Hockey eases tension of Trudeau’s India trip
NEW DELHI — When the going for a Canadian prime minister gets tough, he turns to hockey.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau capped off a difficult state visit to India on Saturday with a ball hockey game at the Canadian High Commission with India’s national women’s ice-hockey team.
The players, aged 18 to 25, came to New Delhi from Ladakhi in northern India, as part of an outreach program involving former Canadian team captain Hayley Wickenheiser.
They were joined on a tennis court at the high commission’s compound by Trudeau’s oldest son, Xavier, 10, himself a budding hockey player.
As Xavier raced around the court, chasing the ball with the best female hockey players in India with his parents looking on and cheering, the tension of the past week was lifting.
Gone were all signs of the Indian clothing that have been part of the criticism the Trudeau family has received during the trip, replaced by casual business attire for the adults and shorts and T-shirts for the kids.
Diskit Angmo, one of the members of the Indian team, said the only reason ice hockey exists in India is because of support from Canada, and she was thrilled to meet Trudeau and his family.
“Meeting the prime minister is a dream come true,” Angmo said.
Among the delegation from Canada, there was a sense of relief that the trip was not entirely a write-off, with positive coverage in the Indian press about Trudeau’s meeting Friday with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Indian media moved on from headlines screaming about the embarrassment of Canada having invited to two receptions in India, a man convicted of attempting to kill an Indian politician near Gold River three decades ago.
The invitation to Jaspal Atwal to a reception with Trudeau in New Delhi was withdrawn after Canadian security officials were tipped off to his identity, though a Canadian official told reporters he posed no security risk, just a reputational one.
Liberal MP Randeep Sarai, who put Atwal’s name on the guest list, flies home knowing he faces a meeting with Trudeau in Ottawa next week where his mistake will be discussed.
A framework agreement to fight extremism and terrorism marked the first time Canada has mentioned Sikh extremist groups in an agreement with India, a fact some Indian media said pulled the entire trip “back from the brink.”
But Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer was less forgiving, calling the trip “a total failure” in a tweet.
Snigdha Basu, a correspondent for Indian NDTV, said the Atwal incident was just as embarrassing for India, which is still looking to explain how it was that Atwal was suddenly removed last year from a black list of Sikh militants barred from entering India, a list he had been on since the 1980s.