John Ivison: India is too important for cheap Liberal domestic politics

Justin Trudeau seems to feel the same way. The two men have doubled down on a cycle of recrimination that has poisoned relations in recent years.

Any hopes that Canada and India might grow closer have been dashed by media reports this week that India’s foreign intelligence agency was linked to the killing of a Sikh separatist in Canada last year. On the same day, news broke that “Long Live Khalistan” slogans were shouted at a Sikh new year event attended by Trudeau (and Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre) last weekend. India accused Ottawa of creating the space for “extremism and violence.”

The bad blood is baked into the relationship and it’s not clear that even a change in government in Ottawa would bring about a reconciliation.

The absurdity of the situation is that, substantively, both countries have much to gain from making nice. They profess shared values; there are nearly two million Indo-Canadians; and, the two governments have only scratched the surface of a trading relationship that both are keen to expand.

Yet, the politics are such that it seems to suit Modi and Trudeau to keep the feud festering.

Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party is currently seeking re-election (seven phases of voting began on April 19th and will end in early June). Polling suggests Modi’s party may win up to 400 of 543 seats. More than half of Indian voters are satisfied with its record in office, in part because of Modi’s leadership qualities and his Hindu nationalist agenda. This includes standing up to any hints of Western neo-colonialism.

It may be a flawed democracy but India is on the rise: a recent Newsweek edition that featured an interview with Modi has his photo on the cover under the word “Unstoppable.”

Karthik Nachiappan, a fellow at the National University of Singapore who specializes in Canada-India relations, said resisting foreign pressure plays in Modi’s favour.

“It suggests ‘we are a strong government willing to defend national security, even if it takes us outside our borders.’ They’re not admitting it but it says ‘this is the new India’,” he said.

The Indians allege that the Trudeau government’s indifference is inspired by ‘vote bank politics’

India is not in apologetic mood, even after this week’s Washington Post report that officers in Indian foreign intelligence were linked to the assassination of Canadian citizen, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, and a plot to kill his New York-based associate, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, which was foiled by U.S. law enforcement.

The report linked the assassination to India’s spy agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, and Modi’s national security adviser.

The Post said the Biden administration, conscious of India’s indispensability as a counterweight to China, said the U.S. would refrain from a punitive response if India held those responsible to account. The approach was viewed as too accommodating by some U.S. officials, the story said.

But at least the fallout was contained. Trudeau’s response was to announce in the House of Commons that Canada had “credible evidence” of Indian involvement. It was clear that labelling Modi an accessory to murder was going to cause a rift that will take years to heal.

“Canada has placed itself in a difficult corner,” said Nachiappan. “They can’t back down now.”

Trudeau has played his own domestic politics with the fracture in relations. At the Sikh event, he pledged to advocated for the community’s rights and freedoms. “Sikh values are Canadian values,” he said.

Nachiappan said Trudeau’s penchant to support minority rights and appease the Sikh diaspora is important for the Liberal party’s election prospects next year.

India’s National Investigation Agency has identified individuals in Canada it accuses of extortion, terrorism, smuggling and money laundering and sought their extradition.

Canada has refused on the grounds that suspects could be tortured if returned to India.

At the same time, it has failed to crack down on suspected Khalistani extremists living in Canada. The enforcement record of the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre (Fintrac), which monitors financial crime, is poor. When it comes to incitement to violence, Canada has laws that are rarely used because of Charter provisions on freedom of expression.

There have been calls to tighten those laws. In 2015, a Senate committee on national security recommended that hate laws should be updated to ban the glorification of terror, terror acts and terror symbols, such as the Khalistani parade float that celebrated the assassination of former prime minister Indira Gandhi that toured the streets of Toronto in 2023. The recommendation was dropped by the Liberals.

The Charter may make it problematic to lay charges against someone who shouts: “Long live Khalistan.” But the Indian government’s allegation against Nijjar was that he ran a terror training camp for the militant Khalistan Tiger Force in Mission, B.C., yet was not arrested or charged with anything.

The Indians allege that the Trudeau government’s indifference is inspired by “vote bank politics.”

That charge has some validity, according to Omer Aziz, a former foreign policy adviser to Trudeau who wrote in the Globe and Mail that Canada should have clamped down on Khalistani terrorist financing but the prime minister “didn’t want to lose the Sikh vote to (NDP leader) Jagmeet Singh, so we dug in our heels.”

However, the world is becoming too dangerous to allow foreign policy to be dictated by diaspora politics.

India is becoming the new epicentre of geopolitics, as Canada acknowledged with the launch of its own Indo-Pacific strategy late last fall. It was designed to improve relations with democracies in the region like India by growing economic ties; expanding market access through a new trade agreement; bolstering visa processing on the sub-continent; and accelerating co-operation against climate change. It was out of date before the ink was dry, after the schism between Ottawa and New Delhi.

Elsewhere, the U.S. is working hard to drag India out of Russia and China’s orbit and into one that shares a vision of an open Indo-Pacific, based on a rules-based maritime order in the East and South China Seas. The Americans, Australians and Japanese have joined India in the Quad alliance, which Modi says is not against any one country but is “a group of like-minded countries working on a shared, positive agenda.”

France and the U.K. are similarly close to Modi, supporting India’s bid for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.

Canada is at the back of the pack, opposing the addition of new permanent seats as part of a group called United for Consensus (nicknamed “the coffee club”) that advocates instead for more elected seats.

Canada could buy some goodwill with Modi by shifting its stance but that looks unlikely to happen. Canada is against extending the security council veto and reconciliation is a two-way street, said one Canadian official.

But something has to give.

When she was foreign affairs minister, Chrystia Freeland once asked whether Canada is “an essential country” in making the world safe, sustainable and prosperous.

The truth is that Canada is an optional country; India is essential. At some point, Ottawa needs to figure out a way to strike a bilateral partnership that focuses on the issues that matter to both countries. In doing so, Canada will have to build a firewall between domestic political tactics and strategic foreign policy. That is impossible while the Trudeau government is still in power.

jivison@criffel.ca

Twitter.com/IvisonJ

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