Page 40 - 06_July-Aug-2025

On the evening of April
28, a little after 10 p.m.,
Amarjeet Sohi, the
Liberal candidate for
the federal riding of
Edmonton Southeast,
entered the Royal
Palace banquet hall.
A large and majority Indo-Canadian crowd had been waiting for
a couple of hours, dining on some excellent curry and watching
election results come in across two giant screens. They were
there to cheer on Sohi’s hoped-for return to Ottawa and, if so,
almost assuredly a cabinet post.
Sohi had a lot going for him, considering Prime Minister Mark
Carney personally asked him to relinquish the mayor’s chair to
run in the newly created riding of Edmonton Southeast (a split
from the former Edmonton Mill Woods riding, now Edmonton
Southeast and Gateway). It seemed wise on Carney’s part and,
although Sohi was coy about it, it was a no-brainer for the mayor
too. After all, Carney had re-energized the toxic Liberal brand,
Donald Trump was creating all manner of trouble for Pierre
Poilievre and the Conservatives, and Sohi, reading the municipal
tea leaves which had him polling at 26 per cent approval last
year, had to have known a second mayoral term was a long shot.
And so, back into federal politics he jumped.
But as the numbers rolled in on election night, it was clear
that the voters of Edmonton Southeast were only slightly more
impressed with his record than the rest of the city. In the end, his
record and name recognition counted for nothing — if not less
than nothing. Sohi would end up losing to Conservative Jagsharan
Singh Mahal by nearly 7,000 votes. In Edmonton Gateway, the
Liberal candidate, a virtual unknown named Jeremy Hoefsloot,
pulled almost the same vote percentage as Sohi. (He lost to
Conservative Tim Uppal, who beat Sohi in 2019 and is now back
in Ottawa as an MP for the fifth time.) If someone as unknown
as Hoefsloot could match someone as well-known as Sohi, that
doesn’t say much for the mayor’s reputation, political machine or
vast well of experience.
In the media scrum after his post-defeat speech, a reporter
asked Sohi if he had any insights about the humiliating result.
He said only that they would analyze the data later. But the truth
is that no analysis is required. The loss was not due to Liberal
fatigue, given the party’s triumphant comeback. Nor could Sohi
claim that voters didn’t have enough time to get to know him.
It surely wasn’t due to an electrifying campaign from his inexpe-
rienced Conservative opponent, a candidate who appears to have
only run a competent campaign without much fanfare.
The plain fact is that Amarjeet Sohi lost because he’s unpopular.
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Yet even that doesn’t quite cut to the heart of the matter.
The real question is, why did a man widely regarded as a solid
and experienced public servant, a candidate so strong that the
prime minister made a point of asking him to run, so wholly fail
to inspire voters?
I had visited with Sohi at his campaign office a
week before the election. The energy was good at headquarters and
at the doors of his would-be constituents. He appeared confident
when I asked him about the roots of his passion for community
service.
“I don’t think it was a moment,” he said. “It was more of a
progression of my work as a community activist.” He recalled
what it was like for him to move to Edmonton in the early 1980s
as a 17- or 18-year-old with almost no insight into the Canadian
way of life. “I couldn’t speak English, and I faced a lot of barriers,”
he said. “But what I remember is that Edmonton helped new-
comers integrate. I have always had a deep appreciation for
community organizations and services. They need to be supported
and strengthened.”
Sohi embraced the values and practices of his second home to
a degree that many birthright Canadians take for granted. A core
element of his political temperament was forged during his time
as a political prisoner in the late 1980s. Sohi, a young Sikh with
artistic aspirations, returned to the Indian province of Punjab
during political unrest to study community theatre and explore
his homeland through the new lens of equality he’d acquired in
Canada. Indian authorities, however, were on high alert due to the
Khalistani movement agitating for an independent Sikh state in
Punjab. Although Sohi was in fact a secular with anti-fundamen-
talist views, the government accused him of travelling to India to
train with Khalistani terrorists. He was jailed.
His family feared the worst, knowing that people too often
disappeared into the sinkhole of the Indian extra-legal system.
But remarkably, a CSIS officer did some informal research
and found no suspicious activity on Sohi’s part. His findings
became a foreign policy cause célèbre and Mill Woods Progressive
Conservative MP David Kilgour wrote to India’s high commissioner
and prime minister requesting the charges be dropped.
Despite these interventions on his behalf, it still took 21
months for Sohi to be released — 21 months during which he
was interrogated, beaten and had to go on a hunger strike to gain
access to improved food and library materials. After he was freed,
india,s government accused young
Sohi of terrorism and jailed him.
Sohi returned to Edmonton. He has rarely spoken of how the ex-
perience changed him other than to say that Canada and Edmon-
ton have made him who he is. After years of driving a taxi, then
a bus, he ran for City Council in 2004. He lost, ran again in 2007,
won, took a run at federal politics in 2015, won one election, lost
another, took some time off, then returned to local politics, vying
for the empty chair in the centre of council chambers.
Though it was only four years ago, he launched his mayoral
campaign during a period of considerable societal distress as
we grappled with the fallout of COVID-19. Against a backdrop
of misinformation, blame, trauma and fear, Sohi’s low-key and