Talk about influencing elections!

​Images: Toronto Sun
1. Sophie Trudeau with Jaspal Atwal.
2. Federal Minister of Infrastructure and Communities, Amarjeet Sohi, with Jaspal Atwal

Who needs Russia? There are folks much closer to home ready and able to discredit the Trudeau government.

Update Mar 3/18 GlobalNews: Justin Trudeau would lose if an election were held tomorrow, India trip a symptom of shift in mood: Ipsos poll

• ​The biggest headline from the trip, though, continues to be Liberal MP Randeep Sarai’s decision to invite convicted attempted murder Jaspal Atwal.
• That conviction earned Atwal a spot on the India government’s travel blacklist — from which he was mysteriously removed last year. [bolding by YYC]
  

Mar 2/18: There are folks who have a keen interest in seeing a Conservative sweep in the next election -- which sadly often matters little to voters these days, since the deeds of Parliament too often overlap regardless of which party gets to take the lead.

Bill C-51 would be a good example.  It was voted in by Cons and Libs alike during the Harper rule, though the Libs promised to revise it if elected next time. Sure enough, a Bill C-51 was introduced in the new Lib parliament, but, oops, it was a completely different Bill with the same name but dealing solely with changes to the criminal code.
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It's possible most people didn't notice, because once the Liberals were in power there were no more demonstrations.  Same as when Obama/Clinton took the reigns and nobody protested their wars.

People prone to conspiracy theory will tell you that the "terror" events in Canada were staged in order to allow our spies easier access to what is euphemized as our privacy. Sure enough, if you delve deeply enough, it's possible to wonder the same thing. There does seem to have been a paucity of such incidents since the earlier Bill C-51 was passed, which either suggests that the Bill has been effective in preventing certain kinds of terrorism in Canada, or that the terror events were staged in order to make the Bill more plausible.

Certainly, no one can blame Muslims for the attack on the Quebec mosque, and the Muslim lady who brandished a knife in a Canadian Tire store is quite rightly being assessed for mental problems. And the RCMP, forerunners of CSIS, were up to some pretty shady shenanigans in at least one "terror" case.

Remember the movie "Rosemary's Baby"?  When she finally realized her predicament, and tried to convince the physician she ran to for protection, she acknowledged that her fears seemed far-fetched, but then said, "There are conspiracies, aren't there, Doctor?" And who could argue with that? The doctor verbally agreed, but secretly decided she was nuts, and turned her over to the conspirators.

Scandal, too, is a good way to influence outcomes, and too many news reports seem designed to bounce your brain around so much that you are left with only a vague idea of the players and the chains of events.  Right now it's Sikhs being cast in a bad light, more so since NDP leader Jagmeet Singh made a splash in October 2017 as "the first person of a visible minority group to lead a Canadian federal political party on a permanent basis".

PolicyOptions:

• It's no coincidence that the party that ran [the] most visible minority candidates swept the [2015] election, calling into question the effectiveness of Conservative outreach efforts to new Canadians

And it may not be a coincidence if the Cons are attempting to discredit a number of those "visible minorities" in the Liberal Party.

GlobalNews:

• [As early as May 5, 2017] Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan was branded a "serial deceiver" by the Opposition.

Government of Canada:

• The Canadian High Commissioner in India (Nadir Patel who was "recently appointed") was said to have issued the invitation to Atwal.

But here's the guy who took the fall: Randeep Sarai

GlobalNews:

• Liberal MP behind convicted attempted murderer’s invite to Trudeau event resigns from role as caucus chair

That was despite National Security Adviser Daniel Jean having been seriously implicated.

​CBC:

• Conservatives want national security adviser to testify before committee on Atwal affair
• PM has defended Daniel Jean and said the invitation was the fault of B.C. Liberal Randeep Sarai

Despite Sarai's mia culpa, Macleans won't let go of the Daniel Jean thing, and also goes into some detail about Atwal.

Toronto Sun: Trudeau breaking bread with would-be assassin in India?

• He’s is [sic] a former member of the International Sikh Youth Federation (ISYF), a militant group fighting to establish an independent Sikh state in the Punjab region of India that was banned in Canada and designated a terrorist organization in 2003.

Well, there are no photos showing Trudeau "breaking bread" with him, but speaking of conspiracy theory, none of these news items has shown a photo of Atwal in India that reveals the name(s) of the photographer, and the photo in this Toronto Star article was lifted from a Facebook page.

All of the photos are very grainy and could very well have been photo-shopped.

The above Sun article speaks of the crime for which Atwal was sentenced to 20 years in prison, but then goes on to say this:

•  [Atwal] did not serve jail time, however, because CSIS was found to have obtained evidence through an improperly obtained warrant."

So do we just believe that CSIS needs a much better watchdog, or was there some sort of method in their shocking lapse of propriety?  Is CSIS now trying to get the smell off themselves and onto the Liberal government? If CSIS is bent on destroying the credibility of the whole Liberal party, Atwal has certainly been very useful in tarnishing its image.

Here is the official reason for Trudeau's trip to India:

• While meeting with business leaders in Mumbai today, the Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, welcomed more than $1 billion in investments between Canadian and Indian companies, which will lead to the creation of more than 5,800 good, well-paying middle class jobs for Canadians.
• These investments will grow Canada’s economy, encourage innovation and entrepreneurship, and see increased collaboration in several key sectors, including infrastructure, information technology, aerospace, clean technology, film production, and research and development.

Somebody does not want Trudeau to take credit for any of that. A movement, it seems, has been started against him, and as the Ottawa Citizen says: That's not going to go away soon.

Below photo by YYC: When Harper was in power...

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