Canada polls: Indian-origin candidates mired in scandals

TORONTO:THE nastiness that often characterises an election in India appears to have seeped into the campaign to form the government in Canada’s largest province, as a couple of controversies surrounding Indo-canadian candidates behaving badly have taken centrestage.

The scandals plaguing the election process in Ontario are emerging from one prominent riding (as constituencies are called in Canada) – Brampton East, in a township in the suburbs of Toronto. Among the high-profile candidates here is Gurratan Singh, brother of Jagmeet Singh, the federal leader of the New Democratic Party (NDP).

Gurratan made an appearance on the front page of the Toronto Sun, for all the wrong reasons. It was a photograph of his from 2006, participating in a demonstration while holding a sign reading “F**k the Police”.

As his party faced serious blowback, he issued a pubic apology, stating it was something he was “now deeply ashamed of”.

His brother leapt to Gurratan’s defence: “It’s something that happened 12 years ago. My brother’s absolutely embarrassed by that, (he has) apologised unequivocally.” While most candidates would have been dismissed for such a transgression, provincial party leader Andrea Horwath has retained Gurratan.

Elections in Ontario matter in Canada in the way that results in Uttar Pradesh do in India. As the NDP loses traction over this controversy, earlier it was the Progressive Conservatives that suffered from another scandal out of Brampton East.

That involved Simmer Sandhu, the party’s then candidate. He had to step aside after his former employer, 407 Express Toll Route, complained there had been “internal theft of customer data”. That data may have been used for the party’s nomination contests, across several ridings and is now the subject of a police investigation. Sandhu has maintained his innocence, calling the allegations “totally baseless”.

Jagdish Grewal, publisher and editor of Ontario’s sole Punjabi language newspaper, Punjabi Post, said this scandal had “major a ripple effect” across the province in impacting the PC Party’s prospects. Similarly, he felt, the Gurratan Singh photo could have an “effect” on the overall chances of the NDP.