Patrick Brown admits succumbing to foreign interference, after years of being groomed by Indian officials

Patrick Brown, under questioning by a Liberal MP Thursday during a Parliamentary committee investigating Indian foreign interference, admitted his campaign team in 2022 was given an order by the Indian government, which was followed.

During his video testimony before the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security on December 5, Brown addressed questions about the Indian government’s involvement in his 2022 Conservative leadership campaign. Brown revealed campaign co-chair, MP Michelle Rempel Garner, received an angry phone call from the Consul General of India asking Brown to stop using the term "Sikh Nation" (which he would utter in front of Sikh audiences during his campaign), prompting him to change his wording.

Pickering—Uxbridge Liberal MP Jennifer O’Connell questioned Brown about the conference call in which MP Rempel Garner shared the Consul General’s disappointment about the term "Sikh Nation" that he had used. She asked who from the Indian Consulate had influenced his campaign to change its language.

Brown did not answer, instead launching into an explanation of why Garner left his campaign team.

"First of all, I don't believe that's the reason that she left the campaign," Brown replied, referring to a media story that cited unnamed campaign team members who said the Indian interference drove Rempel Garner away.

O’Connell interjected: "Sorry, I didn't ask that."

"I asked about the details of the conference call and your answer (to an earlier question) about you being informed by your campaign team that there were concerns from the Consul General raised by MP Rempel Garner not to use the term Sikh Nation." 

Brown replied: "The concern that was raised that I had used the term on several occasions, Sikh nation, and the Consul General had it expressed directly to MP Garner." 

"That was something that obviously they (Indian government officials) didn't agree with. It could be viewed in nationalistic terms towards the Sikh community. And so at the conference call, I had a deputy campaign, national campaign manager, Jaskaran Sandhu, who we sort of assigned to talk to Michelle about it, after the conference call. And what was agreed upon is that I wouldn't use the word Sikh nation. I'd use the word Sikh-Qom."

Sandhu has tried to create a narrative that Brown was the victim of Indian foreign interference and that Pierre Poilievre was actually the candidate in 2022 who the Indian government was trying to benefit. 

He has not responded to questions from The Pointer about payments Sandhu has received for working for Brown. 

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)

On Thursday, O’Connell expressed her concerns that Brown had been involved directly in foreign interference and whether he understood this. “Do you think it's appropriate for a foreign government to ask a sitting MP, a co-chair on a leadership race, to raise their objections to your campaign, not based on constituents, but based on [a] foreign government’s opinion? I think that constitutes foreign interference pretty clearly. Foreign interference doesn’t matter about the outcome, it’s the intention to have that foreign government influence the actions in Canadians' elections. Do you think that that was an appropriate action for a foreign government in a Canadian election?”

Brown replied: “I certainly think that the consular generals in India have been more robust in their opinions than some of us would be comfortable with.”

Brown was later questioned about his interactions with Indian government officials at the Indian Consulate and their demands when Brown said things in public that they did not agree with. 

“It’s never been something as direct as saying, ‘We’re going to raise funds for someone else or tell people not to sign up memberships.’ But in previous occasions there have been positions that I have taken that the government of India doesn’t support and I would hear directly from the Consular General.”

O’Connell replied, “Don’t you think as an elected member the only feedback you should be hearing from are the people who actually elect you?”

Liberal MP Mark Gerretsen later asked if Brown understood he had been influenced by a foreign government. “By your own admission you already said that they, that often these consular generals act in an aggressive manner and don’t make you comfortable. If that’s not foreign interference, then what is Mr. Brown?”

Brown replied: “I think you’re paraphrasing”.

“I'm actually not,” Gerretsen interjected, “I'm actually quoting exactly what you said. You said, quote, ‘They did not make you feel comfortable’ and you referred to their engagement with you as aggressive. How is that not foreign interference?”

Brown refused to use the label (which was part of the title of the committee hearing) and would not name the Indian government. “I think certainly some of their actions are in the grey.”

Throughout his testimony, when he was asked about the Indian government’s foreign interference, he replied using the phrase “foreign intervention”.

O’Connell kept up her line of inquiry. “You’ve confirmed today that a sitting MP, Michelle Rempel Garner, was contacted by the Consul General in India, a 45-minute debrief of an angry phone call is how it was described about terminology around Sikh Nation that was expressed to you. Your campaign ultimately changed that language. You mentioned how some of these interactions have been aggressive, have not made you comfortable and if it did in fact, some of the allegations in the media reporting were true, you acknowledge that would have constituted foreign interference.”

Brown did not use those words, but he did acknowledge that he said what was described.

She then asked about the selling of memberships during the race and if the critical role was impacted by any anger expressed by Indian officials over Brown’s phrasing of issues or position on them.

Brown said the anger was never expressed “in the context of selling memberships. But it would come back to me that positions I had taken, the Consul General is not happy with.”

“With members of your team, Campaign team?” O’Connell asked. 

“People that were supporting me.”

“Right, so the Consul General reached out to members supporting you, and members of your campaign team saying that they were upset. Don’t you think that is making it pretty clear their position? You don’t have to say to someone, ‘I don’t want you to support this candidate because of x,y and z’, the implied threat is there when it’s someone in a position of power like a Consul General would be…Do you agree?”

Brown once again dodged the question. 

“I think the relationship with the Consul General is important for diaspora communities because of the ability to quickly access visas to visit their home country.”

O’Connell pressed him again.

”So that importance would be an implied threat that if a Consul General is unhappy and upset that to support a candidate who has made the Indian government upset, could in fact implicate or effect a visa application.”

“I think that’s something the community would be concerned about,” Brown admitted. 

Patrick Brown testified December 5 about Indian government interference when officials directed him about the language they wanted used during his 2022 Conservative leadership campaign.

(ParlVu)

Parliamentarians have heard from Canadian intelligence how politicians like Brown are brought under the influence of foreign actors seeking to interfere with elections and decision making here. 

“[T]hreat actors employ ‘traditional’ foreign interference through human-to-human relationships,” a special intelligence report to the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians 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.”

The report highlighted that after China, India was the biggest foreign threat between 2018 and 2023.

Brown has publicly boasted about the special treatment Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who Brown calls a “brother”, has given him for more than a decade—the Canadian politician has made more than two dozen trips to the country.

In his 2018 book Takedown, he wrote about the status Modi gave him in India while his own government, led by Stephen Harper, had little time for the opportunistic former Barrie-area backbench MP: “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.” 

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.” 

Patrick Brown took a break from the Ontario PC leadership race in 2015 to visit Prime Minister Narendra Modi in India when Brown was getting help from the BJP to sell memberships in Ontario.

(Patrick Brown/X)

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)

On the BJP’s official website the “Overseas” branch of the Party has been described as being led by an “Indian BJP leader”.  

In 2015, Brown flew to India in the middle of the Ontario campaign to launch Gujaratis For Patrick (which signed up Gujarati-Canadian members for him back home) with the help of the Indian Prime Minister who had been the leader of Gujarat prior to running the country. 

Underlying many of the questions Thursday, was Brown’s close ties to India, which he alluded to in response to many of the inquiries. 

The Pointer spoke to Serge Granger, a director at the Applied School of Politics at Université de Sherbrooke, about the risks politicians like Brown take when opening themselves up to foreign influence by accepting favours and help from powerful countries, and if stopping the use of the phrase "Sikh Nation" was a form of political influence on someone India felt it could control.

"So, of course, this is either, if you want to call it a fine influence, or is the fact that they're trying to format a political discourse," he said, describing Brown’s capitulation to the Indian government. 

The Standing Committee summoned Brown to provide testimony for no less than two hours, following his refusal of an initial request on October 18 to respond to inquiries related to Indian government interference in the 2022 Conservative Party leadership contest. Brown was eventually disqualified after allegations that he had violated financial rules under the Canada Elections Act.

Liberal MP Jennifer O’Connell repeatedly pressed Patrick Brown on the influence India’s Consul General had over his 2022 Conservative Party leadership race.

(ParlVu)

Some of Brown’s testimony did not match his public posture regarding BJP policies in India that caused widespread backlash among Sikh and Muslim communities in Brampton and across Canada.

“I have a long history with India,” he testified. “When they passed the Citizenship Amendment Act (a law which critics have warned could render Indian Muslims stateless if they can not provide proof of birth and identity documents) in India, which I thought was discriminatory towards Muslims, I had responded to a press inquiry and I had said that I didn’t support it. That obviously left organizations that represented India in Canada upset and they relayed that to me generally and the (Indian) consular general at the time relayed that to me directly, how they believed my position on the CAA was wrong.”

The anti-Muslim legislation was passed in 2019 and immediately sparked a global backlash, as governments and Muslim organizations called on PM Modi’s BJP government to retract the Bill which blatantly discriminated against Indian Muslims and threatened their rights as citizens.

In Brampton, the demands escalated and calls for Brown to speak up against the man he called a “brother” mounted. It’s possible the “press inquiry” he referred to Thursday during his testimony was from The Pointer when requests were made to Brown to respond to calls for a strong statement against Modi and his BJP government.

In January of 2020 he tweeted that he had “received a few social media requests for a comment on the BJP’s Citizenship Amendment Act. I don’t support any law that discriminates against one’s faith.” 

In February of 2020 he finally sat down with The Pointer. He had just tweeted that he had visited India 20 times in 14 years and had just returned from his latest trip to promote Brampton there. The Pointer asked if he had met with Modi. He said, “In India I was recognized by Prime Minister Modi for my work in 2013. He said I was an honorary Gujarati.”

He was asked about the backlash against the draconian anti-Muslim law and repeated calls from Brampton Muslim community members for the mayor to take a strong stance against the policy of his close friend.

“I disagree with Modi’s citizenship Act,” he told The Pointer. 

Explaining the “foreign direct investment” trip he had just returned from, Brown said he was “leveraging some of my relationships over there” to benefit Brampton and that he had no plans to break ties with India.

As backlash over the anti-Muslim law grew even more fierce The Pointer followed up with Brown, asking why he refused to more forcefully call out Modi and his BJP government, singling them out specifically for blatant discrimination to show communities across Brampton he was willing to take a strong stand. He did not follow up.

On Thursday, he claimed his relationship with Modi and India was strained since 2016 and repeatedly mentioned what he characterized as his opposition to India’s policies. 

There is no record of such statements against Modi and his BJP government by Brown between 2016 and 2020, and his public statements since then have not referenced Modi, the Indian government or the BJP. On Thursday, when asked about the assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Surrey last year (evidence shows the killing was part of an Indian government plot to murder and harass Canadian Sikhs) he said, “I don’t think it’s limited to India”, referring to foreign interference. 

He then talked about Sri Lanka, claiming its government “subverted” an effort by Brampton council to memorialize the “genocide” that had taken place in that country against Tamils, perpetrated by the Sri Lankan government. Brown, who has long courted the Tamil community across Ontario for political support, has routinely condemned the Sri Lankan government and has described its acts against Tamils during the civil war there as a genocide. On Thursday he was asked about Indian interference, but instead said there was “active” interference and “opposition, obstruction, protest coordinated by the Sri Lankan High Commission” when he worked as mayor of Brampton to memorialize the Tamil genocide.

He has not used the same language toward India, despite being mayor of a City with the largest Sikh population in the world outside India, including many who continue to push for the recognition of mass killings of Sikhs in the ‘80s and ‘90s as a genocide by the Indian government.

He has refrained from any condemnation of the Indian government or Modi’s BJP—The Pointer has asked him multiple times since October when the latest evidence of an Indian plot to murder Canadian Sikhs was released, why he won’t address Modi’s BJP and the Indian government. He has not responded. 

While he repeatedly admitted in response to specific questions Thursday that officials in the Indian Consulate have routinely pressured and influenced him for years, Brown would not name Modi, the BJP or the Indian government. 

It’s a stark contrast to the words he uses for the Sri Lankan government, over a civil war that ended 15 years ago.

He has long accused the Sri Lankan government of genocide and has as recently as August accused it of foreign interference, when he wrote on X, “We will not be intimidated by the foreign interference in local affairs by the genocidal Sri Lankan government.”

His position in support of Tamils and against the Sri Lankan government directly contradicts the official position of the Canadian government. 

Brown’s contradictory stance toward the two countries was shown Thursday, when he said the Indian government, through the local consulate, told him to stop saying “Sikh Nation” because it had “nationalistic” connotations that threaten Indian sovereignty. He admitted that the orders by Indian government officials were followed, drawing particular concern from MP O’Connell.

“Do you think it’s appropriate for a foreign government to send a message to a sitting MP (Brown’s campaign co-chair), that you should be changing the language because it’s not welcomed by that foreign nation? Do you think that’s an appropriate election activity by a foreign government, and do you regret” doing what the Indian government told you to do? “Do you think that’s acceptable in a Canadian election?... I think that constitutes foreign interference pretty clearly.”

Brown again would not single out the Indian government, Modi or the BJP and did not describe the actions as foreign interference.

“I certainly think that Consular Generals in India have been more robust in their opinions than some of us would be comfortable with,” Brown replied, acknowledging under O’Connell’s questioning that despite feeling uncomfortable with taking orders from the Indian government, he chose to follow those orders.

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