Given the ‘streets in the streets’ in the communications crisis, India doubled down, Trudeau testified
India rejected repeated “outs” to avoid a diplomatic crisis after intelligence linked the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar in BC, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Wednesday.
Instead of cooperating with Canada’s investigation into the role of intelligence in the killings, India instead backed away, Trudeau told the inquiry into foreign interference.
“Their response was to attack Canada twice instead of responding or saying, ‘How can we fix this?’ Yes, this was a violation of the law,’” Trudeau said.
In response to Trudeau’s testimony, the Indian government said Canada “has not presented any evidence to support the serious allegations it has chosen to make against India and Indian politicians.”
“The responsibility for the damage caused by this cavalier behavior to India-Canada relations lies with Prime Minister Trudeau alone.”
But appearing at the Hogue Commission two days after the RCMP said India targeted its opponents in Canada with violence, Trudeau detailed his efforts to resolve the dispute with New Delhi.
He said that while the killing of Surrey, the leader of the BC Sikh temple on June 18, 2023 was initially considered a gang or crime, indications of Indian involvement emerged in the summer.
“At the end of July, at the beginning of August, I was briefed on the fact that there was intelligence from Canada and maybe Five Eyes participants that made it clear, it was very clear that India was involved in this murder,” he said.
Canada first contacted Indian officials in August, to inform them of the findings and to try to work together “in an honest way that does not come and destroy the relationship.”
Trudeau said Canada would have made things “uncomfortable” for Prime Minister Narendra Modi by going public with the allegations ahead of the G20 summit in September 2023 in New Delhi.
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He said: “We chose not to.
“We chose to continue working behind the scenes to try to get India to cooperate with us,” he said.
But instead of looking at the behavior of its security agencies, India wanted to know what Canada is worth to them.
“And at that time, it was mainly wisdom, not hard evidence. So we said, ‘Well, you know, let’s work together and look at your security services, and maybe we can do that,'” Trudeau said, adding India’s response was, “No, no, no, we’re not doing that.”
At the end of the G20, Trudeau said he spoke directly with Modi.
“I sat down and shared that we know they are affected, and I expressed real concern about it,” the prime minister said.
“He responded in a way that is normal for him, saying that we have people who speak badly about the Indian government living in Canada and he would like them to be arrested,” he said.
“And I tried to explain that the freedom of speech and the freedom of people who come to our country to become Canadians, to criticize governments overseas, or to criticize the Canadian government, is a fundamental freedom of Canada.”
“But as always, we will work with them on any evidence or any concerns they have about terrorism or hate speech or anything that is unacceptable in Canada.”
When he returned to Ottawa, Trudeau said it was clear that India was continuing its attack on Canada instead of dealing with the issue, and decided to go public with his suspicions about India’s role in late September.
On September 18, 2023, with the Canadian media about to report on the matter, Trudeau told the House of Commons that security agencies have “credible suspicions” of possible Indian involvement in Nijjar’s murder.
“We decided it was in the best interest of public safety in Canada to let people know that we were aware of these allegations, and that we were following them up,” Trudeau told the inquiry.
The prime minister said he did this in part “to make sure that nobody in Canada, in any communities, feels like they have to take action on their own, that they have to trust Canadian institutions to take this threat seriously and follow through on it.”
The Indian government also responded to the statement by attacking and denying it, instead of cooperating, he said. India also expelled a number of Canadian politicians in retaliation, as if to say, “‘We don’t like what you said in the house about us, and we will punish you for that,'” according to Trudeau.
“This was a situation where we had clear, and now clear, indications that India had violated Canada’s sovereignty, and their response was to attack Canada again.”
He said Canada does not want to pick a fight with India, an important trading partner, but must stand up for Canada’s security and sovereignty.
Last weekend, Canadian officials made another attempt to secure India’s cooperation, asking it to increase the immunity of six diplomats identified by the RCMP as “persons of interest” in the investigation.
India refused and released a comprehensive report earlier Monday, accusing Trudeau of playing politics. Later that day, the RCMP announced that they had found evidence of Indian involvement in the violent crime wave.
Agents based at the Indian high commission in Ottawa and embassies in Vancouver and Toronto have been denying Canadians visas they needed to travel to India to force them to become spies, sources said.
Cash payments were also used to hire informers. The information they gathered was fed back to India’s intelligence services, which used it to plan attacks against Modi’s opponents.
India’s intelligence services have contracted organized crime groups like Lawrence Bishnoi’s gang to carry out attacks in Canada, which have mainly targeted activists of the Khalistan movement fighting for freedom in Sikh-majority Punjab.
Global News reported on Tuesday that police have evidence that the operation was approved by Modi’s right-hand man, Amit Shah, a staunch Hindu who serves as India’s Home Minister.
Asked if he acknowledged the violence in Canada was a policy “authorized and directed by senior members of the Indian government,” Trudeau said that was “a very important question.”
“And that’s the question we’ve been asking the Indian government over and over again to help us, and we’ve come to the bottom of it, the question of whether or not there are criminals in the government or whether there’s more, organized, systematic, trying, in the Indian government.”
Canadian investigators are “somewhat removed from being able to uncover the inner machinations of the Indian government, who is at fault or who did this or who did that,” he said.
“That’s why from the beginning we asked that India, the Indian government take these allegations seriously and continue their investigation and work with us, to find out how this terrible violation of Canadian sovereignty really happened. “
Stewart.Bell@globalnews.ca
