Diversity -- Canada's strength (LOL)

The Region of Peel is part of the soi-disant Greater Toronto Area, the next municipality west of the Wormy Apple itself. Peel includes the cities of Brampton and Mississauga, where south Asians are the majority, with people of a darker persuasion second, and old stock Canadians (read: whites) lowest on the totem pole. 

Peel is also the home of the Singh School of Truck Driving, which admits 1000s of trainee drivers every year on student visas. Its graduates are responsible for a large part of the carnage caused by transport trucks on Canada's major highways, including the tragedy of 6 April 2018, in which 16 members of the Humboldt (SKI) Broncos hockey team were killed and 13 injured, when their bus struck a westbound semi-trailer truck that blew through a stop sign.

The semi was travelling at over 60 mph when its driver -- 29-year-old Jaskirat Singh Sidhu --  failed to yield at a flashing stop sign at the intersection of Highways 35 and 335. Three months later, the Mounties charged the driver with 16 counts of dangerous operation of a motor vehicle causing death and 13 counts of dangerous operation of a motor vehicle causing bodily injury, to which he pleaded builty in 2019. Mr Sidhu was sentenced to eight years in prison, after which he was to be deported to his native India.

Mr Sidhu, who his lawyers say should be allowed to remain in Canada for humanitarian reasons (!) is a Sikh. So are three of the five non-white people pictured above. Arrested this week by investigators with the Peel Police 21 Division Criminal Investigations Bureau.were Dupinderdeep Cheema, 36, from Brampton, Beant Dhillon, 51 from Brampton, Arundeep Thind, 39, Mustapha Alawiye, 32, from Mississauga, and Kymani Hassakourinas, 32, from Mississauga.

The five exemplars of the diversity which is Canada's strength (according to Prime Minister Blackie McBlackface) were arrested in connection with a series of “violent extortion incidents," which the cops say took place between December 2023 and May of this year. 

Police allege that the extortion incidents saw victims assaulted and threatened in Peel Region and elsewhere in the Greater Toronto Area. There have also been reports of firearms being discharged. The accused face a combined 14 offences in connection with the investigation. 

Peel police previously launched a task force in December into a number of extortion incidents targeting the South Asian business community, including one in which a suspect opened fire on a business in Brampton. It is not clear whether these arrests have any connection to the incidents that prompted the formation of the task force.

Deputy Chief Marc Andrews is handling the media on this one, since the Peel police chief, Nishan Duraiappah, was born in Sri Lanka and is therefore, errr, not the one you want to be at the podium to announce that "Peel Regional Police will continue working to disrupt and dismantle criminal groups that harm our communities.”

Further reading: "Happy Canada Day? Errr, maybe not", WWW 1/7/24.