A Sri Lankan Tragedy in Canada’s Capital

by Rajan Philips

Mass killings are rare in Canada and Sri Lankans living overseas have never been victims of mass killings anywhere. Both truisms were shattered last week when six Sri Lankans comprising four children, their mother, and a family friend were brutally killed by another Sri Lankan teenager in Barrhaven, Ottawa. All of them had migrated to Canada within the last four years, intended beneficiaries of Canada’s immigration expansion program, especially its large intakes of international students, and now hapless victims of its unintended fallouts. The reactions in Canada at every level including media reporting have been supportive and empathetic.

Recent Sri Lankan immigrants are a tiny trickle in the wave of multinational immigrants, mostly arriving as students aspiring to be permanent residents, and mostly from India. The Barrhaven tragedy has made them the face of what happens when migrant stories totally go off script. They are hardly on script anyway, but people struggle, survive and manage to make a success of their migrant ventures.

That was not to be for the family of Danushka Wickramasinghe, his wife Dilanthika (nee Ekanayake), and their four children – all under seven years with the youngest being a two month old baby. Mr. Wickremasinghe was the first to migrate to Canada in 2021, and was followed by his wife and their three children in 2023. The youngest was born in Canada. The assailant, 19 year old Febrio De-Zoysa, had arrived in Canada in 2022, and his other victim 40 year old Gamini Amarakoon was another newcomer.

As is usually the case, the Wickremesinghe couple and the two other men in this tragedy were not known to one another in Sri Lanka, but their paths crossed in their new country and their new City. The meeting place may have been the Hilda Jayewardenaramaya Buddhist Monastery in Ottawa. The cultural incentives for mutual help and support would seem to have led to Amarakoon and De-Zoysa becoming boarders in the townhouse that that Wickramasingha had rented for his family. What provoked De-Soyza to kill four children and their mother who gave him shelter is still unknown.

A plausible explanation that has been suggested is the teenager’s alleged addiction to playing video games with a violent content; and self-imposed isolation from family members according to an aunt in Ottawa who appears to the only relative of De-Zoysa to have been identified in media reports. According to the Ottawa Citizen, De-Zoysa was known for posting videos of the video game Minecraft on YouTube. His YouTube account has now been taken down. A spokesperson for Google, which owns YouTube, has reportedly said: “Following the tragic attack in Ottawa, our Trust and Safety team identified and terminated a YouTube channel associated with the suspect in accordance with our creator responsibility guidelines. If a user’s off-platform behaviour harms the YouTube community, we may take action.”

Google’s action is too late for the Wickremesinghe family especially the extended families in their natal country. The opinion about the correlation between videogames and violent behaviour is quite divided, just as it was with comic books, the 1950s precursor to today’s videogames. Especially violent comic books that were accused for potentially fomenting juvenile delinquency. It is safe to assume that social and personal circumstances also play a significant role in individuals’ addiction to playing video games and their vulnerability to violent provocations. Only a court trial would tell us what actually drove De-Zoysa to isolate himself, get addicted to video games, and finally pounce on the family who was helping him. And only if he were to be deemed fit to stand trial.

Immigrant Students

All three men arrived in Canada with student visas that also allowed them to work. But their studies were interrupted because of the necessity to work in order to live, let alone study. In the case of Danushka Wickremesinghe, he is reported to have completed his studies and obtained a work permit. He began working as an Uber driver and also started a cleaning business along with his friend Amarakoon. De-Zoysa, on the other hand, had dropped out of Algonquin College where he was enrolled. Following his arrest after the killings, the College released a statement confirming that De-Zoysa was a student at the college and that “it appears his last semester of attendance was winter 2023.” That would have been the end of April in 2023.

What is common to all three men is that they are all beneficiaries of Canada’s immigration expansion policy with a heavy focus on international visa students. The latter cohort of immigrants has exploded in numbers over the last decade – from 500,000 in 2015 to nearly a million of them by 2024. The underlying policy rationale is that immigration is the new impetus for economic growth in western countries with ageing and declining populations, and getting them young as students would better integrate them into the host societies. Canada is a popular destination for immigrants in general and for international students in particular. India and China lead the tally among immigrant students with 34% and 22%, while everyone else is under five percent. Sri Lanka, as I noted, is a tiny trickle.

But what might be economic rationality, if not social altruism, at the policy level, has also become a target for cynical exploitation and a source of immigrant frustration as well as national uproar at the implementation level. First, Canada is currently in a housing crunch, and the influx of international students has both exacerbated the housing shortage and contributed to steep increases in rental. While carefully avoiding any blame being directed at the immigrants, the federal government is now tightening up visa requirements and cutting back on immigration targets.

The fault really lies with the provincial governments which are responsible both for education and for housing. Quite cynically, they have found in international visa students a source of funding to subsidize post-secondary education, and cut back on government grants to universities and colleges. In the province of Ontario, the government has placed a cap on the tuition fees of domestic students and forced the universities and colleges to turn to international student fees to makeup for the shortfalls. The worst outcome has been the mushrooming of fly-by-night colleges and their overseas recruiting agents. Thousands of students are sucked into Canada by these vultures and left to face disillusionment and depression.

At the aggregate economic level, the contribution of international students is very impressive. According to Canadian government figures for 2022, the annual economic contribution of international students was $22.3 billion, greater than exports of auto parts, lumber or aircraft. That is quite a claim and is hardly reflected in the experiences of immigrant students or the host communities where they predominantly live.

The economic figures also fly in the face of ethical concerns and abusive practices. A majority of students have difficulty in paying student fees and get into unmanageable debts. Many of them give up school and join the work force at minimal wages. Suicides of visa students are not uncommon. A whole third of the visa students have been found to be not attending school and end up victims of scams promising permanent residency status and spousal employment. Among the large Indian community in Canada, there have been reports of tensions between resident Indians and the new student arrivals from India, with the latter accused of “stealing jobs” and “causing violence.”

Immigrants and visa students from Sri Lanka may be spared of some of the harsher realities of early immigrant life in Canada, because of their smaller numbers and sources of community support. Barrhaven is a fast growing suburb of Ottawa, and was formerly a part of the Municipality of Nepean where Algonquin College is also located. The Wickramasinghe family would appear to have been finding a foothold to stabilize themselves in Canada. The first two children were attending a local Catholic school. The father seemed to be gainfully self-employed, and the mother was looking forward to her own studies, and the arrival, next year, of her children’s grandmother from Polgahawela, Sri Lanka. Their tragedy seems to be the result of a randomly maniacal act of a young man who needed more help than what his unsuspecting hosts could have ever provided.