Indo-Canadian PC Ontario Candidate Resigns Over ‘Internal Theft’ Of 60,000 Customers’ Data

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Simmer Sandhu, the candidate for Brampton East, said in an online statement that he had recently been made aware of anonymous allegations against him “pertaining to both my work life and my nomination campaign. These allegations are totally baseless. I absolutely deny them,” he said on both Twitter and Facebook. “I will vigorously defend myself and reputation and I am confident I will be cleared.” But Sandhu said it would be impossible to continue as a candidate while doing so and that the election is too important “to get caught up in the issues surrounding any one person.”

TORONTO —  A former Indo-Canadian employee of Ontario’s 407 private freeway quit suddenly Wednesday as a Progressive Conservative candidate in next month’s election, barely an hour after the highway confirmed that information on 60,000 customers had been leaked through an “internal theft.”

Simmer Sandhu, the candidate for Brampton East, said in an online statement that he had recently been made aware of anonymous allegations against him “pertaining to both my work life and my nomination campaign.”

“These allegations are totally baseless. I absolutely deny them,” he said on both Twitter and Facebook. “I will vigorously defend myself and reputation and I am confident I will be cleared.”

But he said it would be impossible to continue as a candidate while doing so and that the election is too important “to get caught up in the issues surrounding any one person.”

A cached version of his election website, which had been shut down by early Wednesday evening, says Sandhu has worked at 407 ETR the last nine years, most recently as a litigation analyst in the collections department. A company spokesman said he left the job this February, reported Post Media.

The Conservatives had little to say about the abrupt departure.

“Simmer Sandhu provided his resignation to the party and the party accepted it,” Melissa Lantsman, a spokeswoman for PC Leader Doug Ford, said Wednesday night.

She later revealed his replacement as candidate will be small businessman Sudeep Verma. The Tories didn’t have much time to act, with the deadline for nominating candidates closing at 2 p.m. Thursday.

The announcement came at a particularly inauspicious moment for the Tories, as Ford was holding a rally in neighbouring Mississauga Wednesday evening, partly to highlight candidates in the region.

The 407’s operator said earlier Wednesday it is notifying 60,000 of its customers that information about the motorists was divulged through an “internal theft” of names, addresses and phone numbers.

Local police and federal and provincial privacy agencies have also been notified of the breach, which the firm first learned about last week, said Kevin Sack, a spokesman for the 407 ETR Concession Company.