In Canadian cities, such as Toronto, we also see such a cultural mosaic, but it's broken and there's no unifying sense of "Canadian-ness". Too many, if not most, immigrants put the old country ahead of the host country. Most of them even refuse to learn English and keep to themselves in their respective ghettos - ghettos they themselves have created, not ones into which they were forced by the local, Canadian, population.

A case in point is the community of Tamils in Toronto. In the early 1980s, Canada's then-Liberal government opened the floodgates to immigrants and refugees from Sri Lanka. Toronto is now the city with the largest number of Tamils in the world. The problems back in the old country, Sri Lanka, are indeed quite severe, with a civil war raging on and on. It is only now that the civil war between the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tigers (LTTE) is finally drawing to a close.

There is absolutely no doubt that people have suffered and continue to suffer over there. Even though the Tigers are a terrorist organization, one also has to recognize the inhumane treatment the Sri Lankan government has meted out to the Tamil minority for decades. Still, all the suffering, hardship and rights violations in Sri Lanka notwithstanding, none of that changes anything about the terrorist nature of LTTE. Unfortunately, it must be assumed that members and supporters of LTTE make up a high percentage of those who have found their way to Canada. The civilian population, the ones who suffer the greatest adversity, and have often been used as expendable pawns by the Tigers, are not usually the ones capable of emigrating.