00:01:23.840So it's sort of one of those one of those tricks of organized crime where they you're actually protecting themselves, the business owners from themselves.
00:01:32.880So it's the lay down or stay down mentality.
00:01:35.320Yeah. So like pay us or or you're going to need protection.
00:01:39.040If you pay, if you do pay us, then you don't need protection, protection against who.
00:01:44.360That's the question. So that's the traditional type of extortion that we we've seen or been aware of.
00:01:50.080it dwindled down to almost zero by the time before the before covet at some point in 2023
00:01:56.800i believe justin trudeau stood up in the house of commons and told the country that there are
00:02:04.640credible uh there are there's credible information that india was involved in in murder of a um
00:02:15.280of a sikh activist um and after that um things kind of went cockeyed in terms of relations with
00:02:23.600india okay and that's when the rcmp identified that the extortions began and since then it's
00:02:30.560it's blown up now nobody really knows if it's uh all down to uh one gang which which is what some
00:02:40.800people believe or if there's copycats out there who have seen the this lawrence bishnoy gang in
00:02:48.240india have success and they're now picking up the torch and doing it themselves and claiming that
00:02:54.480they're from the lawrence bishnoy gang so it's almost like they paved the way and then that
00:02:58.880there's a potential that a whole bunch of other groups maybe loose groups or maybe heavily
00:03:03.120structured everything in between kind of seen this and maybe they've latched onto it now this
00:03:07.280This is why we're seeing the crazy increase.
00:03:16.280Brampton is the home of extortion in Ontario.
00:03:19.860It's also going on out in BC, out in Alberta, in Surrey and Edmonton.
00:03:26.420But in Ontario, it's become quite a problem.
00:03:30.540Now, the implication by the statement by the RCMP that that the extortion began after Justin Trudeau stood up in the House of Commons and said these comments is that the Indian government is somehow involved and and allegedly using Lawrence Bishnoi as a proxy to commit these crimes from India.
00:03:51.760And now and that's that's where we don't know what's happening in terms of people on the ground here, because they could either be working for Lawrence Bishnoi directly or working for themselves and using Lawrence Bishnoi as a as a cover for their activities.
00:04:09.680Well, City News in Toronto specifically said that there's 190 targeted businesses that got this last year.
00:05:00.660And the result of that has been twofold.
00:05:03.680Either the payment works and the threats stop or the payments go through and six months later, the threats begin again because they know they have a willing party.
00:05:15.620Well, there's been everything from arson to drive-bys to physical shootings.
00:05:20.040We're seeing a little bit of everything.
00:05:21.800So they're starting from threats, family members, businesses, et cetera, et cetera, and they're actually turning real.
00:05:27.540So these people that aren't, they're not answering or they're brushing this off.
00:05:31.160it sounds like they're actually getting some sort of retaliation from these people.
00:05:55.340Oh, people don't often report extortion
00:05:58.040because they don't trust the police.1.00
00:06:01.160A lot of them are foreigners or at least immigrants.1.00
00:06:04.880Either they don't trust the police, they want the problem to just go away,1.00
00:06:08.540they want to deal with it themselves, they don't want to escalate things,
00:06:13.200they want to ignore the problem, and the threats remain.
00:06:19.400Now, action is often taken, in terms of shootings and arson,
00:06:24.600they're taken a small minority of the time, but they are still happening.
00:06:31.160And the whole purpose of threats is to scare people.
00:06:36.840The purpose of carrying out the threats is to show people that, hey, we're not joking around.
00:06:42.880And that's why news reports are so important here because the fear reverberates.
00:06:48.240Once you put out a news report about a threat being actualized and someone's home being shot or an arson, everyone in the community finds out and they realize that these guys aren't joking around.
00:07:00.080So if you just had a bunch of threats without action,
00:07:03.220the issue may subside because people don't believe
00:07:06.620that anything's going to happen to them.
00:07:08.420But there have been shootings, there's been arsions,
00:07:10.720there's been a couple of murders that have been tied to this.
00:07:13.400We're unaware if it's directly tied or not,
00:07:16.720but there has been one or two murders associated to extortion and threats.
00:07:23.200Now, I'm nowhere near an expert on this matter of these situations.
00:07:28.200I'm a two-hour expert, like I told you at the beginning of the show.
00:07:31.840In your opinion, how organized is this?
00:07:34.360Do you think this is more just filling in of loose groups,
00:07:36.940or do we think that this is more of a structured kind of almost a business in itself?
00:07:43.140Again, the RCMP is not completely aware.
00:07:47.060One thing that we know is that it started in one way.
00:07:52.700So, you know, some people believe it's the Indian government that's doing this to get back at people that want to separate Punjab from India.
00:08:05.720Some people think it's threats against six.
00:08:08.540Some people believe it's local players that are doing this after threats came from India originally.
00:08:18.080So we don't really know what's happening.
00:08:20.380what we can do is is is guess speculate estimate we can work off the numbers to see that
00:08:27.860yes the threats are often coming from another country um and that's part of the reason why
00:08:34.540whatsapp is so popular in terms of these extortions we also know that the problem isn't going away
00:08:41.480even now that canada has tried to normalize relations with india the problem persists
00:08:48.540we're going to see what happens next um and we also know that um that a lot of the times it's
00:08:58.140six being targeted why do you think that is well there's a there's a there's a a separation movement
00:09:08.120going on in india uh six separation movement in india and a lot of people that's carrying over
00:09:14.940year yeah the the the the fights in the homeland of have come to canada india says that canada is
00:09:22.220harboring sick terrorists uh a lot of six say that we're we're doing peaceful activities and
00:09:29.260and there's probably truth to both of those statements right you know those are really hard
00:09:34.460to talk about uh because there is such a deep history involved in this just like you know i a
00:09:41.820lot of us are immigrants all our parents have um fights from the home country that have gone back
00:09:48.380centuries um and and so it's it's difficult to talk about um in terms of in terms of this but
00:09:56.780we do know that uh the canadian government the rcmp believe that this is this is international
00:10:04.140criminality, which I don't know if it's right in any, no matter what's gone on in the background.
00:10:12.000Well, I'll tell you, there was, as of last year, there were 70 removal orders issued,
00:10:16.920right, for these targets. And 35 deportations already were carried out. And that's reported
00:10:23.060by City News again. That seems very low. Yeah. Right? So yes, half. That's great. We had 70
00:10:33.060reported cases and we got it with 35 of them and had been deported that means they're out of the
00:10:36.540country we don't have to worry about this problem anymore but it does seem very low if we're talking
00:10:40.160about how high these numbers are arising it's interesting because um the bishnoi gang was
00:10:46.500recently deemed a terrorist organization so that allows the rcmp to take extra steps when
00:10:54.600investigating but extortion that's what makes it such a sort of interesting crime is that extortion
00:11:01.040is very difficult to investigate um and and and to deport someone you need evidence evidence is
00:11:10.240hard to gather it's very expensive it's difficult to gather it's also difficult to point the finger
00:11:16.040at one person so uh that's why i would suggest that there's so few that are being deported is
00:11:23.520because it's it's it's hard to identify the that the targets well and i've got a i have a few stats
00:11:29.580hear that too will add to that uh as to why this may be a little bit harder than most people would
00:11:34.340think now the authorities are starting to treat extortion not just as a crime anymore this is a
00:11:38.640national security threat like you said um and this is more than just an organized crime issue
00:11:43.800this is becoming an actual threat law enforcement challenges here's the here's the big challenges
00:11:49.040it takes digital access to get digital access takes 20 to 45 days for the local authority that
00:11:55.520means 45 days of digging on whatsapp to be able to get access to it to be able to open up the
00:13:43.400when it comes to privacy in Canada, right?
00:13:45.280And every bill under the sun underneath C, a lot of people are complaining, saying, you know, we don't want access to our text messages and our online social media.
00:13:56.180We don't think the government should be involved in that.
00:13:58.360But with C2, it forces telecom companies to provide data within 24 hours now, right, with this new bill that's been passed.