Mr. Speaker, I have in fact met on many occasions with representatives from the Tamil community.
While watching the final days of the civil war in Sri Lanka, we saw the Sri Lankan government prohibit international journalists as well as the Red Cross from entering the country. We heard stories of war crimes and atrocities, including the use of phosphorus bombs and the bombing of hospitals. We heard of extrajudicial killings. In fact, recently there has been some authenticated film footage showing summary executions of Tamils taking place on the side of the road by regular Sri Lankan army officials. It was a bit of a glimpse into the seriousness of the problems that had happened in that country.
Then we had the two boats which came carrying refugees from that war-torn country. We have to put this in perspective. We had slightly over 500 people come to these shores. It is a country of 34 million people, the second largest country in the world by land mass. There is no reason for people to jump to knee-jerk reactions because we had 500 people come to our shores from a civil war. That represented less than 2% of the entire refugee claimants of that year.
Earlier my friend from the government side said that we had let in 34,000 refugees last year. That is 10,000 visas fewer than were issued five years ago. Therefore, the trend is getting worse, not better.