Ujjal Dosanjh wants Canada to keep ex-KGB spy

TORONTO - Ujjal Dosanjh, former Canadian health minister and top Indian-Canadian leader, has urged the government to allow a former KGB spy to stay on in Canada.

Mikhail Lennikov, 49, who is hiding in a church in Vancouver since June to avoid deportation, lost his last chance to stay in Canada when the apex court rejected his plea in September. The former KGB agent, who came to Canada 12 years ago with his family to study at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, was ordered to be deported because of his past association with the KGB, the spy agency of the former Soviet Union.

However, his wife and son have been allowed to stay on humanitarian grounds.

Dosanjh, who won the Vancouver South parliamentary seat by just 22 votes last year, Sunday urged Prime Minister Stephen Harper to allow the former KGB to stay in Canada in the spirit of Christmas.

Dosanjh and fellow MP Don Davies appeared with the Russian man in Vancouver to publicly appeal to the prime minister to show sympathy for the former spy who maintains that his work as a translator for the KGB in the 1980s was “innocuous”. He says he was forced to work for the spy agency because of his language skills. He said he left the then Soviet Union only to dissociate himself from the KGB.

The former spy has produced 3,500 pages of documents from government departments to prove he is not a national security threat to Canada. His case is similar to that of an Indian Laibar Singh who sought refuge in a Vancouver gurdwara to avoid deportation in 2006. Police didn’t enter the Sikh shrine for fear of hurting their religious sentiments. Finally, Singh was deported to India last year.

The Russian spy took a cue from Singh and sought refuge in the church in June to avoid deportation. Police have not entered the church either to arrest him.

With its broken immigration system under which anyone can enter this country and file for refugee status on flimsy grounds, Canada has more than 60,000 such cases before its immigration and refugee board. As these cases linger on for years, refugees cost millions of dollars to Canadian taxpayers each year.