Today, we join Tamil communities across Canada in celebrating the start of Tamil Heritage Month.
The first Tamils arrived in Canada in 1983, through government measures and policies aimed at helping people flee the decades-long armed conflict in Sri Lanka. For more than 40 years, Tamil communities have helped build the Canada we know today through their courage and social commitment. From politics and health care to entrepreneurship and the arts, Tamil communities continue to enrich our society with their excellence and resilience.
As we celebrate this month, we must also remember that people of Tamil descent still face many systemic barriers. To that end, we recently launched the first-ever Action Plan on Combatting Hate and anti-racism strategy to address these barriers.
