A Sikh-heavy Conservative slate is ready to rumble in B.C.'s Lower Mainland

DELTA, B.C. — First-time Conservative candidate Jessy Sahota hopes to punch his ticket to the notoriously quarrelsome House of Commons in next Monday’s election, but he could easily have ended up in a much different arena of combat. Sahota, a standout amateur heavyweight wrestler, was in Orlando, Fla., for a tryout with NXT, the developmental brand of pro wrestling juggernaut WWE, in March 2020, just as COVID-19 triggered global lockdowns. “We’d just made it to NXT’s performance centre when management told us we had to leave because they needed the space for the main roster,” recalls Sahota’s equally brawny brother Paul, who’d tagged along for the tryout. The brothers were soon on a one-way flight back home to Canada, putting an abrupt end to their dreams of squared circle superstardom. Jessy, now 32, says the twist of fate was probably for the best. “A few of the guys I used to wrestle with have tried to get into things like WWE and (mixed martial arts)… It’s a tough life and there’s not much money in it unless you get to be one of the top guys,” he says. Now a constable with the Delta police, Sahota says he reached out to his local Conservative riding association after liking a lot of what he heard from leader Pierre Poilievre on crime and affordability. “I asked them how I could help and it turns out the best way was by running for the nomination,” said Sahota. Sahota is one of eight South Asian candidates running for the Conservatives in British Columbia’s Lower Mainland, all members of the Sikh community. A ninth, real estate agent Lourence Singh, was set to run for the Conservatives in the Greater Vancouver riding of New Westminster—Burnaby—Maillardville but was dropped by the party a week into the campaign A few of these candidates are, like Sahota, in their 20s and 30s. Gurtaj Sandhu, a volunteer on Sahota’s campaign, said that young Sikhs are gravitating toward the Conservative party for many of the same reasons as other young Canadians . “I think a lot of us are worried about finding good jobs and whether we can afford to live on our own,” says Sandhu as he door-knocks in an idyllic subdivision not too far from Delta’s waterfront. While none of the 14 Conservative MPs who held seats in B.C. at the start of the campaign were from the Sikh community, the party is clearly looking to change this. Poilievre himself was in the Lower Mainland for the Sikh festival of Vaisakhi on Saturday, his visit coinciding with a critical stretch of advance voting. The Conservatives have also reportedly ramped up spending on Punjabi-language ads, targeted to the Lower Mainland and Greater Toronto Area, in recent weeks. Sikhs make up about 8.5 per cent of Metro Vancouver’s population, according to the most recent census , taken in 2021. But the Conservatives’ bridge-building with the Sikh community has been overshadowed somewhat by nomination controversies, with some critics accusing the party of tokenism in its recruitment of Sikh candidates. The nomination of 25-year-old blueberry farmer Sukhman Gill in the nominally safe riding of Abbotsford—South Langley has been an especially large headache for the party . Gill, a total newcomer to politics, won the Conservative nomination after ex-B.C. finance minister Mike de Jong was rejected by the party’s internal vetting team . De Jong has kept the focus on the party’s decision by continuing to run as an independent, racking up the endorsements of several prominent local leaders, including Ed Fast, who held part of the riding as a Conservative MP from 2006 to 2025. Gill’s campaign didn’t immediately respond to a request to comment on this story. Ujjal Dosanjh, who’s held Lower Mainland seats at the provincial and federal level, said that this sort of perceived favouritism can hurt the cause of Sikhs, and other minorities, looking to enter politics. “You do risk a sort of cultural backlash when voters pick up a ballot and see a bunch of ethnic names that they don’t recognize,” said Dosanjh. “It can give the impression that ethnic groups themselves are somehow co-opting politics and tilting the rules in their favour.” Dosanjh added that, no matter the ethnicity, candidates should put in the work to build up name recognition in their communities before putting their name on the ballot. “You never want people to see your name on the ballot and think ‘who is this guy and what has he done to deserve to represent us in government?'” said Dosanjh. Dosanjh himself worked for several years in Vancouver, as a lawyer and newspaper editor, before entering politics in his 40s. Vancouver-based strategist Kareem Allam says he agrees that the Conservative outreach efforts have been too ham-fisted. “What we’re seeing from the Conservatives is the sort of ‘ethnic sandbox’ approach of yesteryear,” said Allam, a partner Richardson Strategy Group. “Sikhs are a much more heterogenous group than they were, say 20 or 30 years ago. They’re not going to automatically put an ‘x’ by the Punjabi name on the ballot.” National Post rmohamed@postmedia.com

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