Steps from the old quarter of Amritsar, the holiest city for the Sikh community, 62-year- old Ashok Kumar tended his newspaper stand, with the dailies perched precariously on the seat of a scooter, and sighed. The headlines are dominated by the news — in English and Punjabi — of the bitter diplomatic fight between India and Canada, and Kumar doesn’t like it.
“This shouldn’t be happening,” said Kumar, especially with what he called “baseless speculation” from Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau.
The newspaper vendor told CBC News that everyone in his corner of Punjab is paying close attention to the growing rancour between the two countries, following the bombshell statement from Trudeau that Canada is pursuing “credible allegations” that link Indian government agents to the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Canadian citizen, on Canadian soil.
Nijjar was campaigning for an independent Sikh state called Khalistan. New Delhi considered him a terrorist.
Newspaper vendor Ashok Kumar tends to his stand in Amritsar on Saturday. Kumar has had a busy week, with many people in India’s northern Punjab state anxious to keep up with the diplomatic twists and turns of the deepening tensions between India and Canada. (Salimah Shivji/CBC News)
The anxiety is palpable on the streets of Punjab, the only Indian state with a majority Sikh population, with most people, like Kumar, concerned that regular Punjabis will feel the brunt of the worsening ties between the two once-friendly countries.
Kumar, in an interview with CBC News in Punjabi, talked of “a lot of rumours swirling around,” and fear that Canada might follow India’s lead, after the latter suspended visa services for Canadian citizens wanting to visit India. Canadian authorities have given no indication that they intend to stop granting visas to Indian citizens due to the tensions with India.
But mostly, the newspaper seller is worried about the renewed spotlight on the secessionist Khalistan movement, which has some traction in diaspora communities but garners little support in India. India considers the movement violent and a threat to the country’s territorial sovereignty.
“Sikhs in Punjab don’t demand Khalistan. They want peace and prosperity,” Kumar said. “That’s why they go to Canada to improve their earnings.”
Tens of thousands of Indian students, many of them from Punjab, apply for visas to study in Canada every year, searching for a better life and more opportunities. (Salimah Shivji/CBC News)
Visa processing suspension causes worry
Ramandeep Kaur, 20, admitted she isn’t someone who usually follows geopolitical news, but this week has changed that. She was also feeling anxious as she left work at a private ESL school on a Saturday afternoon.
“Students feel really disappointed with [what’s happening],” said Kaur, who grew up in one of Punjab’s largest cities, Patiala, dreaming of becoming a nurse in Canada. “I applied for a visa and I don’t know what will happen in the future with this issue.
“I’m worried about it because I invested a lot of money on this [dream],” she added.
Ramandeep Kaur, 20, has wanted to study in Canada for years, and is now concerned the worsening India-Canada ties could jeopardize her dream. (Salimah Shivji/CBC News)
Canada is a top destination for tens of thousands of Indian international students each year, many of whom come from Punjab.
For both Sarabjit Kesar, 52, and her close friend Kamaldeep Ghumman, 53, the past week has been “tense and filled with pressure,” they said, following India’s announcement it would temporarily stop issuing visas to Canadian citizens.
Both mothers have adult children living and working in Canada. The weekend was filled with stress, as Kesar packed a suitcase for her flight to Toronto the following day — her first trip to Canada to visit her sons marred by her persistent worry about whether her trip would be disrupted by any future retaliatory measures in the diplomatic standoff.
“Our thoughts are filled with fear over what will happen in the future,” Ghumman said.
“What types of measures will the government take?” she wondered, if the feud escalates.
Kesar added that everyone in their circle of friends was worried.
“The tension is so high and everyone feels depressed, like me,” she said.
Kamaldeep Ghumman, left, and her friend Sarabjit Kesar, have spent an anxious week dissecting the news of the growing diplomatic rift between the countries. ‘The tension is so high’ across Punjab, especially among parents with children studying in Canada, Kesar said. (Salimah Shivji/CBC News)
For others, it’s not so much a personal worry but a more generalized concern about what Trudeau’s allegations linking New Delhi to an extrajudicial killing of a Khalistani activist mean for the Sikh community in India, after months of the Indian government claiming that the separatist movement was having a resurgence in the northern Indian state.
Harveer Singh, 30, called it a “political stunt” by the Canadian government.
“It’s disheartening,” Singh, 30, told CBC News outside Amritsar’s Golden Temple, the Sikh religion’s holiest spot, which was stormed by Indian army officers in 1984 in a bid to quell Sikh militancy. Thousands of people were killed.
Singh said Canada’s accusations were an attempt to gain votes that had put a razor-sharp focus on a “particular agenda of Khalistan and the separation from India,” and feared it could have consequences.
“Some people who don’t have any kind of knowledge, they will just start hating us,” he said. “They portray a picture of Sikhs that all Sikhs are Khalistanis [and] this is really sad.”
MONTREAL – The employers association at the Port of Montreal has issued the dockworkers’ union a “final, comprehensive offer,” threatening to lock out workers at 9 p.m. Sunday if a deal isn’t reached.
The Maritime Employers Association says its new offer includes a three per cent salary increase per year for four years and a 3.5 per cent increase for the two subsequent years. It says the offer would bring the total average compensation package of a longshore worker at the Port of Montreal to more than $200,000 per year at the end of the contract.
“The MEA agrees to this significant compensation increase in view of the availability required from its employees,” it wrote Thursday evening in a news release.
The association added that it is asking longshore workers to provide at least one hour’s notice when they will be absent from a shift — instead of one minute — to help reduce management issues “which have a major effect on daily operations.”
Syndicat des débardeurs du port de Montréal, which represents nearly 1,200 longshore workers, launched a partial unlimited strike on Oct. 31, which has paralyzed two terminals that represent 40 per cent of the port’s total container handling capacity.
A complete strike on overtime, affecting the whole port, began on Oct. 10.
The union has said it will accept the same increases that were granted to its counterparts in Halifax or Vancouver — 20 per cent over four years. It is also concerned with scheduling and work-life balance. Workers have been without a collective agreement since Dec. 31, 2023.
Only essential services and activities unrelated to longshoring will continue at the port after 9 p.m. Sunday in the event of a lockout, the employer said.
The ongoing dispute has had major impacts at Canada’s second-biggest port, which moves some $400 million in goods every day.
On Thursday, Montreal port authority CEO Julie Gascon reiterated her call for federal intervention to end the dispute, which has left all container handling capacity at international terminals at “a standstill.”
“I believe that the best agreements are negotiated at the table,” she said in a news release. “But let’s face it, there are no negotiations, and the government must act by offering both sides a path to true industrial peace.”
Federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon issued a statement Thursday, prior to the lockout notice, in which he criticized the slow pace of talks at the ports in Montreal and British Columbia, where more than 700 unionized port workers have been locked out since Nov. 4.
“Both sets of talks are progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved,” he wrote on the X social media platform.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
VANCOUVER – Employers and the union representing supervisors embroiled in a labour dispute that triggered a lockout at British Columbia‘s ports will attempt to reach a deal when talks restart this weekend.
A spokesman from the office of federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon has confirmed the minister spoke with leaders at both the BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514, but did not invoke any section of the Canadian Labour Code that would force them back to talks.
A statement from the ministry says MacKinnon instead “asked them to return to the negotiation table,” and talks are now scheduled to start on Saturday with the help of federal mediators.
A meeting notice obtained by The Canadian Press shows talks beginning in Vancouver at 5 p.m. and extendable into Sunday and Monday, if necessary.
The lockout at B.C. ports by employers began on Monday after what their association describes as “strike activity” from the union. The result was a paralysis of container cargo traffic at terminals across Canada’s west coast.
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint against the employers for allegedly bargaining in bad faith, a charge that employers call a “meritless claim.”
The two sides have been without a deal since March 2023, and the employers say its final offer presented last week in the last round of talks remains on the table.
The proposed agreement includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term along with an average lump sum payment of $21,000 per qualified worker.
The union has said one of its key concerns is the advent of port automation in cargo operations, and workers want assurances on staffing levels regardless of what technology is being used at the port.
The disruption is happening while two container terminals are shut down in Montreal in a separate labour dispute.
It leaves container cargo traffic disrupted at Canada’s two biggest ports, Vancouver and Montreal, both operating as major Canadian trade gateways on the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
This is one of several work disruptions at the Port of Vancouver, where a 13-day strike stopped cargo last year, while labour strife in the rail and grain-handling sectors led to further disruptions earlier this year.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
VANCOUVER – Judicial recounts in British Columbia‘s provincial election should wrap up today, confirming whether Premier David Eby’s New Democrats hang onto their one-seat majority almost three weeks after the vote.
Most attention will be on the closest race of Surrey-Guildford, where the NDP were ahead by a mere 27 votes, a margin narrow enough to trigger a hand recount of more than 19,000 ballots that’s being overseen by a B.C. Supreme Court judge.
Elections BC spokesman Andrew Watson says the recounts are on track to conclude today, but certification won’t happen until next week following an appeal period.
While recounts aren’t uncommon in B.C. elections, result changes because of them are rare, with only one race overturned in the province in at least the past 20 years.
That was when Independent Vicki Huntington went from trailing by two votes in Delta South to winning by 32 in a 2009 judicial recount.
Recounts can be requested after the initial count in an election for a variety of reasons, while judicial recounts are usually triggered after the so-called “final count” when the margin is less than 1/500th of the number of votes cast.
There have already been two full hand recounts this election, in Surrey City Centre and Juan de Fuca-Malahat, and both only resulted in a few votes changing sides.
A partial recount of votes that went through one tabulator in Kelowna Centre saw the margin change by four votes, while a full judicial recount is currently underway in the same riding, narrowly won by the B.C. Conservatives.
The number of votes changing hands in recounts has generally shrunk in B.C. in recent years.
Judicial recounts in West Vancouver-Sea to Sky in 2020 and Coquitlam-Maillardville in 2013 saw margins change by 19 and six votes respectively.
In 2005, there were a record eight recounts after the initial tally, changing margins by an average of 62 votes, while one judicial recount changed the margin in Vancouver-Burrard by seven.
The Election Act says the deadline to appeal results after judicial recounts must be filed with the court within two days after they are declared, but Watson says that due to Remembrance Day on Monday, that period ends at 4 p.m. Tuesday.
When an appeal is filed, it must be heard no later than 10 days after the registrar receives the notice of appeal.
A partial recount is also taking place in Prince George-Mackenzie to tally votes from an uncounted ballot box that contained about 861 votes.
The Prince George recount won’t change the outcome because the B.C. Conservative candidate there won by more than 5,000 votes.
If neither Surrey-Guildford nor Kelowna Centre change hands, the NDP will have 47 seats and the Conservatives 44, while the Greens have two seats in the 93-riding legislature.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
