News East West
TORONTO: In what is trending as Canada’s`peegate’ on social media, an Indo-Canadian candidate in the Oct 19 general election has been kicked out after he was found urinating in a tea mug and then washing it down a sink at a home where he called to repair kitchen wash basin.
Jerry Bance (anglicised from Bains), who comes from Punjab, was the candidate of the Conservative Party of Canada from the Toronto riding of Scarborough Rouge Park.
On Sunday, a 2012 video identified him urinating into a mug and washing it down the sink at the home where he came to repair the wash basin. Bance runs his own home repairs company called XPress Appliance Service.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) had broadcast the urination incident without identifying Bance in March 2012 in an episode of Marketplace. But the national broadcaster identified Bance on Sunday.
Bance was invited to that home to carry out sink repairs as part of a sting operation by the CBC for the programmme Marketplace. Bance was to be filmed while carrying out the repair and then confronted whether he was overcharging. But instead, they filmed him peeing into the tea mug and emptying it in the sink.
The Conservative Party lost no time in dropping Bance who now says he `deeply regrets’ the incident.
Bance left Punjab for Luton in England in 1968. He married his wife Shinder there in 1973 and the couple moved to Canada in 1974. A service technician, Bance worked for Sears Canada for many years before starting his own business. He and his wife have lived in Scaborough for over three decades and they have three children – two daughters Anita and Neelam and son Sachin.
Bance also served as president of a Sikh temple from 1986-1992.
Apart from Bance, the Conservative Party also kicked out another candidate – Tim Dutaud from the riding of Toronto-Danforth – for making prank calls in YouTube videos. Dutaud is a real estate sales representative.
It is not uncommon see to real estate agents, insurance agents and small-medium business owners as candidates in Canadian elections. Most Indo-Canadians in politics come from such backgrounds.
