Agincourt, Scarborough—Guildwood and Mississauga East—Cooksville.
I had the pleasure of visiting Sri Lanka twice. The first time was for a conference, but the second time I led an all-party parliamentary delegation to Sri Lanka as the chair of the Canada-Sri Lanka Parliamentary Association right after the tsunami, both to view the disaster of the tsunami and to ensure that moneys were actually going into reconstruction areas, but also to push for peace. In negotiations at the time there was still a ceasefire.
We met with the government representatives of all the parties involved as well as the LTTE in the one area we visited. In the landmines area we spoke to a lot of people. Unfortunately, I have to say that I came away from that visit convinced that neither side was interested in peace. That was what I drew from that visit. That is what I got from a lot of the discussions and meetings. The military solution, of course, which is what ensued, that lack of interest in the peace discussion, is what we have today which is the horrible humanitarian crisis which has trapped some 240,000 people in an area that they cannot get out of at the moment, but also, the many people it has injured, maimed and killed.
Canada was very active in putting forward and fighting for what is called responsibility to protect, which is a declaration of the UN now. It is something that we need to act on to protect the people. That was put in place to protect people and states that are not able to protect their own citizens. To some degree, this is happening in Sri Lanka today. I would hope that the Sri Lankan government would allow the United Nations to come in and work with it.
According to the Human Rights Watch report, on the one hand the LTTE refused the movement of civilians, but the Sri Lankan government has also contributed to the risk by detaining those who have managed to flee LTTE areas, including families in militarized detention camps, thereby denying them freedom of movement. This is wrong and it should stop. The freedom of movement of these people and the protection of the vulnerable is fundamental.
It is the government's duty to provide safety to all citizens but also to ensure journalists and human rights defenders the freedom of movement to seek out the truth. This has been denied and this is something that we must change, and it needs to happen very quickly.
Again, close to 250,000 people whose lives are at stake at the moment seem to be abandoned and they are crying out to all of us. So I call on both parties to respect the safe zones, to respect the safe areas, and to respect the non-military attack of medical facilities, schools and so on. They need to respect humanitarian and international law. It is extremely critical and we need to demand that this happen at all cost.
Humanitarian aid must reach those in need and there needs to be an immediate ceasefire with international monitors put in place to ensure that it is respected. The UN should appoint a special representative to monitor the ceasefire and also to start the peace talks immediately.
The challenges facing Sri Lanka cannot be resolved by military activities but through political action. This must include, obviously, a dialogue on the kind of government, the sharing of power, possibly a federal system as Canada has, or something similar, but certainly sharing of power needs to happen. The agreement also needs to include the recognition of plurality and minority rights.
Canada has a major role to play in this crisis. We have a large Sri Lankan diaspora in Canada, who together in partnership with the government should be and will be involved. So I, too, call on our government to take leadership in this case, to go to Sri Lanka, to start the talks, to push and to aggressively take action. It has been too long and we have waited far too long.
It is time that the Government of Canada be aggressive on this issue with the United Nations. The Security Council of the UN should also be involved. We call on both sides to a ceasefire immediately and to start talking about a political solution because without that there is no solution, and Sri Lanka violence will continue even if the government succeeds in its objective with the military at the end of the day.