How India-Canada ties have been ‘Trudeaued’

India-Canada ties have developed severe strains, and not for the first time. Historically, nuclear and Khalistani issues have bedevilled the equation. The Canadian response was or is marked by overactivity in the first case and passivity, if not complicity, in the second. Interestingly, both phases of the downward spiral happened under the watch of a Trudeau, whether father or son, Pierre in 1974 and Justin since 2015. One may therefore be forgiven for observing that the relationship has been ‘Trudeaued’, at least in the immediate term.

It took 36 years to put the nuclear issue behind with the conclusion of a bilateral Nuclear Cooperation Agreement (NCA) on the margins of the G20 summit in Toronto in 2010. Canada, which had supplied two civil nuclear reactors for power generation, had reacted sharply to the Indian Pokhran test in 1974 by imposing sanctions and cutting off developmental assistance, even though fissile material from the reactors was not used in the test, nor had India signed the 1968 Treaty to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, which she regarded as discriminatory. In 2015, Canada agreed to start supplying uranium to India. It has one of the world’s largest reserves.

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On the other hand, the Khalistani issue continues to fester. It may be recalled that Punjabis, mostly Sikhs, started trickling into Vancouver, Canada, in the late 19th century. The first Gurdwara in North America was built in Vancouver by the Khalsa Diwan Society in 1908, which became a central feature of life for all South Asians, regardless of their faith.

Their numbers and those of Indians in general grew steadily in the second half of the 20th century. However, during the Punjab problem in the late 1970s and ’80s, a sizeable number of Sikhs, harbouring imagined grievances against the Indian government, moved to Canada, taking advantage of the red carpet rolled out for them by then Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. Most of them were economic migrants masquerading as political refugees escaping persecution. Some of them were fugitives wanted for murder and other violent crimes. They routinely admitted ignoring Indian alerts about their antecedents.

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Soon they had sizeable concentrations in Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, and Edmonton, among other pockets. They naturally felt beholden to Trudeau and his Liberal Party. They struck roots quickly, organised themselves politically, and began to deploy Gurdwara funds for their activities, both kosher and questionable.

From the safety of their adoptive home, the hardliners started agitating for Khalistan, routinely engaging in intimidation and violence, while the administration turned a Nelson’s eye. It led to the blowing up of Air India’s Kanishka jetliner on June 23, 1985, in which 329 people, mostly Indo-Canadians, perished. Prior intelligence provided by India was ignored by the Canadian government.

The carnage was hatched and executed by Khalistanis in Canada. However, believing it to be India’s problem, the Canadian authorities carried out half-hearted investigations, virtually letting the perpetrators go scot-free.

It was with this inherited mindset that Justin Trudeau became the leader of the Liberal Party in April 2013 and the prime minister in November 2015. Both before and after assuming office, he has proactively cultivated the Sikh diaspora and indulged the Khalistani separatists. The issue figured prominently in the very first meeting, in Toronto in April 2015, between Trudeau and PM Modi, who was on a visit to Canada. The former gave a stock reply that he believed in defending free speech.

Modi was among the first world leaders to felicitate the newly elected Canadian PM and invite him to visit India. However, the latter seemed to have his own priorities. Even their in-person meeting materialised in April 2016 on the margins of the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, instead of Turkey, the venue of the G20 summit in November 2015, where Trudeau engaged with a slew of world leaders. The very next month, while visiting Washington, he quipped, “I have more Sikhs in my cabinet than Modi does," which raised many eyebrows in New Delhi.

The Canadian PM finally embarked on a weeklong visit to India in February 2018, when very little went right. Trudeau basically concentrated on optics to flaunt and burnish his pro-diasporic credentials, relegating substance to the backburner. The resultant expectation gap dealt a setback to bilateral ties. His second visit to India during the G20 summit in September 2023 fared no better, floundering on the Khalistani issue.

The Canadian leader provocatively waded into India’s internal affairs by making common cause with the agitating Indian (mostly Punjabi Sikh) farmers, saying, “Canada will always be there to defend the rights of peaceful protest.” That he did precisely the opposite by evoking emergency laws and cracking down on the remarkably peaceful truckers’ protest is a different story. He has since accused Indian agencies of interfering in national elections and orchestrating the assassination of a known Khalistani without providing any credible evidence. He also called off trade talks with India. India demanded that 41 Canadian diplomats be recalled, bringing about parity in bilateral diplomatic representation.

India, which for decades had been patiently engaging with the Canadians on Khalistani activities, without any success, decided to call them out. The Foreign Office Spokesperson noted that Canada was acquiring a ‘growing reputation as a place, as a safe haven for terrorists, for extremists, and for organised crime’.

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar did some plain speaking. He, for instance, stated at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York last September, “We have given them a lot of information about organised crime leadership, which operates out of Canada. There are a large number of extradition requests. There are terrorist leaders who have been identified. And our concern is that it’s really been very permissive, because of political reasons, we have a situation where actually our diplomats are threatened, our consulates have been attacked. And this is often justified as saying, ‘Well, that’s how democracies work’."

Let us be clear. All Canadian political parties mollycoddle the Khalistanis and woo the Sikh vote. Even though the Sikh diaspora, numbering 750,000, comprises just over 2 per cent of the Canadian population, they wrest some 20 or 6 per cent seats in the House of Commons. They provide generous financial and manpower support to their preferred party. As noted above, Liberals are the biggest beneficiaries, cornering the lion’s share. The present government has taken appeasement politics to a new level.

Trudeau has been unabashedly participating in Khalistani public events where terrorists and assassins are eulogised, secessionist slogans rent the air, and hate speeches against India are the norm. The emboldened miscreants have conducted the so-called Khalistan referendum to establish a separate homeland for Sikhs in India. They aim at reviving the separatist movement in India, which died down in the early 1990s. They are also threatening Hindus and trying to sow seeds of discord within the Indian community in Canada.

Notwithstanding such a politically charged environment, the bilateral dialogue process continues uninterrupted, as it should among democratic societies. Trade, investment, education, and people-to-people exchanges between the two countries remain robust and reflective of the opportunities and potential. Decades of efforts on both sides have gone into building on the synergies, which cannot be allowed to wither at the altar of cynical political expediency.

Sooner or later, the Canadians would hopefully realise that appeasement politics are counterproductive. They could result in societal fissures, spawn organised crime syndicates, and radicalise sections of the youth. The country’s global standing could suffer.

All the same, don’t expect a change any time soon, especially not under the current Liberal dispensation. Their India-baiting goes well beyond even the calculus of vote-bank politics, perhaps betraying a certain personality bias. Thus, apart from a cataclysmic event that may jolt the system out of its slumber, change will be episodic and gradual. Meanwhile, India should keep the spotlight focused on Canada’s unbecoming behaviour, be prepared for the long haul, and remind herself that patience is the key.

The author is a foreign affairs specialist and an ex-envoy to Canada and South Korea. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.