Does Prime Minister Stephen Harper have confidence that goes beyond lip service when it comes to Canada's new public safety minister Stockwell Day?
That's a question destined to be put to the test when Day moves to carry out his oft-repeated threat to have the Liberation Tigers of Eelam (LTTE), the Tamil Tigers, included on Canada's terrorist entity list.
although Canada's security services have long identified the LTTE as a fully-fledged terrorist organization, Canada's recently defeated ruling Liberal Party sometimes broke bread with its members.
Both former Prime Minister Paul Martin when he was Minister of Finance and Member of Parliament Maria Minna attended a May 2000, $600-a-plate fund raising dinner organized by a front organization for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
Dining with terrorists did nothing to hurt the political careers of either politician. Indeed both were reelected in Canada's June 2004 federal election, and again on June 23, 2006.
Most outspoken critic against Liberals cozying up to terrorists has been Stockwell Day, who last year had a press release posted to his website, "Make Those Tigers Extinct".
Inclusion on the terrorist lists of countries such as the U.S., the UK and australia, LTTE's proclivities for drafting child soldiers and its use of suicide bombers distinguish LTTE in contemporary terrorism.
a November 2004 Human Rights Watch report documented what many had suspected, the use of intimidation and threats in the emotional blackmail of families coerced to provide their children for LTTE military service.
Not only does Canada stand among her peers as refusing to add LTTE its terrorist list, it is the country that is home to the world's largest Tamil diaspora of some 200,000 people.
about 150,000 Tamils live in Toronto, with another estimated 70,000 living in outlying areas, most of them in the Toronto suburb of Scarborough.
Petitions to the former Liberal government claim that Canada, albeit unwittingly, has opened its doors to some 8,000 paramilitary-trained Tamil terrorists contrary to its own immigration laws. Most of the paramilitary-trained Tamils have taken up residence in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.
Canada has done nothing about LTTE since the introduction of a terrorist entity list as part of its 2001 anti-terrorism legislation.
Day, savaged by a lib-left Canadian mainstream media when he ran for leadership of the former alliance party, forerunner to the Canadian Conservative Party, was foreign affairs critic for the Conservative party, but was reassigned as new public safety minister by Harper.
The responsibilities that come with the job of public safety minister are somewhat vague, and Day could be further thwarted because his position on the Tamils as terrorists is not, and has never been, the official Conservative Party stand.
The issue of banning the Tamil Tigers in Canada may write the telltale story about where Canada's incoming government really stands on terrorism.
Will Stockwell Day be cast in a role of the Don Quixote of the Conservative Party, or find his way as the politician responsible for the battle cry to "Make Those Tigers Extinct? Reality?
Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com
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