A police officer takes down crime scene tape outside a café that was shot at multiple times, in Surrey, B.C., in July. The café is linked to comic and television host Kapil Sharma.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
Mayors of some cities across Canada hard-hit by the recent wave of attempted extortions, shootings and arsons aimed at South Asian business owners are headed to Ottawa next week to ask for more help and a declaration of a national emergency.
The mayors of Brampton, Ont., Surrey, B.C., and Winnipeg say the extortion crisis will be a major focus for them at the Big City Mayors’ Caucus scheduled for next week in Ottawa, and they think other mayors will join them.
“My worry is that this is going to spread much more broadly across the country. And the status quo here is just not working,” Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown said.
B.C. mayor says 20 additional RCMP officers to support anti-extortion operations
In light of the crisis, federal Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree has said Peel Region, which includes Brampton, will get up to $1-million to bolster local police work.
But Mr. Brown and others say there needs to be much more support from the federal government to cope with an emerging extortion tactic employed by established and impromptu gangs, some of them with international connections.
“We need to be agile and nimble and we don’t want to just catch the person who shoots at a house. We want to get the people higher up,” said Mr. Brown, whose city was the first to report the new trend in criminal activity in 2023.
In Surrey, city council approved a motion Monday calling on the federal government to declare a national emergency. Mr. Brown said he will bring a similar motion to his council next week.
Mayor Patrick Brown says he worries that the extortion crisis is 'going to spread much more broadly across the country.'Andrew Lahodynskyj/The Canadian Press
Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke has said the city needs 150 additional police officers to help grapple with the explosion of this kind of criminal activity.
The federal government has pledged funding for up to 20 additional RCMP officers for Surrey to combat the problem, which Ms. Locke said was an appreciated first step.
Surrey Police Service Chief Norm Lipinski said he’s concerned the crime wave is far from breaking.
There were 133 extortion threats reported to Surrey police in 2025 and 49 shootings. After relatively low numbers in November and December (a half dozen between them), he thought things might be slowing down.
But January has seen 43 threats and 10 shootings already, with some conducted by what police believe are highly organized international gangs and others believed to be carried out by smaller, local copycat groups.
Chief Lipinski agreed Surrey needs extra help from both the provincial and federal government.
Surrey police are dealing with a mounting backlog of files and investigations as they ramp up action on the crime wave and it takes a lot of time to go through cellphone records and more to make cases solid, he explained.
Members of the Sikh community patrol the Sri Guru Singh Sabha Gurdwara in Malton, Ont., in 2024, after the community was subject to a slew of violence from pro-India activists in the northwest corner of the GTA.Christopher Katsarov/The Globe and Mail
“This is a crisis. We feel it here. I need investigators,” said the Chief. “And then I need boots on the ground. We need to have a visible overnight presence in those communities. People are scared.”
Beyond resources, B.C. Premier David Eby called on the federal government to expedite Bill C-12, which includes measures tightening up the immigration system and restricting access to asylum. The Canada Border Services Agency said last September that 15 foreigners facing extortion charges had applied for refugee status in Canada.
“What we’re seeing in Surrey is it’s a terror attack in slow motion,” Mr. Eby said at a meeting of premiers and Prime Minister Mark Carney on Thursday.
“You would never dream of giving refugee status to someone who participated in a terror attack. But that’s exactly what’s happening under our current system. That loophole has to be closed.”
He said provincial ministers will meet next month with police and federal officials to discuss a co-ordinated approach to tackling the problem.
B.C.’s Extortion Task Force, established in September last year to tackle the problem in Surrey, Abbotsford and Delta, said in a news release earlier this week that it has taken over 32 files across the Lower Mainland.
The task force said it was investigating 111 foreign nationals, with seven criminally charged and nine deported.
In Winnipeg, the extortion statistics haven’t reached the levels of Surrey or Brampton, but Mayor Scott Gillingham says it is a rising concern.
Winnipeg police recently arrested five people in a case involving extortion and threats, but Mr. Gillingham said he knows of other cases. One of the five arrested was from Kitchener, Ont., and two were from Montreal.
Many investigators across Canada point to Edmonton and its police department’s Project Gaslight, formed to respond to the extortion threats, as offering a way forward.
Deputy Chief Nicole Chapdelaine, who heads Edmonton’s Investigations Bureau, said they first started seeing new homes being torched in the fall of 2023, which shocked the community.
“When you see a new home build go up in flames, it shines in the sky,” she said during a phone interview Friday.
Gary Mason: Extortion suspects using asylum loophole to remain in Canada is a farce
Once her force determined these incidents were connected, they ramped up investigations, which involved 200 department members, she said. They also added extra officers to patrol areas frequented by extortionists and had South Asian officers attend community meetings to engender more trust from victims to come forward with complaints.
In 2024, 54 charges were brought against six people linked to the extortions of dozens of wealthy South Asian people. Last fall, five charges were brought against another person accused of three drive-by shootings in Edmonton and Winnipeg.
Deputy Chief Chapdelaine said improvements are needed in terms of how intelligence on these sophisticated crime groups, some of which are based in India, is shared among different police agencies.
That’s because investigators are often using different provincial or municipal intelligence databases and have to call up each other to share crucial information on their suspects. She endorsed a call made by experts last year for Ottawa to create a national targeting centre for organized crime akin to that for identifying and disrupting terrorists.