Canada’s Carney seeks to mend ties, but Khalistan issue requires India to be cautious

In this season of geopolitical flare-ups, it seems at least one relationship is back on track. Years after the Justin Trudeau administration played sinister games with India trying to appease its domestic Khalistani vote bank, the India-Canada equation under newly elected Prime Minister Mark Carney is now becoming friendlier with each passing day.

A good example of this was on display during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Canada last week for the G7 summit. Earlier India had downgraded its diplomatic ties with the country and had even recalled its diplomats after a controversy had broken out during the previous administration when then Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had accused Indian agents of the assassination of Khalistani terrorist Hardeep Singh Nijjar on Canadian soil. But now on the sidelines of the G7 summit, both PM Modi and Carney have not only agreed to the reinstatement of High Commissioners between India and Canada, but they have also decided to resume the long-stalled trade talks between the two countries.

While speaking to media on the occasion of the G7 summit, PM Carney was all praises for PM Modi’s leadership, calling his meeting with him a ‘great honour’ in addition to asserting how Modi has become a permanent invitee to the summit since the year 2018 and would also likely make an appearance at the next summit scheduled to be held in France. While the conciliatory notes extended by Carney towards India are a significant break from the past, what is also important to note is that the whole Canadian dispensation seems to be undergoing a shift of position towards India even on the much-controversial Khalistan issue as well.

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Around the same time that Carney and Modi held a meeting on the sidelines of the summit, an interesting report was released by the country’s top intelligence agency, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS). While the report has again made an unsubstantiated assertion over alleged Indian foreign interference in Canada, in a big break from the Trudeau era, the report has also conclusively noted that Khalistanis are indeed using Canadian soil to “promote, fundraise and plan” violent activities primarily targeting India since the mid-1980s. This has to be the first time that a Canadian agency has made such an open and honest admission of Canada serving as a base for the Khalistani terrorists for almost four decades now.

Looking at the changing tunes in Canada, one really wonders if the future of India-Canada ties will be bright now onwards, with the biggest irritant of extending state support to Khalistanis by Canada a thing of the past? Well, the truth is that it will be a constant cost-benefit analysis that will determine Canada’s attitude towards India in the long run, no matter how friendly and favourable the Carney government seems at the moment.

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One may say that unlike the Trudeau government, which was at the mercy of noted Khalistani Jagdeep Singh’s New Democratic Party (NDP), this time the Liberal Party government faces no such compulsions. NDP is now a politically spent force and Jagmeet a practical nobody in the Canadian political scene, allowing Carney to dictate terms more freely. This explains why, for the first time, a Canadian intelligence report has so openly indicted the Khalistanis for targeting India using Canada as a base. The last time an attempt towards this was made, the Trudeau administration had made sure to redact those portions.

In addition to the reduced political dependence on the K-factor, Carney, unlike Trudeau, is a pragmatic leader who is choosing to see the big picture when it comes to the India-Canada relationship instead of pandering to the Khalistanis. This signalling was impossible to miss on the eve of the G7 summit when Khalistani groups were threatening to disrupt PM Modi’s visit with charged-up protests taking place in Calgary, but Carney refused to budge to the threats and went ahead with his plans to host PM Modi.

Carney’s logic was simple: his predecessor had thrown an important diplomatic relationship to the wolves due to his political myopia, and G7 was a great opportunity to reset ties with India, a dynamic emerging economy. Maybe this is why Carney’s dissociation with Khalistan was early to spot, as not even a single campaign rally of his had allowed the separatists to wield their flag or raise their cause. In comparison, opposition leader Pierre Poilievre had pandered fully to the Sikh separatists.

Unlike other Canadian leaders such as Trudeau and Poilievre, Carney understands the importance of India as a country whose global influence is growing each passing day. In a press query, he noted India’s leadership on the world stage and called his meeting with PM Modi a ‘foundational’ necessary first step towards much-needed repair of bilateral ties. As per him, India is the fifth largest economy in the world and the most populous country, which is also central to the global economic flow by being at the heart of crucial supply chains.

Carney’s own recognition of India’s economic significance was also driven by the diplomatic pressure that his administration faced from the other G7 countries. In an interview with a Canadian network, Vina Nadjibulla from the Asia-Pacific Foundation of Canada noted that there was a strong push from other countries to invite India to the G7 summit, leaving Canada with little choice.

Now that Carney has finally embraced a friendlier approach towards India as a sign of his political maturity, Canada stands to benefit a lot from the relationship. India, after all, is Canada’s tenth largest trading partner with an emerging market of 1.4 billion people for its agriculture, hi-tech and educational services offerings. There is also a two-million-strong Indian diaspora in Canada, of which the Khalistanis are just a small fringe. At a time when even big players in the West are looking to court India, Trudeau’s alienation of India was a strategic suicide. It seems Carney for now has done a great job in mending the bridges. But will the Khalistan issue disappear from the Canadian political landscape and also become irrelevant in the India-Canada bilateral relationship?

Well, hardly so because the Western countries, especially their deep states, have carefully nurtured the K-elements as an asset to balance a rising India. Whenever India will not follow their preferred course of diplomatic action, they will not take a moment to deploy the Khalistani separatists. On this matter, even Carney would not be any different from Trudeau. Not to forget that Khalistanis not only remain a strongly funded cause in Canada, but their activities to canvass support domestically are still continuing in the garb of freedom of speech even today. For now, the Canadian leadership seems to have understood the importance of India as a key partner, so we should make the most of it. But India’s own efforts to keep the Khalistanis in check in the Western societies, including Canada, must go on without an iota of hesitancy.

The author is a New Delhi-based commentator on geopolitics and foreign policy. She holds a PhD from the Department of International Relations, South Asian University. She tweets @TrulyMonica. The views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.