It’s a crime that’s hitting specific populations and pockets of our nation, relentlessly. Extortion attempts and acts, including drive-by shootings, arson and even murder, have prompted police, including Peel Region, the RCMP, Calgary police and Surrey police, to meet this week in British Columbia to try and get a better handle on these crimes, which cross provincial and international borders.
There have been hundreds of incidents of extortion over the past few years in Peel Region, and there’s been one group in the crosshairs: Peel’s burgeoning South Asian community. So much so that two years ago, Peel police started an extortion task force, now one of the biggest units in the service. They’ve laid over 340 charges since its inception, but still, so many of the incidents go unreported, and others unsolved, leaving some in the community to simply abandon the region – and Canada – altogether.
“So if the police cannot protect you, the police have nothing to protect you. So what do you do? They say, leave from your house, leave your house. Where do you go? Why do you want to buy another house in the same area or the same country? Better leave the country,” says Dharmjit, who has been the victim of two drive-by shootings over the past two months.
“They start in October, calling me about money. Then I informed the police. So I blocked the number, then they started calling from another number, and I blocked this number. Then they come on November 25th at my farm, they shoot, at night,” he explained after he refused to pay.
Dharmjit says Caledon provincial police is investigating the incident and encouraged the family to stay away from their home for a few days. When they returned, so did the gunfire.
He says the entire family was in the home, including two children, when shots rang out on the night of December 11. Two months later, the bullet holes remain, but the family says they won’t be staying.
“Police don’t have enough resources to fight these criminals,” he says.
That’s exactly what this week’s summit in B.C. is trying to address.
“The issue that we’re currently dealing with and responding to has implications, not just here in Peel, but on a national level, and for that matter, even an international level,” said Peel Regional Police Deputy Chief Nick Milinovich.
Although many of the extortion incidents in Surrey, B.C., another hotspot, Brampton and Caledon have claimed to be the work of the Lawrence Bishnoi gang, an India-based terrorist group, Milinovich sees little evidence of that.
“I currently don’t have anything definitive that could draw a correlation to Lawrence Bishnoi,” he said. “Now, having said that, it would be naive to ignore that as a possibility. So it’s something that we continue to investigate.”
Systemic hurdles hampering extortion investigations
Extortions are particularly difficult to investigate, in part because of this fear.
“I believe under-reporting is happening,” says Milinovich. “I do believe that there are community members, because they are afraid, are paying, which gives rise to the proliferation of more of these extortions happening.”
Police investigations can be hit by systemic hurdles as well, such as delays in getting court permission to access phone evidence, catch and release bail, and short sentences.
“Once we finally do get to trial, what can we expect in terms of punishment? There needs to be a deterrence,” says Milinovich.
These are all things Milinovich hopes to discuss at the summit, but in the interim, he says Peel’s task force is going on the offensive, making even more investments in the unit and trying to make the region as inhospitable as possible to extortionists.
“Peel right now is the epicentre of it, it’s the front of this war on extortions we’re fighting, and we’re gonna win that war and planning on committing the resources necessary in order to do that,” he says.
All of this is of little comfort to Dharmjit, his family and even his Caledon neighbour, who have started moving their businesses and families out of Canada. Similar situations are being felt across the country. Calgary is currently investigating 21 cases, Surry is investigating nearly 50 cases from this year alone, and Caledon has had 60 reported cases since 2023.
