Convicted gunman at budget speech
Complaint filed after invitation- only event
A formal complaint was made to the Speaker of the B. C. legislature last week after a wouldbe assassin received an invitation to attend the budget speech, The Vancouver Sun has learned.
Jaspal Singh Atwal, who was convicted of attempted murder for shooting a visiting Punjabi cabinet minister in 1986, attended the invitation- only event in the B. C. legislature Feb. 21.
He sat in the public gallery, while the legislature was locked down and only invited guests, MLAS and accredited media were allowed inside.
Shane Mills, Premier Christy Clark’s director of communications, said Monday that Atwal only made his way onto the guest list when another person invited by the premier’s office asked for an extra ticket to attend.
“If we had known his background, he would not have been invited,” Mills said.
Mills said Atwal’s name was just given to government the day before the budget speech.
“And we don’t normally vet those kind of things. So we were unaware of the person’s background and we will be working to improve the vetting and working with the Speaker’s office on that,” he said.
Atwal — and three others — were convicted in 1987 of trying to kill Malkiat Singh Sidhu on an isolated Vancouver Island road. Sidhu was struck twice and survived the attempt on his life, but was later assassinated in India. The trial judge called the attack “an act of terrorism” and sentenced Atwal and the others to
20 years. Atwal admitted to the parole board at one of his hearings that he was the shooter in the assassination attempt.
More recently Atwal was found by a B. C. Supreme Court judge to be a member of an auto- fraud ring that was ordered to repay ICBC hundreds of thousands of dollars for vehicles that were reported stolen and then fraudulently resold.
Atwal did not want to comment Monday on the controversy over his budget invitation. “We are taxpayers. We can go anywhere we want,” he said.
Told there was a complaint to the Speaker because of his conviction, Atwal said: “A lot of people have criminal records.”
He declined to comment further, blaming the complaint on some of his enemies in Surrey’s Indo- Canadian community.
The Speaker’s office referred calls to Sergeant- At- Arms Gary Lenz, who is in control of security at the legislature.
Lenz said Monday he could not discuss specifics of any complaint related to security at the legislature.