Saskatchewan NDP Leader Carla Beck energized with larger caucus after election defeat

EDMONTON – Ride-share giant Uber has banned a customer from its app after one of its drivers posted a social media video showing him enduring a racist tirade.

Mandeep Sehgal says it was important for him to call attention to it because South Asian drivers are increasingly facing racist taunts and Uber was taking too long to hold his belligerent customer accountable.

Sehgal said South Asian Uber drivers are also increasingly installing cameras in their cars for safety due to the hate.

“Enough is enough. We are not going to tolerate it anymore,” Sehgal, 40, said, in an interview.

Uber, in an emailed statement this week, confirmed action had been taken.

“We have been in touch with the driver, and have removed the rider from the platform,” the company said.

Uber added it has made it easier to report discrimination on its platform, and reminded users that they are required to follow its guidelines, which state “discriminatory language … vilifying, or asking questions about sensitive topics regarding national origin, race, ethnicity” and “making racial comments or using slurs is never allowed.”

A spokesperson for the app did not answer questions about why it took so long for it to ban the customer.

Sehgal said he picked up a man from a remote neighbourhood southeast of Calgary on the night of Sept. 21.

Sehgal can be seen in an approximately three-minute long dashcam video.

As he begins driving, the man asks Sehgal where he’s from. Sehgal tells him he’s Indian.

He asks Sehgal if he’s a permanent resident. Sehgal replies that he is, and that he arrived in Canada seven years ago.

Are you going to get a “white chick” pregnant, the man asks.

Sehgal laughs nervously and replies: “Why you’re so judgmental?”

“Cause I’m born and raised Calgarian. I’m white blood of the land. You are on my land. I’m the blood of the land,” the man replies.

“You’re not even close to being from here.”

That was enough for Sehgal, who said he no longer felt safe with this passenger and was done with tolerating “ignorant customers” complaining about immigrants over the three years he has been driving for Uber.

He pulled over and ordered the passenger out, telling him, “You can get out here on your land.”

Sehgal said the man left him shaken and upset.

“I’m paying taxes. I’m a law-abiding citizen. If I have to prove that I belong here, it creates insecurity,” he said, adding both his children were born in Canada.

Sehgal said he later contacted Uber support to report the man’s behaviour and send the dashcam video.

But he said the app’s support workers told him they couldn’t do anything. They also refused to remove the customer from the app and the low driver rating he had left behind.

A frustrated Sehgal then posted the video on social media. He said Uber contacted him soon after to warn him he can’t publish video without a customer’s consent but, again, didn’t take action to hold the man accountable.

He said the video gained traction this month on the internet, after it was shared again thousands of times on a different platform and, ultimately, Uber banned the rider.

Sehgal said he, himself, erred. The RCMP directed him to remove the address he had posted of the area he picked up the man because it was not related to the customer, putting an innocent third party at risk of harassment.

Evan Balgord, the executive director of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, said Sehgal’s plight is part of a larger, growing problem.

Balgord said he has recently observed a lot of hate targeting Canada’s South Asian diaspora in response to politicians discussing immigration and student visas in Canada.

He said Sehgal’s customer needs to reflect on his actions.

“I hope he learns from this experience, changes his beliefs, and comes forward and apologizes,” Balgord said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 1, 2024.

RED DEER, Alta. – Thousands of members of Alberta’s governing United Conservative Party gather Friday in Red Deer ahead of a crucial weekend vote on the job performance of their leader, Premier Danielle Smith.

The party’s rules don’t say what level of support in a leadership review is considered a passing grade. But Smith has said that she’d like to see a higher level of support than the 54 per cent she received when party rank and file picked her to replace then-premier Jason Kenney in 2022.

Earlier that year, Kenney resigned as leader after receiving a lacklustre 51 per cent of the vote at a scheduled party leadership review.

The vote comes at the party’s annual general meeting, and at least 5,500 members are registered to attend.

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Smith wouldn’t say what percentage she would like to receive, but said she thought the number of party members attending the event was a sign of support in itself.

“That’s a measure of how excited people are about what we’ve done over the last two years,” she said.

“I’m really encouraged by the number of people coming.”

In recent months, Smith has toured the province speaking to party faithful while introducing policies critics say are aimed at keeping the party’s restless social-conservative flank from voting against her in the review.

This week, her government introduced bills aimed at putting in rules around youth using preferred pronouns at school, along with restrictions on transgender surgery and transgender players competing in female amateur sports.

She also announced a renewed legal fight against the federal carbon levy and introduced a bill to revamp Alberta’s Bill of Rights aimed at giving residents the right to refuse medical treatments, including vaccines.

Party members this weekend will also vote on non-binding policy resolutions such as abandoning net-zero greenhouse gas targets and banning transgender women from using women’s bathrooms and change rooms.

“Smith clearly is behaving like somebody who is worried about this,” political scientist Lisa Young, with the University of Calgary, said in an interview.

“What we’ve seen is the premier and the cabinet really focused for the past five or six months on pursuing a policy agenda that’s intended to ensure that the party membership is supportive of the premier.”

Lori Williams, a political scientist at Mount Royal University, agreed.

Williams also pointed to Smith’s recent promise to introduce legislation next year to restrict how professional regulatory bodies like the College of Physicians and Surgeons police their members — something the party’s base has been calling for since last year.

“It looks like she’s been working very hard, a concerted long-term effort, to shore up support from those who are likely to be attending the (annual general meeting),” Williams said.

Williams and Young said Smith will likely escape the leadership review unscathed, but it likely won’t be the only moment her leadership is under a microscope.

“I think she might have created a sense of expectation in the party grassroots that they get to drive party policy,” Young said.

“There may still be a moment of reckoning down the road.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 1, 2024.

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MARKHAM, Ont. – Police have identified human remains in a decades-old cold case as those of a man who they say escaped from prison a month before he was found dead in Markham, Ont.

Investigators with York Regional Police say the remains were found on July 16, 1980, but could not be identified at the time due to decomposition.

They say the remains were exhumed in 2007 to attempt facial reconstruction and get DNA, but there were no matches when the DNA profile was added to the national database the following year.

Police say they used genetic genealogy to find relatives of the deceased person in 2021, and two years later, they identified the remains as William Joseph Pennell, a 26-year-old Toronto man.

Since then, police say they have learned more about Pennell, including that he spent time in a number of correctional institutions for a variety of offences.

They say he was arrested and charged with armed robbery and attempted murder while out on parole in June 1979, and escaped from prison in June 1980 shortly after being convicted in the robbery.

His remains were found a month later and police say that while the cause of death was undetermined, they believe foul play was involved.

Police say Pennell had told his case officers there were at least two others involved in the robbery he was convicted in, but refused to name them, believing his life would be in danger.

They say no detailed records related to his escape from prison have been found so far.

Investigators say Pennell had told a friend that he planned to flee to South America in what is believed to be his last contact before his death.

Police say they are working to identify more of Pennell’s friends and associates to try to build a timeline between his escape and the time his body was found. They’re asking anyone with information to come forward.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 1, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.