McCallum claims Indian election interference in Surrey, demands investigation<\/p>\n
Published 10:16 am Tuesday, July 28, 2026<\/p>\n
Surrey mayoral candidate Doug McCallum has dropped a political bombshell, demanding a federal investigation into alleged foreign election interference in Surrey, Delta and Vancouver.<\/p>\n
His Safe Surrey Coalition issued a press release July 28 concerning a \u201cnetwork\u201d of at least six Facebook pages posing as local news in Surrey, Delta and Vancouver being operated out of India, \u201cpaid for in Indian rupees, and billed to an entity at a Government of India research facility\u201d which are \u201caimed at Canadian voters one week into the pre-campaign period for the October 17 election.\u201d<\/p>\n
His slate is calling on CSIS, the RCMP, Elections BC and the Surrey Police Service to investigate. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not a Canadian operation. The people running it are in India. The money paying for it is in rupees. The payer named on the advertising is an entity at a research facility of the Government of India,\u201d McCallum alleged.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is foreign interference in a Canadian election. Not influence. Not marketing. Interference. Foreign operators, foreign money, aimed at the voters of three Canadian cities, hiding their own location the moment they were caught. Ottawa calls this a national security matter when it happens federally. It is happening in Surrey right now and not one person in authority has said a word.\u201d<\/p>\n
The SSC is calling on CSIS \u201cto establish who commissioned, funded and directed it, and whether any foreign state entity or its representatives in Canada played any role\u201d and Elections BC to investigate \u201cunregistered third party advertising, missing sponsorship information and prohibited foreign funding, covering the money paid to produce this content as well as to distribute it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The slate also want the Surrey Police Service and Surrey Police Board briefed on this \u201cand to coordinate with federal partners,\u201d and for Meta and TikTok to remove these pages immediately pending full disclosure of ownership, operators and funding.\u201d<\/p>\n
McCallum says content in this network \u201camplifies Mayor Brenda Locke, including a public safety post presenting her record on policing, extortion and gang violence entirely in her own framing, pushed to Surrey audiences with no disclosure of who paid to put it there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Locke seemed baffled by these claims. \u201cI\u2019m not sure what the deal is,\u201d she told the Now-Leader. \u201cHe\u2019s saying there\u2019s foreign interference?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe Mr. McCallum and members of his team should come up with a better strategy, maybe they have to have a better platform and maybe they should go knock on some doors because I don\u2019t see what they see here. I don\u2019t know what to say,\u201d Locke said. \u201cIf they think there\u2019s something that should be investigated they can go take it to the police but I don\u2019t see what he\u2019s saying, so.\u201d<\/p>\n
Referencing the press release, she said, when she looks at the comment attributed to her \u2013 mayor of Surrey says she\u2019s deeply concerned about the ongoing extortion and gang-related violence in the city \u2013 \u201cyeah, I would\u2019ve said that. I\u2019m not sure what to say. I would have said that, I am deeply concerned.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI have no knowlege of this so I have no idea what he\u2019s talking about. He knows obviously something I don\u2019t or maybe he doesn\u2019t know. I have no idea what this is all about,\u201d Locke said.<\/p>\n
Third-party sponsors must register with Elections BC as required under the Local Elections Campaign Financing Act before advertising and those with $500 or more in advertising expenses must file a full disclosure statement. Organizations of any kind, and individuals who are not residents of British Columbia, are banned outright from funding third party election advertising. Offences carry fines of up to $20,000 for an organization and up to two years imprisonment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"McCallum claims Indian election interference in Surrey, demands investigation Published 10:16 am Tuesday, July 28, 2026 Surrey mayoral…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":831957,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194299],"tags":[49,48,87674],"class_list":["post-831956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-surrey","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-surrey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831956","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=831956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831956\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/831957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=831956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=831956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=831956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}