Canadian PM backs Public Safety Minister over letters supporting Sri Lankan’s immigration case

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has expressed confidence in Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree following a report that Anandasangaree, prior to becoming a minister, wrote letters supporting the immigration application of Senthuran Selvakumaran, a Sri Lankan man barred from Canada due to alleged affiliation with the Tamil Tigers. 

Anandasangaree, who denies Selvakumaran’s affiliation claims, stated he was acting as an MP for a constituent and has since recused himself from Sri Lanka-related matters as minister.

Carney has expressed confidence in Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree after a report that, before he became a minister, he supported an immigration application from a Sri Lankan whom federal officials had barred from entering Canada.

While he was parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Justice, Mr. Anandasangaree wrote to the Canada Border Services Agency supporting an application to overturn a decision not to let Senthuran Selvakumaran, a constituent’s husband, into the country.

Canadian immigration officials had denied Mr. Selvakumaran entry after determining that he may have been affiliated with the militant Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), also known as the Tamil Tigers.

Mr. Anandasangaree asked the CBSA if it would review its decision to advise the public safety minister not to grant Mr. Selvakumaran permanent residence in Canada to enable him to join his wife and child who live in his riding. The Liberal MP wrote two letters in support of his case in 2016, as well as in 2023, when he was parliamentary secretary.

Mr. Selvakumaran had previously told British immigration authorities that he had been involved with the Tamil Tigers, a proscribed terrorist organization in Britain and Canada, a claim he denied when he applied to come to Canada to join his wife in Toronto.

His Canadian lawyer said that he had been advised by a British lawyer to falsely say that he had been linked to the militant group while making an asylum claim there. British authorities denied his asylum claim and he had to leave the country.

In the July, 2023, letter to the CBSA, Mr. Anandasangaree said his constituent Nilushie had married Mr. Selvakumaran in 2005 but they had spent “most of their nearly 18 years of marriage separated from each other, relentlessly striving to be reunited.”

“Senthuran’s claims of affiliation to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) was erroneously made when he sought asylum in the United Kingdom in 1998 to escape the growing conflicts in Sri Lanka. He was wrongfully counseled by his legal representative to lie,” Mr. Anandasangaree’s letter said.

“However, his claims were found lacking credibility, and the UK Refugee Tribunal had established that Senthuran did not have any affiliations to the LTTE. This is consistent with Senthuran’s position all along.”

In a statement, Mr. Anandasangaree said his 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,” he said. “MPs from all parties provide letters of support for constituents as a routine matter, including in Ministerial Review cases.”

Mr. Carney, asked at a press conference Wednesday about Mr. Anandasangaree’s intervention in the immigration case, said he “is being transparent about the details of that situation, and he has my confidence.”

Mr. Anandasangaree’s intervention in the immigration case was first reported by Global News.

Toronto immigration lawyer Lorne Waldman, a member of Mr. Selvakumaran’s legal team, said “numerous MPs” write letters on behalf of their constituents on immigration cases and there was “nothing unusual” about Mr. Anandasangaree doing so.

“What he did, on the contrary, was trying to help a constituent who felt herself in a very difficult situation,” Mr. Waldman said.

After Mr. Selvakumaran was denied entry by the Immigration Department, his lawyers applied for the public safety minister at the time to review the decision, asking for him to be allowed to join his wife here through “ministerial relief.” The minister upheld the decision to deny him entry to Canada.

Mr. Selvakumaran then launched a court challenge of that decision but his case was dismissed in the Federal Court in a judgment earlier this month.

Mr. Anandasangaree, who was born in Sri Lanka, was named Public Safety Minister in May by Mr. Carney, and the CBSA now reports to him.

He has recused himself from dealing with matters relating to Sri Lanka, including about the Tamil Tigers, which fought in a protracted civil war against Sri Lankan government forces in a bid to create an independent state.

“As a Tamil Canadian, active for decades in my community, I have long faced innuendo and whisper campaigns that question my allegiance 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,” Mr. Anandasangaree said in an e-mail.

“When I was appointed Minister of Public Safety, 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, or the World Tamil Organization.”

He said that since becoming a minister he has not sent a letter seeking ministerial relief on 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,” he added.

--Agencies