The first days of January, 2005 — I was on an aircraft with the first 200 Canadians headed for the ampara district of Sri Lanka.
a wall of water traveling 500 miles an hour had just hit their coast. The television pictures were horrendous. The damage, immeasurable. The human carnage, unfathomable.
I remember thinking that day that the Canadian military’s DaRT group had been set up for failure by the politicians in Ottawa. The feel on the airplane amongst the Canadians was one of resignation: they were being sent to a world disaster. Paul Martin, the Prime Minister, and his ministers had waffled and waited, and had spoon-fed the Ottawa media. "Wrong people. antiquated equipment," they said.
The Canadians hit the ground running. They were people possessed. They became known as the Sri Lankan Navy, and moved 70,000 people across a river, where the bridge had been washed out.
They produced very close to 4,000,000 liters of water and got it to the people. Their doctors and nurses examined and treated over 7,000 individuals.
The Prime Minister of Canada visited Sri Lanka. The end result was a great photo op for him. Drinking water.
I can attest to one thing — the water was produced by the Canadian DaRT group. But you wouldn’t know it by the pictures or the stories shown back home. Canadian soldiers were to be left out of it entirely. and they were.
The leader who sent them, after waffling for a week, didn’t even bother to visit the DaRT headquarters in Sri Lanka.
a year later, as the world’s media goes back to do their anniversary reports, they are finding that the countries are in exactly the same state as they were a year ago. Politicians posturing, NGO’s talking about the future: housing, roads, schools and food.
Verbal commitments.
Nothing has changed. Billions of dollars out there somewhere, but the people still are with nothing.
It seems that the meager food that they had been allotted is going to be cut off in December. One man states the obvious: I live in a tent. I scrounge every day. My family is dead. I can’t say that I’ll be in a house soon, because they keep saying they’re going to build some housing for us. But they haven’t started yet. and really, we don’t know if they will.
So where is all the money? Our Prime Minister guaranteed $450 Million. The classic smoke and mirrors of CIDa, an agency of the government of Canada. The CIDa representative who met with the Canadian DaRT in the ampara district of Sri Lanka, in my mind, sits as the most arrogant human being I’ve ever met. Twelve thousand dead people — mostly children — in our area alone. and her anger is viciously aimed at the Canadian soldiers. It seems she doesn’t like soldiers. Or guns. Her immaculate white SUV sits as a symbol. It has anti-gun decals on it. She leaves the Canadian camp in disgust, and moves in with the americans.
So much for CIDa’s support.
Near the end of our stay, I went to interview the Canadian High Commissioner in Colombo, Sri Lanka. One hundred and thirty thousand people missing in her area of concern — but she was on vacation. Oh the party was great in the four-star hotel, complete with swimming pool.
Now, here we are a year later, and the people of the ampara district of Sri Lanka are in the exact same state they were when the Canadian DaRT group left. My mind goes back to a man lying on a carpet. His eyes closed. His arm outstretched. In his hand, a brick. Canadian Padre Jim Hardwicke kneeling beside him. He explains through the interpreter: the water, the ocean, took everything. His mother, his father, brothers and sisters. His wife and his family. and that he will soon walk down into the ocean to be with them.
I wonder if he took the good advice of Padre Jim Hardwicke and started to rebuild, and to help take care of his neighbours.
But that’s impossible, because the money guaranteed by the Prime Minister of Canada, and supposedly administrated by CIDa, has not arrived. It seems that Canadian government representatives are driving around in white SUV’s complete with the maple leaf, and making the same old promises. The future, long term. But there’s one thing for sure: the majority of Sri Lankans who lived along the ocean, are basically in the same shape they were in within weeks of the tsunami.
Just think of this ugly agency, CIDa. The smoke and mirrors of the bureaucracy in Ottawa and the tax money that the Prime Minister was talking about — one to one dollars — we’ll match every dollar given by Canadians with Canadian tax money. It was reported that the auditor General was complimentary towards CIDa. Obviously she never talked to the people in the ampara district.
So where is the money? Who’s got it? Why don’t the people it was intended for have it?
The DaRT group would have been happy to have just received the interest on the millions in the bank somewhere in Ottawa. They were refused money to buy simple things for the people — five horsepower pumps to pump out their wells; they’d already given out all the blue tarps that they had brought with them — we all know the ones: I call them Canadian Tire tarps. The people of Sri Lanka are still living under them.
In a story in the Globe and Mail, the journalist writes about all the graffiti on the buildings and walls: UNICEF, Care, United Nations. Oh the graffiti is there, but where the hell are they? The Canadian soldiers watched in disbelief as white SUV’s with drivers roared up and down the coastal highway with the UN flag and the UN logo in black letters on the doors. They were showing their UN presence, but they never stopped. In the end, the local people formed human barricades to stop these vehicles. The locals’ concern? The SUV’s were traveling at such a high speed, they were going to kill one of their precious children — the few that were left after the tsunami.
The government of Canada obviously gave CIDa the money that they collected from average Canadians. Our children broke their piggy banks, our schools and churches collected. average Canadians gave. Where the hell is that money? and why was it not used to help the Sri Lankans?
Common sense tells you that your best bet is to put your money where your people are, so that they can use it to help. Here we had 250 Canadians with the skill set, put together from across our country for precisely what had happened. Carpenters, heavy equipment operators, backhoe operators, bobcat operators, doctors, nurses, state-of-the-art water purification systems.
and CIDa — the Government of Canada — denied them discretionary spending money.
The anger — across the board — was palpable amongst the Canadian soldiers.
So here we are a year later, and the news coming from journalists is not good. Things have not changed that much. The coastal highway has not been repaired, and won’t be for years to come. The blue tarps are everywhere. The NGO’s, who seem to be able to find the cameras wherever they are, talk in terms of thousands of new houses to be built. Their air-conditioned SUV’s will not be far away. and the people realize they’re on their own — scavenging every day for scrap from the tsunami — that’s what they’ll use to build their futures. Not the dishonest pledges from countries far away.
Just the $40 million — the real money the Canadians gave, before Martin started to pledge government help — just that $40 million we gave — what good it could have done — with 250 committed Canadians working day and night.
But their hands were tied by CIDa when they refused discretionary spending money to the on-ground Canadian commanders.
The head of a refugee camp, Dr. Jill Sampson from BC said it best, " We’ve come up with a cheap shelter. Three dollars and 40 cents buys us the lumber to make the structure. The Canadian soldiers come over and put it together with one of their tarps. They’ve run out of tarps, and we’re running out of money. There are over 2,000 people in my camp now. and more arriving every day. and I believe they’re going to be here for a long time."
How right she was.
Canada Free Press columnist Garth Prtitchard, is an award-winning documentary filmmaker living in alberta.
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