Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he believes India’s relations with Canada may have undergone “a tonal shift” in the days since the unsealing of a U.S. indictment alleging a conspiracy to murder a Sikh activist on American soil.
The prime minister made the remarks in an end-of-year interview with the CBC’s Rosemary Barton.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government reacted with scorn and flat denials when Trudeau stated publicly in the House of Commons on September 18 that there was credible intelligence linking India to the June 18 shooting death of Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar outside a temple in Surrey, B.C.
Last month, a U.S. indictment alleging that Indian government agents were both the instigators and the financiers of a murder plot in New York City was unsealed. The indictment said that American authorities had thwarted an assassination plot linked to India in their own territory — one with ties to Nijjar and a scheme to kill Canadians.
Last week, Trudeau said he went public with the allegation after weeks of fruitless quiet diplomacy in order to “put a chill on India” and deter any Indian agents who might be thinking of carrying out further attacks on Canadian territory.
WATCH | India open to working with Canada to investigate alleged murder, Trudeau says:
India open to working with Canada to investigate alleged murder plot: Trudeau
3 days ago
Duration 1:04
In a year-end interview with CBC News chief political correspondent Rosemary Barton, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says a U.S. indictment alleging multiple Indian assassination plots across North America has resulted in an ‘understanding that (India) can’t bluster their way through this.’ The high-profile killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar triggered a diplomatic rift between Canada and India.
A shift in India’s messaging
While Modi himself stayed above the fray, Indian government officials — including Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar — initially suggested that the Canadian government was making things up and had no evidence to back its allegations.
That tone softened somewhat when the Modi government saw other G7 countries — particularly the United States — line up behind Canada in the dispute.
The White House leaked the fact that U.S. President Joe Biden raised the issue directly with Modi during their bilateral meeting at the G20 summit in New Delhi, a week before Trudeau made his explosive allegation in the House.
U.S. President Joe Biden and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi attend a White House meeting in June. (Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters)
The public didn’t know at the time that the U.S. was pursuing its own investigation of a plot to assassinate Sikh activist and U.S.-Canadian dual citizen Gurpatwant Singh Pannun.
The indictment alleges that Indian officials in New Delhi offered $100,000 to a drug dealer named Nikhil Gupta to hire a hitman to kill Pannun in New York.
The indictment says that U.S. authorities have intercepted phone conversations and video conferences between Gupta and officials in New Delhi in which they discussed the Pannun plot and, at one point, debated tasking Gupta with the Nijjar hit.
The indictment says that, within hours of Nijjar’s murder, an Indian government contact texted Gupta a photo from the crime scene and told him he could stand down.
India more open to ‘collaborating,’ Trudeau says
The U.S. indictment appears to have convinced the Modi government to adopt a more sober tone, said Trudeau.
“I think there is a beginning of an understanding that they can’t bluster their way through this and there is an openness to collaborating in a way that perhaps they were less open before,” he told Barton.
“There’s an understanding that maybe, maybe just churning out attacks against Canada isn’t going to make this problem go away.”
The U.S. indictment is much more detailed than Canada’s allegation, and lays more of its evidence on the table — reflecting the fact that the U.S. criminal investigation is at a more advanced stage.
But the main difference as far as India is concerned may be simply that the U.S. is a much more powerful country than Canada — and tensions with Washington have more potential to do harm to India and the Modi government.
A person holds a sign during a protest outside the Indian consulate in Vancouver on Sept. 25, 2023, after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said there were ‘credible allegations’ linking India to the June killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar on Canadian soil. (Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press)
The U.S. has continued to show concern about the alleged murder-for-hire plot, which was a topic of conversation between the two countries again last week when FBI Director Christopher Wray visited New Delhi.
On November 29, India’s Ministry for External Affairs announced that it had set up a high-level commission of inquiry to look into the Pannun case. A spokesperson claimed the commission had begun its work on November 18.
Although both the U.S. and Canada have focused their messages to India on the need to investigate, officials in both countries say privately that they do not believe the Modi government was really unaware of the alleged assassination — which bears the hallmarks of a state-directed operation and does not appear to be the work of rogue agents.
At the end of last week, the Biden administration gave a confidential briefing to the “Samosa caucus,” a group of five influential Indian-American members of Congress. They emerged from that briefing to issue a warning to the government of India.
“We believe the U.S.–India partnership has made a meaningful impact on the lives of both of our people,” said the five Democrats. “But we are concerned that the actions outlined in the indictment could, if not appropriately addressed, cause significant damage to this very consequential partnership.”
Trudeau had a similar message for India in his CBC year-end interview.
“We don’t want to be in a situation of having a fight with India right now over this,” he said. “We want to be working on that trade deal. We want to be advancing the Indo-Pacific strategy. But it is foundational for Canada to stand up for people’s rights, for people’s safety, and for the rule of law. And that’s what we’re going to do.”
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
