Sgro Goes

A pizza succeeds where strippers failed...Toronto Star:

Sgro's decision to step aside came only hours after the Toronto Star obtained a copy of an affidavit in which pizza shop owner Harjit Singh claims Sgro pressed him to supply food and workers for her campaign last spring. Singh, a father of three facing deportation from Canada, alleges in the sworn affidavit filed in the Federal Court of Canada in Toronto yesterday that when word of his arrangement with Sgro started to leak out, Sgro suddenly reneged on the deal and last month ordered his arrest and removal from Canada "to save her job."

[...]

It was recently revealed Alina Balaican, a 25-year-old stripper from Romania, was granted a ministerial permit to stay in Canada after she volunteered on Sgro's election campaign. Balaican's husband has told the Star that people with immigration problems flocked to Sgro's campaign office during the election. Sgro's problems are the focus of an investigation by federal ethics commissioner Bernard Shapiro, who is probing claims that she dispensed favours to Singh and Balaican and allegations that she had senior advisers doing campaign work while on the government payroll.

Not much fear that this development will affect the special trips of Canadian immigration officials to recruit Librano supporters in northern Sri Lanka.

[deputy foreign minister] Mr. Warnapala suggested that Tamils have already disproportionately taken "full advantage" of Canada's immigration system.

Protocol demands that he bite his tongue when Prime Minister Paul Martin visits Sri Lanka next week, he said. But, if asked, he will express his government's point of view that Tamils have been extended special preference because of "pressure groups associated with the LTTE operating in Canada, particularly in Toronto and Scarborough."

[...]

Militant expatriate Tamils are aggressively lobbying Canadian officials, he said, and Ottawa should be careful not to interlope into divisive political issues at a delicate time.

Jim Karygiannis, a Liberal MP from Scarborough, is in the northern part of Sri Lanka on a self-directed mission to ensure that aid is being distributed there.

While not taking anyone to task in particular, Mr. Warnapala said it would be wrong for outsiders to become embroiled in the internal politics of his country. The two have made attempts to put aside their differences during the tsunami crisis.

"We don't want people to interfere and upset the balance we have created in the last 13 days. We don't want anybody to make political capital out of that," he said.

Most of Canada's 200,000-plus Tamil population fled the war between the Sinhalese-dominated government forces and the LTTE.