‘We already know the BJP interfered in Canada to help Patrick Brown’: Brampton Mayor summoned to Ottawa after hiding from investigation into India’s meddling 

After failing to meet a request in October to voluntarily testify before the Parliamentary committee investigating foreign interference, Patrick Brown, who has publicly acknowledged his cozy relationship with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has now been ordered to answer questions in front of MPs before December 10th.

A motion “that the committee summon Mayor Patrick Brown to testify alone for no less than two hours on the study of Indian interference,” committee member and Pickering—Uxbridge Liberal MP Jennifer O’Connell announced Thursday before a majority of her colleagues voted in support of her motion to subpoena Brown.

“We have spoken about this before, this notice has been on the record for quite some time,” she added.

“An invitation was given to Mr. Brown and he declined,” Committee Chair, Mississauga—Malton Liberal MP Iqwinder Gaheer, explained. “Alternative dates were provided and there was no reply.”

Brown issued a statement Monday indicating that he will appear before the committee, but claimed that “my appearance has been sought for political reasons”.

The Pointer asked Brown in October when he was initially asked to appear before the committee voluntarily, if he would honour the request, but he did not respond at the time. 

In his statement posted on X Monday Brown wrote that, “I have no new evidence to contribute to the committee’s proceedings”.

The decision of MPs on the committee to first seek Brown’s testimony came days after the RCMP and federal government officials including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau addressed shocking evidence in October of a plot by India’s government to harass and murder Sikh Canadians.

A deeply disturbing U.S. Department of Justice indictment unsealed in October includes detailed evidence of the plot and an alleged assassination attempt by an Indian agent who targeted a dual Canadian-American citizen and Sikh rights leader.

"I think it is obvious that the government of India made a fundamental error in thinking that they could engage in supporting criminal activity against Canadians, here on Canadian soil. Whether it be murders or extortion or other violent acts, it is absolutely unacceptable," Trudeau said in October. 

"No country, particularly not a democracy that upholds the rule of law, can accept this fundamental violation of its sovereignty."

Brown, who has repeatedly called the Indian Prime Minister his “big brother”, was given “state status” by Modi during visits, according to the mayor, who has been to India at least two-dozen times. 

Patrick Brown with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and controversial BJP politician Yogi Adityanath, who groups in Canada want banned from ever visiting the country due to his repulsive hate commentary against Muslims.

(X/Supplied)

He has remained silent on the issue of India’s alleged plot to kill Sikh Canadians, despite leading a city that has the largest Sikh population outside India (about 200,000 residents in Brampton identify as followers of the faith) and mounting calls to condemn the government led by his close friend.

One of the issues the committee has been wanting to ask Brown about is the possible interference by the Indian government in the 2022 Conservative Party of Canada leadership race, when Brown ran but was eventually disqualified for allegedly violating rules around signing members and payments for campaign staff (he has denied the allegations; a federal investigation is still ongoing according to sources). 

On Monday Brown wrote that he does not believe any possible interference by India “altered the final outcome of the 2022 (CPC) leadership race”.

In 2016, Brown acknowledged the help he received from the BJP, India’s ruling Party which Modi leads, during a gala dinner that included Indian visitors affiliated with the BJP, a year after his surprise victory in the Ontario PC leadership race the year before.

“A year ago, when I ran for the leadership of the Ontario PC Party, my first poll I was at two percent,” Brown told the audience. He was a relative unknown before the 2015 race. “But I had friends, and I had friends particularly in this room…When people say, ‘Why did you surprise everyone?' I said it’s because I am unabashedly proud to have so many friends in the Overseas BJP who signed up friends all across Ontario, and that’s something that I am never going to forget.” (View the video here)

Modi, according to Brown, had said similar words about him a few years earlier.

When he was still a Barrie-area backbench Conservative MP, who had already forged his friendship with Modi prior to his election as India’s PM, the rising BJP political star faced widespread condemnation for allegedly instigating the killings of hundreds of Muslims during communal religious rioting that saw members of the majority Hindu population massacre Muslims while officials and police stood by. 

Modi was banned from visiting the U.S. prior to becoming PM but as his star rose among a growing group of Indian constituencies, Stephen Harper’s Conservative government, while Brown was an ambitious but little known young MP, was careful in its dealings with the internationally vilified Indian politician, whose Hindu-nationalist party was widely condemned for its shocking views and treatment of religious minorities.

Brown, meanwhile, had hatched an unusual personal political strategy, using his close relationship with Modi to eventually gain influence with Harper and the Conservatives as they began to aggressively court South-Asian Canadian votes and campaign donations.   

He spoke to Indian media outlet Rediff during an unsanctioned 2015 visit to India when he was courting the BJP’s support while simultaneously holding his MP seat and running for Ontario’s PC leadership. He explained why Modi, who had become PM, was so close to him, detailing a visit years earlier. "[Canada's] Department of Foreign Affairs told me not to go visit him,’ says Brown. ‘I went anyway. Modi said he would never forget the gesture. He said he would never forget who his friends are’."

In his 2018 memoir, Takedown (which gives Brown’s version of his dramatic fall after allegations of sexual assault ended his bid to become Ontario’s premier; he denies the accusations) he describes the lengths he went to please Modi while he was a backbench MP.

During one trip he describes receiving a call while “en route” to India from “Canada’s high commissioner, ordering us to turn around and come back to Canada.”

He then details the mounting frustration within prime minister Harper’s office (the PMO) over Brown’s reckless behaviour and concerns his own government had about Modi’s human rights record, when he was widely implicated in the killings of hundreds of Muslims (Modi has never faced formal charges and denies any role despite evidence that he encouraged the killings). 

“The [Indian] government had ordered a 200-foot Canadian flag,” Brown wrote. “They wanted to send the message that Modi… was not a pariah… we didn’t have backing of our government… Modi never forgot who was with him when he needed support.”

The relationship groomed by Modi, which Brown describes in his own book and in other public statements over almost two decades, resembles techniques foreign officials use to leverage those relationships often while Canadian politicians are unaware of how they are being exploited. Such tactics were described by intelligence officials during the ongoing foreign interference hearings in Ottawa.

“[T]hreat actors employ ‘traditional’ foreign interference through human-to-human relationships,” a special intelligence report to the parliamentary committee detailed. “This primarily involves establishing reciprocal relationships with influential Canadians, using clandestine networks, employing proxies, and covertly buying influence with candidates and elected officials. In the period under review, threat actors used all of these levers, often at the same time.”

Brown brags in his book about the status Modi gave him in India while his own government had little time for the opportunistic backbencher: “And while back home, I was having trouble getting permission to go to the bathroom, in India, Modi began promoting me as a friend. He’d invite me to lunch with Bollywood stars… and with billionaires such as Ratan Tata, who has a net worth of about $70 billion US… He had me sitting at tables with the who’s who of India… I was walking around with a big stick. I was given state status. I would travel around with three vans in front of me and three vans behind. There were guys with machine guns to protect me.” 

Modi and Brown shared each other’s private cell phone numbers, he wrote.

Patrick Brown shakes hands with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2015 during one of his many trips to India, while he was there courting BJP support to help him win the Ontario PC leadership race.

(Patrick Brown/X)

Regarding how Brown paid for his travel to India, he wrote in his book: “I was now being placed on the official travel ban list for one year. This did not mean I wasn’t technically allowed to travel for official purposes. I was, that is, technically speaking. However, it meant that government wouldn’t pay. That wasn’t so bad, either. I mean, I knew I could get the Indian organizations (which Modi had connected him to) to sponsor my flights.” 

The special intelligence report to the Parliamentary foreign interference committee includes details of how the Indian government has exploited Canadian politicians including former MPs (there is no mention of Brown and names that are included in the raw report are redacted in the version that was made available to the public): “CSIS and CSE (the human and signals intelligence agencies of the Canadian government) produced a body of intelligence that showed that foreign actors used deceptive or clandestine methods to cultivate relationships with Canadians who they believed would be useful in advancing their interests — particularly members of Parliament and senators… In some cases, parliamentarians were unaware they were the target of foreign interference… Two sentences were deleted to remove injurious or privileged information. The sentences described an example of India’s financial support to some candidates from two political parties, and CSIS's assessment that the candidates were unaware of the source of the funds.”

Former longtime Brampton city councillor Elaine Moore has been an outspoken critic of Brown’s frequent trips to India and close relationship with Modi, previously questioning why there are so few details about these visits, who pays for them and how they benefit Brampton.

“The news of Patrick Brown’s summons is not surprising,” she told The Pointer Monday. “He never wants to be questioned, it’s just sad that a person elected by the public won’t go before the public and explain himself voluntarily. Does he have something to hide? 

“In Brampton it’s widely known that he visits India regularly, he speaks about it openly. He has visited India almost a dozen times since becoming mayor according to people inside City Hall.”

She is concerned about a narrative since the summons late last week—that Brown was actually a target of Indian efforts in 2022 to undermine his CPC leadership bid—that is being spread by the mayor’s surrogates.

“Look, I supported him when I stepped down in 2018, I even volunteered for him, stood shoulder to shoulder with him and helped connect him to groups. But when I saw how he uses people and groups against each other, on top of all the scandals that quickly came out of City Hall, it shocked many of us. I became really concerned.”

Moore referred to a CBC story after the summons that claims unnamed supporters of Brown have knowledge of Indian government efforts to sabotage his CPC leadership candidacy.

“What I don’t understand is that with all the evidence, with his own acknowledgement of being helped by Modi and the BJP, which he doesn’t keep secret, why has the federal government and its intelligence agencies not investigated his, frankly, alarming ties to the Party in power in India? 

“What does he have to hide? That’s what I don’t understand about the (CBC) story: if he really was the victim, why didn’t he testify instead of refusing, then avoiding and now he’s being forced to go before Parliament.”

Moore raised concerns about a man named Jaskaran Sandhu, who used to work at City Hall as an advisor to former mayor Linda Jeffrey and now runs his own PR and lobbying firm, State. 

The CBC story refers to posts on an online platform Sandhu launched (but the CBC does not name him) which advocates for Sikh causes and is critical of Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre for allegedly courting India’s BJP government. The article refers to Sandhu’s platform as being a source of information pointing to Indian interference to undermine Brown’s CPC leadership bid. Sandhu has been a regular panelist on CBC news shows.

Others have been critical of what has been described as Poilievre’s reluctance to call out Modi and his BJP government over the disturbing evidence implicating Indian agents and key BJP leaders of orchestrating the plot against Canadian Sikhs.

This despite strong words of condemnation by the Conservative leader. 

“The news and allegations today from the RCMP are extremely concerning and must be taken very seriously,” Poilievre wrote in an official press release from the Conservative Party in October, the same day the RCMP released its alarming statement. 

“Any foreign interference from any country, including India, is unacceptable and must be stopped. Our government’s first job is to keep our citizens safe from foreign threats.

“We expect the full criminal prosecution of anyone and everyone who has threatened, murdered or otherwise harmed Canadian citizens.”

It is no secret that Brown and Poilievre have an acrimonious relationship.

The Pointer has sent multiple requests to Brown for comment since evidence of the Indian government plot was released. He has not responded and has not made any public comment condemning the BJP or the Indian government which are led by his close friend Modi.

The CBC article suggested their relationship has soured, citing comments Brown has recently made questioning religious discrimination in India, after significant pressure from groups in Brampton where visible minorities make up about 80 percent of the population and Sikhs are the largest ethno-religious demographic group. Muslim-Canadians, another significant demographic in the city, have also condemned Modi and his government for their policies and demanded Brown finally take a strong stand. In his public remarks cited as evidence of a souring relationship, Brown has refused to single out Modi or the BJP, or even mention them and he has not referred to the Indian government.

He has continued to visit India regularly and in 2021, when Modi’s BJP government passed draconian legislation aimed at disenfranchising Muslims and stripping away control from Sikh farmers, The Pointer repeatedly questioned Brown for refusing to take a stance despite multiple protests by Sikhs in his city and widespread backlash among Muslim Canadians including the large numbers in Brampton. 

He eventually released a brief video defending the right to protest but refused to name Modi or the BJP and did not mention their policies which sparked unrest across parts of India that impacted hundreds of thousands of Brampton residents.  

Sandhu has spoken glowingly of Brown, praising him as a strong Brampton leader in the Toronto Star when he registered for reelection in 2022 after his disqualification by the CPC. Sandhu did not disclose that he was planning to run for Brampton council himself. He registered three days after the Star article was published. 

Sandhu failed to mention any of the numerous scandals Brown had been implicated in or evidence of his wrongdoing around contracts and hiring. Brown eventually cancelled a half-dozen investigations that had been called by a majority of councillors in 2022, probing the allegations and damning evidence that staff had brought forward against him. 

Sources, including Moore, have told The Pointer Sandhu helped Brown during his 2022 CPC leadership bid. His PR company lists “Tamil Rights Group” as one of his clients, one of Brown’s central causes and key sources for political support when he won the Ontario PC leadership in 2015 and during his campaigns since then.

Sandhu did not respond to questions Monday.

“I don’t understand how a media outlet could take its cues from a man who supported Brown and talked him up in 2022, helped him on the CPC leadership campaign, and now is behind a narrative trying to tell us Brown isn’t close with Modi,” Moore said Monday. “I just hope the CBC doesn’t feel like it has to take sides because of Pierre Poilievre‘s promise to cut its funding.”

She cautions MPs on the parliamentary committee to avoid he said, she said claims, pointing to examples of Brown’s history of dividing diaspora communities for his own political gain.   

“I just hope this isn’t another example of Patrick Brown telling one side one thing and the other side something else, with our media and government leaders wondering who to believe.

“But isn’t that the whole point of the committee hearings, to find out and show how our politicians get used by operatives, agents and people in our own communities working with foreign governments? 

“It just seems like whenever Patrick Brown is questioned about anything, somehow he spins the narrative to look like he’s the victim.

“We already know the BJP interfered in Canada to help Patrick Brown.

“When he cancelled the forensic audits in Brampton looking into all the evidence of his own wrongdoing, he obviously had something to hide. This is a pattern with him.”

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