Canadian Ethnic Media Association

The Tamil family is an “important family” in multicultural Toronto, Councillor Pam McConnell told a gathering of Tamil expatriats gathered to honour local Tamils who have excelled in various fields from academics to university studies and real estate and others such as OMNI-TV vice-president Madeline Ziniak for her work in multicultural broadcasting.

“We must pressure our federal government to make sure it speaks up and pushes for the fighting in Sri Lanka to stop,”Ms. McConnell said. “We must alsopush Ottawa to help the Tsunami victims in Sri Lanka many of whom are still suffering.” (more…)

By Zuhair Kashmeri

CEMA Webmaster & Editor

Gone are the days when the Metro Toronto police force had fewer than 3 per cent of visible minorities, leaving crime in the ethnic communities unsolved and serving newcomers to Canada far less than the majority communities. (Click photo to enlarge, then back to return to article.)

Today, says police chief Bill Blair, “Our number for visible minority police officers is close to 17 per cent… and we have officers representing just about every [minority] community and language group… Believe me it has helped us solve a lot of crimes because they understand the language, the culture, the little nuances that are important for police work.” (more…)

In view of the growing number of murders, acts of violence, unjust incarcerations and punitive censorship of journalists throughout the world, the Canadian Ethnic Media Association (CEMA) expresses its alarm at this increase of actions against freedom of thought, speech and publication.

While declaring common cause with the rights organizatons monitoring this alarming situation, CEMA also stresses the need for a free press education campaign in the countries concerned, given the literacy and education level of most of these countries, as outlined later in this statement. (more…)

By Zuhair Kashmeri

CEMAWebmaster and Editor

SailorJones Media has launched an interactive website inthe German, Italian and Chinese languages for The Fundamental Freedoms Project athttp://www.charterofrights.ca/ and http://www.chartesdesdroits.ca/.

It launched the English and French sites in June 2006. The six additional languages planned for production include: Spanish, Inukitut, Cree, Polish, Portuguese and Punjabi.

Although Punjabi is a South Asian language, missing in the list are Hindi and Urdu, the two predominant languages from South Asia, which is now the No. 1 source of immigrants to Canada. One would have thought that these two languages would have taken priority over the two European languages in the current launch, given that immigration from the European Union countries to Canada has virtually dried up! (more…)

The first speaker in our 2007 Speaker Series, Armand LaBarge, chief of police for the GTAs York Region (population 900,000) fascinated members with his well-detailed outline of police services in the region that stretches from east to the west north of Toronto.

His talk focused on diversity in a growing multicultural region.La Barge was accompanied by Staff Sergeant Ricky S. Veerappan (born in South Africa) and Constable Paul Chiang (born in Pakistan), both of whom joined in the lengthy Q and A session following the chiefs address.

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Two longtime CEMA members passed away recently, and CEMA sends its heartfelt condolences to the families of both. The two are Dr. George Korey Krzeczowski and Ken Mori.

Dr. Krzeczowski, author, poet and founder of the Canadian School of Management. Born in Kielce, Poland in 1921, he was educated at universities in Poland and Germany and in

1974 received a diploma in educational management at Harvard. He authored more than 100 economic studies, 14 volumes of poetry in Polish, three volumes in English and the autobiographical Navigators Can, published in 2003.

Mr. Mori, founder and editor of The New Canadian, a pioneer post-war newspaper in Japanese. A longtime member of CEMA, Ken retired with the sale of the paper in the 1980s. It ceased publication some years ago.