{"id":314092,"date":"2025-11-29T09:26:25","date_gmt":"2025-11-29T09:26:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/314092\/"},"modified":"2025-11-29T09:26:25","modified_gmt":"2025-11-29T09:26:25","slug":"huge-urgency-in-addressing-rising-extortion-cases-in-b-c-eby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/314092\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Huge urgency\u2019 in addressing rising extortion cases in B.C.: Eby"},"content":{"rendered":"

B.C. Premier David Eby<\/a> said federal and provincial authorities feel a \u201chuge amount of urgency\u201d to address rising cases of extortion targeting South Asian communities in the province.<\/p>\n

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At a press conference in Surrey Friday, Eby, along with federal Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree<\/a>, committed $1 million in funding to support extortion victims in B.C. The money is intended to boost police communications to victims and to help develop safety plans if required.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnyone who is facing these threats, they cannot rest at home and feel comfortable and safe, they\u2019re worried about their businesses \u2026 they\u2019re heartbreaking stories,\u201d Eby told reporters Friday.<\/p>\n

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But while Eby acknowledged urgency in addressing the rising cases, he also cautioned that getting to the networks behind the extortion attempts will take time.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThere\u2019s a difference between arresting the front line person that commits the offence of shooting at a house and doing the deeper police work of rooting out the entire noxious weed of the organization,\u201d Eby said.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe have asked police not to focus exclusively on the front line people \u2026 but who is paying them, what are the roots and can we pull out the whole plant instead of plucking a few leaves, because the leaves are just going to come back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Communities in B.C. have reported a troubling rise in the number of violent extortion threats this year, particularly targeting Canadians of South Asian descent. That includes Surrey, which as of last week reported 101 extortion files and 44 \u201cshots fired\u201d incidents related to extortion so far this year.<\/p>\n

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Surrey\u2019s police chief called the numbers \u201calarming.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cExtortions are (a) relatively new and deeply troubling threat in Canada \u2014 one of the most significant we have seen in recent years. These criminals rely on fear as their primary weapon,\u201d wrote Surrey Police Chief Constable Norm Lipinski in a public letter last week.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey want residents to feel vulnerable, isolated, and reluctant to come forward. We cannot let that happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

In October 2024, the RCMP took the extraordinary step of warning the Canadian public that \u201cagents of the Government of India\u201d were involved in serious criminal activity in Canada, including extortion.<\/p>\n

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The national force said at the time their public warning was motivated by the \u201csignificant threat to public safety\u201d those activities represent. The RCMP noted the use of organized crime to create \u201cthe perception of an unsafe environment\u201d for South Asian Canadians.<\/p>\n

Balpreet Singh, a spokesperson for the World Sikh Organization (WSO) in Canada, said that while he was pleased to hear of collaboration between Ottawa and B.C. to address the issue, he was disappointed by the \u201ctiptoeing\u201d around naming the \u201cactual root of the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cThis isn\u2019t just random crime happening. This is an organized crime wave that has its roots in India,\u201d Singh told Global News Friday.<\/p>\n

Prime Minister Mark Carney\u2019s government has attempted to rebuild diplomatic \u2014 and crucially economic \u2014 ties with New Delhi and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi after years of fraught relations. Carney\u2019s predecessor, Justin Trudeau, publicly revealed that Canada had intelligence linking agents of the Indian government to the assassination of B.C. Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in 2023.<\/p>\n

Nijjar was a leader within the Khalistan movement, which advocates for a homeland for Sikhs separate from India. India has long accused Canada of harboring \u201cextremists,\u201d and the Khalistan movement has been an irritant in bilateral relations.<\/p>\n

Canada, meanwhile, recently listed the international criminal organization known as the Bishnoi Gang as a terrorist entity. The India-based gang has been accused by the RCMP of a campaign of violence against Sikh activists in Canada.<\/p>\n

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\u201cCanada clearly wants to rebuild economic ties with India, but it\u2019s at the expense of accountability, the duty to protect Canadians, our sovereignty,\u201d Singh said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce again, the RCMP and government officials have already said that the government of India was the one that created this phenomenon. So why are we not saying it? Is it to, you know, have more supply chains?\u201d<\/p>\n

Anandasangaree, the federal public safety minister and a B.C. MP, allowed that transnational repression was one factor in the rising number of extortion cases.<\/p>\n

\u201c(But) ultimately this is about money,\u201d Anandasanagree told reporters.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople who are involved in (these) heinous crimes are bad people whose singular focus is money. And it\u2019s not about what they do to get the money, it\u2019s about the end goal.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\t&copy 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"B.C. Premier David Eby said federal and provincial authorities feel a \u201chuge amount of urgency\u201d to address rising…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":314093,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[49,48,2169,2662,86515,44,714],"class_list":["post-314092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-crime","tag-david-eby","tag-gary-anandasangaree","tag-news","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=314092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314092\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/314093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}