Judge gives repeat LCBO thief a harsher sentence because he doubts CBSA will deport him

Justice Michael K. Wendl said the removal order had stood since 2022, yet CBSA never acted on it. Photo by Nick Brancaccio /POSTMEDIA NEWS ARCHIVES

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An Ontario judge says he has no confidence the Canada Border Services Agency will deport a repeat LCBO thief, despite a standing order to remove him.

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Justice Michael K. Wendl said the removal order had stood since 2022, yet CBSA never acted on it.

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“Ultimately, I have no confidence that the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) will actually deport (Manjeet) Singh,” Wendl said in the June 23 decision. “Put bluntly, a deportation order has been in place for nearly four years. During that time, he has been in custody on serious criminal charges, under which CBSA could have readily located and removed him, yet no action has been taken.”

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The CBSA acknowledged a request for comment but did not respond by publication deadline.

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Wendl said Singh spent about 45 days in custody in 2024 and more than five months in 2025, on charges including robbery and theft over $5,000, yet was not removed either time.

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Wendl said the inaction may change how courts treat deportation at sentencing. The judge said that going forward “the bare assertion of potential immigration consequences, without supporting evidence, may no longer suffice for a court to find that collateral immigration consequences are established.”

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The criticism came as Wendl rejected a 90-day sentence the Crown and defence had jointly proposed for Singh and imposed 12 months instead, roughly four times as long. The deal had rested on the expectation that Singh, who is in Canada without status, would be deported once he served his sentence.

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Judges are supposed to accept joint sentencing deals unless the sentence would bring the justice system into disrepute. Wendl said the 90-day deal would.

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Singh, 30, came to Canada in 2016 to study culinary arts and developed a drug addiction during the pandemic, the decision said. He has a criminal record dating to 2021 and has been under a removal order since October 2022.

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He pleaded guilty to two counts of theft under $5,000 from the LCBO and one count of breaching probation by entering one. On June 3, 2025, he and two others walked into an LCBO in Hamilton, filled a cart with 14 bottles of whisky and left without paying. About 90 minutes later they did the same at a second LCBO in the city, taking 25 bottles of vodka and whisky. The haul came to $3,268.30, none of it was recovered.

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Singh was barred from every LCBO in Ontario under a probation order at the time.

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The thefts were not isolated. Singh has pleaded guilty to similar thefts from LCBOs and Home Depots in other jurisdictions and was already serving an eight-month sentence when Wendl sentenced him. The judge said he was travelling the province and targeting certain retailers.

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“This is an organized and systematic campaign targeting LCBO with the intent of stealing thousands of dollars’ worth of alcohol,” Wendl said, adding the LCBO is taxpayer-owned and its losses fall on every Ontarian. Wendl said Canadian retailers lose more than $4 billion a year to crime.

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Wendl imposed 12 months on the theft counts and 60 days for the breach of probation, to be served at the same time. Organized theft from the LCBO, Wendl said, “will be severely sanctioned.”

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