THE Globe and Mail reported on Wednesday that Liberal MP Chandra Arya was not allowed to run for the party leadership and was later barred from running again in his riding of Nepean because of alleged foreign-interference concerns involving India.
The newspaper said it was told that by a source with top-secret clearance.
Arya took a trip to India last August and met Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The source claimed that Arya had not informed the government of his trip in spite of the bad relations between Canada and India.
However, the fact is that it was obvious that Arya had not been allowed to run for the party leadership because of his alleged ties to the Indian government and that he had been barred from running again in his riding for the same reason.
The fact is that Arya never acted surreptitiously. He was very open about his friendship with the Indian government and his hostility towards supporters of Khalistan.
The Globe and Mail reported: “The source said the Canadian Security Intelligence Service had briefed the government about Mr. Arya’s alleged close ties to the government of India, including its High Commission in Ottawa. Liberal Party officials who have security clearances and had received a general CSIS briefing on foreign interference also had concerns about Mr. Arya, a Liberal source said.”
The fact is you didn’t need CSIS to tell you that.
Also, if the government and the Liberal Party were so concerned about this, why didn’t they take this up with Arya much earlier and demand an explanation? The whole situation is so absurd.
Arya posted the following on X: “As a Member of Parliament, I have engaged with numerous diplomats and heads of government, both in Canada and internationally. Not once have I sought—nor been required to seek—permission from the government to do so.
“At no point did former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau or any cabinet minister raise concerns about my meetings or public statements.
“The sole point of contention with the Liberal Party has been my outspoken advocacy on issues important to Hindu Canadians and my firm stance against Khalistani extremism.”
ON Tuesday, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre told reporters that he won the 2022 Conservative leadership without any help from India after The Globe and Mail reported that agents of India and their proxies raised money and organized within the South Asian community for him during the leadership contest.
The newspaper said its information was from a source with top-secret security clearance.
Poilievre said: “Let’s be honest, I won the leadership fair and square, even my political competitors like Mr. Patrick Brown have publicly testified under oath that that was the case.”
Poilievre has been slammed by leaders of other political parties for refusing to get a national-security clearance that would allow him to get classified briefings on foreign interference.
But he asserted on Tuesday: “What I will not do is commit to the oath of secrecy that the Liberals want to impose on me. They don’t want me to speak about these matters, so they bring me into a dark room and they say, ‘we’re going to give you a little bit of bread crumbs of intel and then we’ll tell you you can’t talk about this stuff any more.’”
