Ontario PC candidate’s backers used leaked police records in smear
Riding winner denies being part of campaign
Supporters of a Progressive Conservative candidate in the last Ontario election helped run a smear campaign against a party rival using leaked police documents, with the politician’s business partner caught on video mailing out the records, a watchdog agency has revealed.
The latest report on the incident from Ontario’s Office of the Independent Police Review Director ( OIPRD) serves up more startling details of the law- enforcement- aided scheme, including the involvement of people around Tory candidate Harjit Jaswal.
Jaswal — who denies taking part in the campaign to discredit Nick Gahunia — lost the race for Brampton Centre to New Democrat Sara Singh by just 89 votes in the June 2018 election.
He had won the constituency’s Conservative nomination after the party pulled Gahunia from the running at the last minute, citing the police documents.
The report says Jaswal’s then- real estate partner, Sukh Toor, admitted to mailing out the packages and knew the officer who obtained the documents. But Toor told investigators he picked up the packages from Jaswal’s campaign office and had no idea what was in them.
Jaswal, who also ran in the 2014 Ontario election and is a former regional director of the PC Ontario Fund, reiterated in a brief interview this week that “I had nothing to do with this.”
Asked if Toor could have been acting on his own, the former PC candidate said “I have no idea what you are talking about. ... You can ask Mr. Toor, not me. I cannot speak on behalf of other people.”
Toor could not be reached for comment.
A spokeswoman for Conservative Premier Doug Ford said Ford would not comment on the matter, referring questions to the PC party. Party spokesman Marcus Mattinson also said he couldn’t comment as the matter is “not yet settled before the courts.” He did say that Ford expects candidates to “act with the highest level of integrity.”
The smear operation has now resulted in disciplinary charges against one Toronto police officer and a recommended charge against another. OIPRD says then- Const. Amarjit Mann, who was on long- term medical leave, asked Det.- Const. Soon Lum to access the internal police documents for him, before they were distributed to various community members in Brampton.
Mann resigned from the force last month, meaning a Police Services Act charge cannot proceed against him, says the report, a copy of which was obtained by National Post.
Toronto police conducted a “full criminal investigation” into the matter but “based on available evidence, no criminal charges were laid,” said spokeswoman Connie Osborne.
“Any leak of information or records is a clear breach of protocol and procedures and the service takes these matters extremely seriously,” she added.
Gahunia, meanwhile, has sued the Toronto force and others for $12 million, accusing them of thwarting the democratic process.
“Me and my family are disgusted and traumatized by this whole experience, especially when the names of people behind my take-down are slowly coming out,” he said this week about the latest revelations.
Gahunia, a law- school graduate, was the riding association president in Brampton Centre and believes he had the inside track on the actual nomination, while polls suggested the Conservative candidate would have had a good chance of winning the riding.
But packages containing copies of Peel Regional Police reports on two encounters he had with officers — one when he was just 18 — were mailed to community members and some media just before the nomination election in April 2018. A day before the election, the party disqualified him.
Peel police later issued a letter indicating Gahunia has no criminal record.
Toronto Police charged Lum last year with accessing the records — from a database that allows police to obtain documents from other forces — at the behest of another officer. The identity of that officer, and who was behind the operation, has been kept under wraps until now.
The latest OIPRD report said security video from a Shoppers Drug Mart store in Brampton indicates the packages were mailed from there by Toor, who was both Jaswal’s business partner at the time and helping on the campaign.
He initially denied to OIPRD investigators that he had anything to do with the packages. But when Toronto police carried out a criminal investigation last year, Toor “contradicted” the earlier statement and admitted he had been the mailer, the report said.
But Toor said he simply picked up the parcels from an outgoing mail tray in Jaswal’s campaign office, with staff telling him they contained voter lists, according to OIPRD.
He also said of Mann, “I know him well and he knows me well,” and that Mann’s wife was the accountant for two of the partners’ companies, said the report. But he denied having received the confidential police records from the officer.
Whoever instigated the scheme, it was months in the planning.
Lum told investigators that Mann asked him in January of 2018 to check for any records regarding Gahunia. He found some, eventually printed them out and handed them to the other officer that February, the report says. When asked, Mann indicated they were for police business, Lum told OIPRD.
As investigators closed in late last year, Mann “begged” Lum not to reveal his involvement, the report says. OIPRD says there’s no evidence that Lum knew how the records would eventually be used.
The agency says it tried to interview Mann while he was still a Toronto officer, but the force said it could not order him to do so since he was on medical leave. His lawyer told OIPRD last October he was unable to attend an interview because of his medical condition, the report said.