Joel Binda, June 2026
One year ago in May 2025, a child drowned in the Credit River in Mississauga.
The comments on news articles shared two sentiments. First, the assumption that this was an ethnic Indian child. Second, sarcastic and racist remarks against the dead child and family.
“Was a cricket bat found nearby?”, “Was a turban floating in the water?”, “Parents were too busy eating curry.”
A few years ago, there would be sympathy and condolences. But this was 2025, a decade into Justin Trudeau’s mass immigration.
Those of us from Indian ethnicity are familiar with the widespread shift in sentiment. Indians were once considered a model minority. Hard working, educated, low crime rate and strong family values. Now Indians are fraudsters, car thieves, the invaders taking your kid’s job and getting your order wrong at Tim Hortons.
A country famed for its tolerance of immigrants had turned against one group in particular.
In 2018, Justin Trudeau gave a noble speech urging people to go beyond tolerance:
“I think we can aim a little higher than mere tolerance,” Trudeau said. “Think about it: Saying ‘I tolerate you’ actually means something like, ‘Ok, I grudgingly admit that you have a right to exist, …So let’s try for something a little more like acceptance, respect, friendship, and yes, even love.”
Paradoxically, while asking people for more than tolerance, his time in office reduced it to a point of hatred. How this happened in a welcoming country of immigrants is an important lesson to learn.
Before Trudeau was elected in 2015, immigrants came from a diverse set of countries. China, India, the Philippines, Egypt, Lebanon, Poland, Columbia, Jamaica, Ghana, etc. Within a few years of Justin’s election, the government would surge immigration with Indians. Temporary migrants, like foreign students, would rise from 500,000 per year to 1,500,000 per year. In December 2023, Indian students were almost half of all Study Permit holders. Four times as many as the next highest country.
This surge came with costs. Background checks weren’t done. Criminal records falsified. International students were assumed to be students. Those on temporary status were assumed to be temporary. For many trucking schools, colleges and businesses, immigration became a strategy and fraud a tactic.
The Bank of Canada (2025) put this more politely:
“Since 2015, non-permanent residents have become a primary driver of Canadian immigration inflows, reversing previous trends where this group was small and permanent residents played a predominant role.
…temporary workers have become younger, less experienced and more likely to come from lower-income countries than previous waves of immigrants.”
In other words, along with the large increase in quantity came a decrease in quality.
Indian fatigue became the word of the decade for Canadian society. Posters were put up to “stop the invasion”. An entire category of social media is the “Indian Reel”. Recordings of Indians dumping garbage on the side of the road for example. Amateur comedians have become experts at mimicking Indians, with the accent, headshake and sandals down to a science.
Immigrants, including other Indians, have especially turned against those Indians. Believing they have a special license to be more critical or even racist. There was once solidarity among immigrants with a shared dream and struggle. Now there is hostility and a sense that this one group destroyed Canada for the rest of us. Even a tragically dead child in Mississauga becomes a flag bearer of this annoying group. Receiving a society’s frustration and hate. Whether the child was actually Indian is irrelevant.
How did our immigration system become so large, intolerant and dominated by one nationality? More importantly, why? Was this an accident of bureaucracy or something more calculated?
Many of our relatives who immigrated decades ago still vote Liberal. Because without the Liberals, “we wouldn’t be here”. This ethnic loyalty is real in politics. The racist, Democrat President Lyndon Johnson, who passed the Civils Rights Act in 1964, famously said he’d have the negros voting Democrat for the next 200 years. African-Americans, who previously voted Republican, have so far proved him right.
Did Justin Trudeau want his own large ethnic vote bank? Are Indians the new Black? It’s important to point out that model minorities, successful minorities, don’t reliably vote Liberal. Were Indians too much a model minority? Were their economic success and family values leading them to the Conservative camp?
Beleaguered minorities vote Liberal. Victims of racism vote Liberal. Under two terms of Liberal government, Indians have gone from a model minority to a large hated underclass. Coincidentally, Liberals protect us from this hatred, from racists, from bad Conservatives.
The former African-American slave and educator, Booker T. Washington warned against the parties that relied on votes from beleaguered minorities. And had an interest in keeping them oppressed. The doctors who didn’t want the patient to get well.
“I am afraid that there is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don’t want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public.”
As a pharmaceutical company needs the sick to buy medication, some political parties need victims who vote.
Systematically, federal policy singled out Indo-Canadians from the immigrant mosaic. They were made into the face of mass immigration. Blamed for the job market, housing shortage, crime and garbage on the street. Many who spent decades in Canada, working hard, becoming Canadian, now found themselves a hated minority. Indian again, this time without the model minority label.
During his time in power, Justin Trudeau dressed in Indian costumes, ate Indian food, did Indian dances and Indian religious rites. As Justin became a despised Indian, he took many Canadians with him, including that drowned child.
Joel Binda is a resident of Mississauga, immigrant from Trinidad, and candidate for Ward 7 Councillor in the Mississauga election.
Share this article:
Sources:
https://www.bankofcanada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/sdp2025-8.pdf
https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/corporate/transparency/committees/cimm-feb-28-2024/international-student-program-at-a-glance.html
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/canadas-growing-immigration-challenges-are-we-returning-to-dangerous-policies-of-exclusion/article_6f019c3e-ad6a-411e-85ac-0cbf6155adee.html