Canada-India Hostilities

"[Canadian businesses and investors may be faced with "uncertainty" resulting from expulsions of Indian diplomats from Canada; rest assured the government plans to support commercial and economic ties between itself and India]."

"However, we must consider our economic interests with the need to protect Canadians and uphold the rule of law."

"We will not tolerate any foreign government threatening, extorting or harming Canadian citizens on our soil."

"[The Canadian government is] open to dialogue [with India and look forward to continuing a] valued relationship." 

Canada's Trade Minister Mary Ng

India's envoy to Canada, who is being expelled over what Ottawa says are links to the murder of a Sikh leader, insisted in an interview he was innocent and said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had wrecked bilateral political ties, but trade may remain unscathed.  Reuters

 

NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, a Canadian Sikh and known supporter of the Khalistan movement that seeks to divide India by carving out a geographic region as a Sikh homeland, dismisses the  history in Canada of Sikh extremists, their criminal activities in pursuit of forcing a Sikh separatist movement, insists that the government levy "severe sanctions" on any Indian diplomat involved in criminal activity in Canada. Sikh extremist elements within the wider Sikh-Canadian population have been guilty of murdering a newspaper editor critical of Sikh violence against India, of severely beating a prominent Sikh moderate and former premier of British Columbia, Ujjal Dosanjh, attempt to assassinate a visiting Indian MP, and an infamous plot to bomb an Air India flight in midair, killing all 329 people aboard.

Justin Trudeau, Canada's divisive prime minister, set the stage for a highly hostile relationship between Canada and India when in the summer he announced in Parliament that the government of India was complicit in murders carried out by Indian Hindu contract killers in the death of a prominent Sikh-Canadian who was a stalwart in the violent Khalistan movement. He repeated the allegation again in Parliament last week. In India itself, the separatist Sikh movement has spent itself. Yet agitators for Sikh separation and advocates for violence against Hindus and Indian government officials have found a home in Canada where their criminal excesses are handily overlooked.

Sikh separatists hold rallies where they excoriate India, demanding their vision of Khalistan be recognized. Parades where the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visage is hatefully distorted, his effigy hanged, and where Sikh-assassinated former Prime Minister Indira Ghandi was murdered by her own Sikh guards, making it a matter of great satisfaction and celebration, the figures of the two Indian prime ministers hatefully caricatured, with no sign of a protest from the Trudeau government that insulting a collegial democratic country will not be countenanced in Canada.

Canada saw fit last week to formally expel India's high commissioner to Canada, Sanjay Verma along with five other accredited, now accused Indian diplomats. For its part, India returned the compliment, expelling Canada's diplomats from India. Justin Trudeau's reason for the expulsion was that evidence had been acquired that linked the government of India with "links tying agents of the Government of India to homicides".  The RCMP announced conclusions in their investigation of Indian agents conspiring with hit men to murder Khalistani-separatist Sikh-Canadians.

India's Ministry of External Affairs observes with justification an "atmosphere of extremism and violence" against India is alive and well in Canada. India's Narendra Modi spoke of numerous instances when Justin Trudeau was given a list of names of Sikhs in Canada convicted of criminal activities in India, with the request that they be extradited to India. No such action was ever undertaken by Trudeau's Liberal government. The large, influential voting bloc of Sikh-Canadians is in no danger of Canada's Liberal government cracking down on their hostile, anti-India provocations.

"What we've seen from an RCMP perspective is the use of organized crime elements ... and it's been publicly attributed and claimed by one organized crime group in particular, which is the Bishnol group."

"We believe that that group is connected to agents of the government of India".

Assistant RCMP Commissioner Brigitte Gauvin

Irish naval authorities in Cork bring debris from bombed Air India flight ashore on 28 June 1985  Getty Images

 

India's National Investigation Agency filed a charge sheet against Bishnol for alleged links to Babbar Khalsa International, listed as a terrorist organization in Canada. Babbar Khalsa plotted and carried out the 1983 Air India bombing, representing the worst act of terrorism in aviation history prior to the Sept, 11, 2001 event. Chief Babbar Khalsa plotter Talwinder Singh Parmar was living in British Columbia while India attempted to have him returned to face murder charges; Canada refused to cooperate.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi (left) and his then Canadian counterpart Stephen Harper leaving wreaths at a memorial in Toronto in 2015 in memory of the hundreds of Indian Hindu-Canadians whose lives were lost on Air India Flight 182.  CP