An Indo-Canadian lawmaker from Brampton Center Ramesh Sangha has been expelled from the ruling Liberal Party’s caucus. Sangha, a lawyer by profession, was first elected Liberal MP in 2015. He has in the past accused the Liberal Party of patronizing Sikh separatists.

I can't say I was surprised.

On September 14, 2015, my printing shop on Tranmere Drive was closed and I was at home when a group of Liberals knocking the doors in support of Brampton Centre candidate Sangha knocked. One of them was none other than Navdeep Bains, our now ex-innovation minister.

Bains was excited when he saw me and urgently introduced me to Sangha, noting how he was hoping they could count on my support for the then-upcoming federal election. Bains' campaign office was located in the same plaza as my printing shop, and I had visited Bains several times beforehand.

What a difference a few years makes. In the span of a week, both are gone from the Liberal Party.

It wasn't a surprise.

In a recent interview with Y Media, Sangha leveled serious allegations against Bains. While Bains said the reason for leaving politics was to spend more time with his family, Sangha expressed surprise at Bains' decision and said neither he nor the community was digesting it.

At the same time, talking about Bains' background, Sangha claimed that when someone is "an extremist and a Khalistani, is he fit to be a minister?" He said that there were some reasons why Bains had to resign from his ministry, suggesting ulterior motives or collusion.

It's not only Sangha who had a problem digesting Bains’ decision to step down. I felt the same thing and thought that given how Bains was handling the PPE (personal protective equipment) rollout and pandemic response and was busy negotiating funding to big corporate companies, that there was an ulterior motive.

Sooner or later, the truth will come out. Bains simply abandoned the Titanic before it sank. Let’s hope the truth will come out sooner, so that every Canadian will find out why one of our elected leaders seemingly abandoned his post in the fourth quarter of the game, with two touchdowns to go.

Indeed, Bains' extremist views are nowhere to be found, and his ideology has always been very liberal. Even in 2019, Sangha accused his party of backing the Khalistanis, which is not a good thing.

In 2019, Sangha accused the Liberal government of "pandering" to Sikh separatists in a way that threatened to derail Canada's relationship with India.

Official Whip Mark Holland said, "We have made it very clear that such conspiracy theories and dangerous accusations against members of Parliament or other Canadians will not be tolerated... the Liberal Caucus will continue to stand up against racism and intolerance."

Racism? I don’t see what racism Sangha is creating here, particularly when compared to his government's prior actions. When PM Justin Trudeau made a sweetheart deal with Omar Khadr (the Canadian citizen spent a decade in the infamous US military prison, Guantanamo Bay, for war crimes allegedly committed when he was a young teenager in Afghanistan. In 2012, he struck a plea deal and was transferred to a prison in Alberta, Canada. He was released on bail in 2015 and sued the government. Canada formally apologised to Khadr in 2017 and paid him a C$10.5 million ($8m) settlement), and handed him millions to get back to a normal life, it was fine to tolerate it. 

Now, when someone is trying to speak the truth, and being honest, they kick the person out.

Is this what our justice system has come down to? If someone tries to speak the truth, they're put behind bars, muzzled and collared, while the culprit gets to walk free with a big fat cheque written out in their name.

This isn't what Canada is.

(The writer is a freelance journalist based in Brampton, Canada. The views are personal)