CITY OF BRAMPTON AND LOCAL MEDIA BLACKS OUT 3 CFF CANDIDATES FROM ELECTION DEBATE

It is very unfortunate that Brampton Mayor, Patrick Brown, decided to block our candidates from local federal debate organized by City of Brampton in city owned Rose Theater on 09 October 2019. The taxpayer money was used to organize the debate.

Even the Punjabi Media Association left our CFF party candidates from local riding debates. Not only the Mayor of Brampton, but the local Punjabi YTV owned by Y Media, that carried the debate live, refused to reply to our 10 Oct, 6 October emails detailing our concerns about our exclusion from the local City debate that was held on 09 Oct 2019. Brampton Guardian, the local city newspaper failed to respond our email. One of the persons instrumental in getting us excluded from the Brampton City Debate was Yudhvir Jaswal, Host and CEO of Y Media as he acted unethically by not replying back to us, or forwarding our letter to the right person organizing the debate. Our party had not given any ads to Y Media on their marketing agent’s request and CFF has taken a position on biased journalism of Yudhvir Jaswal. Surprisingly Yudhvir Jaswal was also one of the three panelists along with two other local media hosts/journalists, San Grewal (ex Toronto Star and CEO of The Pointer.com) and Arifa Muzaffar (President and host of E awaz). These journalists were provided list of candidates and parties well in advance but none of the three journalists had the moral courage to ask the city as to why the 3 candidates of CFF, including party leader Partap Dua running from Jagmeet Singh’s home riding, Brampton East were excluded from the city organized debate.

This shows a ‘quid pro quo’ arrangement between the major parties and Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown/ local media. The latter are heavily influenced by the major parties. We have learnt that Brampton East candidate, Ramona Benson Singh used to work in office of Patrick Brown at Queens Park while he was Ontario PC Party Leader. Of course media houses have advertising greed from major parties which have huge coffers of money to throw around. And we are perplexed that Mayor Patrick Brown would also indulge in such a behavior after having been humiliated by a major party(PCs) with a scandal and removed as leader of the party. How come people have no self respect and they tow the line of major parties again? In present case he is promoting Ramona Singh belonging to PC’s big brother Conservative party.

Where is the justice? Is the local Brampton Media and Brampton Guardian (owned by Torstar group) also blocking democracy and fair election in Brampton?

Interestingly our CFF candidate in Calgary, Alberta was invited to Calgary-Skyview debate along with Christian Heritage Party and Communist Party Candidates. So Calgary voters are well informed and Brampton voters have been deliberately kept in dark. Our party was deprived free debates and airtime exposure of almost 4 hours by City of Brampton and Punjabi Media Association. The President of Punjabi Media Association, Jagdih Grewal, was also a victim of Conservative Party as he was unceremoniously removed as Conservative candidate from Malton riding few years back. His absurd reason given to CFF party leader Partap Dua for exclusion was that they only invite candidates who have done community service in Sikh temples. He forgot that many NDP, Liberal, Conservative and PPP candidates were non-Sikhs and did not attend any Sikh temple but Christian Churches and Hindu Temples.

The Peel police as well as Elections Canada have also been totally uncooperative in helping us when our volunteers were blocked by a hard core racist and abusive supervisor/manager of Dayspring Condo Corp on Dayspring Circle near Goreway/ Queen in East Brampton. Canada Election Act prohibits anyone in obstructing access to condo/apartment building for election campaign from 9-9pm. In this case both police and the supervisor have violated the Act jointly by obstructing us to convey our message.
So the media, City of Brampton, Peel Police and Elections Canada have all joined hands to please the Liberals and Conservatives???

IMPORTANT: Late Friday, a judge of Peel Superior Court gave a ruling on an injunction application filed by a local Mississauga candidate, Greg Vezina forbidding the City to exclude any of the candidates from debates organized by the City. The reasoning is City uses taxpayer money to organize the debates. Similarly no media house in receipt of public funding can exclude any of candidates from debate (Vezina v City of Mississauga 2019, ONSC 5925.