Angry in the Great White North

Jason Kenney is in some trouble over a remark he made in 2000:

Kenney was an MP and the co-chair of the Canadian Alliance campaign when, in October 2000, he led a conference call to address a rumour that an Alliance riding association executive belonged to a Canadian neo-Nazi white supremacist group.

"How do we know that and how do we know that this isn't overheated Sikhs using the race card, which they so often do when their credentials are being questioned?" Kenney said.

Now this actually part of a larger conversation that was quoted in some news reports:

Kenney and other participants on the conference call were told they must deal with a rumour that a member of the executive for the Canadian Alliance riding association in what was then known as Bramalea-Gore-Malton-Springdale might be a member of the Heritage Front, a Canadian neo-Nazi white supremacist group.

"The whole national campaign could go down on that alone," Kenney says, according to the transcript published by a magazine. Kenney then asks for more information: "Now, this notion that there's somebody tied to the Heritage Front on the executive. How do we know that and how do we know that this isn't overheated Sikhs using the race card, which they so often do when their credentials are being questioned?

So let's be clear. Someone was accusing someone in the riding association of being a neo-Nazi. Based on Jason Kenney's comments, that accusation was coming from a Sikh.

So I ask myself, what's the larger context here?

In 2000, the riding of Bramalea-Gore-Malton-Springdale was in turmoil. The original Alliance nominee was supposed to be Bill Bhangal, but when the Alliance HQ is Calgary delivered the news, the riding association executive quit. This was reported in the Toronto Star in November 2000:

The riding first drew national attention late last month when the entire Alliance riding association quit when the Canadian Alliance headquarters in Calgary ordered it to accept Bill Bhangal as a candidate to run in the party race to represent the riding. Bhangal later lost [the nomination fight].

A few days later it was revealed that Gurdish Mangat, who won the Alliance nomination, is facing a drinking- and driving-related charge of refusing to provide a breath sample.

Now it seems that Gurdish Mangat, the Alliance nominee that the Alliance didn't want, plays dirty politics.

In order to boost his chances in the election, Mangat's opponent alleged that Mangat arranged for an independent candidate to run.

The plan? To drain away votes from Liberal nominee Gurbax Malhi by arranging the candidacy of Gurinder Malhi, a shy 28-year-old mother of one who didn't even realize she was running for office. Confused voters might check off the wrong Malhi. Clever, eh?

[Liberal nominee Gurbax Malhi] has sworn affidavits from people saying their names on [Gurinder Malhi's] nomination papers were either forged or they didn't know what they were signing.

"I don't know how they got our names. I don't know who the woman is. I've never seen her," said Sinder Pal Poonia, whose name along with her husband's and the names of her mother-in-law and father-in-law were all on the papers. The signatures appear to be from the same person.

Four people swore that Gurpreet Singh Mangat, Gurdish Mangat's brother brought around "a blank form" asking them to sign it. They said they did and later someone filled in the name and addresses.

"We never signed for any candidacy of Gurinder Malhi. We understand that our signatures were misused by Mr. Gurpreet Mangat," they said.

Apparently, this sort of nonsense is par for the course in India:

Gurbax Malhi, the Liberal incumbent, said these are the kind of "tricks" used back in India. "In India the people they sometimes use these tricks but this is Canada and he (Mangat) is following those tricks by using somebody's name similar to me," he said.

With all this swirling around, questions were being asked. Was this the nominee that the Alliance wanted to have running? Even if the allegations about the electoral shenanigans were just allegations, the drunk-driving charge was not imagined.

And what happened when the new riding association asked questions? Suddenly someone blurted out that a neo-Nazi was manipulating the riding association, targeting the Sikh candidate with these racially-motivated lies and unfounded allegations.

Faced with this sorry mess, Jason Kenney asked the obvious question -- was someone playing the racism card as a way of shutting down any serious discussion about Mangat's candidacy by hinting that Mangat was being tagetted because he was a Sikh?

Fair question. Perhaps Jason Kenney did not use the best choice of words, but what he was entirely right to ask the question.

As it turned out, there was no neo-Nazi, Mangat ran against Malhi, and Malhi won rather easily. And poor confused Gurinder Malhi? She got a respectable 783 votes, which apparently had no impact on Gurbax Malhi's nearly 22,000 votes. Mangat was crushed -- only 7,200 people voted for him.

You would think Mangat would have faded into obscurity, but he did not. Four years later, he pops up on the radar again. This time he was arrested for helping run grow-ops, as reported in the Toronto Star on June 4, 2004

A Brampton realtor, who ran in the last federal election as a candidate for the Canadian Alliance party, faces charges after police allege there was a plot to buy two houses and turn them into marijuana grow operations.

Gurdish Mangat was arrested Thursday afternoon at his real estate office, Homelife United Realty, following a six-month, joint forces investigation, Peel Region police said in a news release.

He remains in custody and is scheduled for a bail hearing Monday.

Police allege there was a scheme to "orchestrate house sales, fraudulently registering the house titles," and that houses were leased as residences and then turned over to be used "for marijuana cultivation."

Mangat has been charged with two counts of conspiracy to produce a controlled substance, two counts of theft of electricity, and forgery.

He entered politics for the first time in 2000 as an Alliance candidate after winning a hotly contested and controversial race to represent the federal riding of Bramalea-Gore-Malton-Springdale.

The nomination contest was dogged with allegations of racism, dirty tricks and internal bickering highlighted by the entire riding association resigning.

Dogged with allegations of dirty tricks and racism? The Toronto Star reported that in 2004, and no one went after the the Toronto Star for making that statement. No one declared the paper to be racist rag. Racism was a big part of that nomination contest. Racism was used as a political tool. That's a fact. When Jason Kenney entered the picture, he asked if the racist allegation made against a member of the riding association was just one more dirty trick in a riding that seemed to be suffering from more than its fair share of dirty tricks.

A dirty trick played by a supporter of the nominee who would later be linked to a drug trafficking ring.

These old stories in the Toronto Star really help set the context of the "race card" comment for me. Jason Kenney seemed to have plenty of good reason to wonder about the credibility of the people surrounding Mangat. Under the circumstances, a lot of people might wonder if alleging anti-Sikh racism was just one more trick.

Update: I'm not the only one who can tell the difference between being a racist and asking about racism.