Canada-India relations have turned frigid
One passage of the new report on Justin Trudeau’s trip to India deals with the public testimony given by Daniel Jean, the former national security adviser, before the parliamentary oversight committee on national security last April.
It reads: “As the NSIA (Jean) stated during his testimony: ‘***’.”
The words of the statement that the now-retired Jean gave to the committee were redacted — along with most of the other interesting bits of the report.
Redacting testimony that is already in the public domain would seem somewhat overzealous for a new committee intent on persuading Canadians about its integrity.
The liberal use of the black pen became the focus of question period in the House of Commons Tuesday.
Conservative MP Peter Kent suggested the heavy redaction was aimed at preventing Liberal embarrassment over the diplomatic incident that ensued when it emerged that Jaspal Atwal, a man once convicted of the attempted murder of an Indian politician, was invited to official Canadian events in Mumbai and New Delhi.
“The prime minister should get off his asterisk and release the findings,” said Kent.
The truth is, it was not a distinguished debut by the committee. The report was redacted after it went to the Prime Minister’s Office on the advice of officials, according to Trudeau.
But it was sent back to the committee and its members, including senators, Conservatives and a New Democrat, apparently agreed to live with the contents as they appeared.
In the end, it hardly matters — the discerning reader can comprehend what’s going on, even when all six findings on the subject of “foreign interference” have been blacked out.
The report details how Jean attempted to counter a narrative in India that the Trudeau government is soft on Sikh separatism.
Back in April 2017, the chief minister of Punjab refused to meet Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan, after accusing him and four other Canadian ministers of being “Khalistanis.” (Khalistan is the would-be Sikh homeland in the Indian state of Punjab.)
Jean quarterbacked efforts to address Indian concerns about Canada’s role in the perceived rise of extremism.
He travelled to India to meet his counterpart and there were also delegations by the RCMP and CSIS, emphasizing Canada’s support for a strong and united India.
Despite those efforts, a rash of stories appeared in the Indian press alleging Canadian complicity in Sikh extremism. Trudeau did not help his case by attending a Sikh event in Toronto the previous year, which featured Khalistan flags and posters of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, a Sikh extremist leader killed by Indian troops at the Golden Temple in Amritsar in 1984.
After Atwal’s presence at the event in Mumbai was revealed, Jean briefed Canadian media, including the National Post, suggesting elements in the Indian intelligence service might be motivated to embarrass Trudeau for being soft on Sikh terrorism. He said Atwal met with Indian diplomats from the consulate in Vancouver and Atwal’s own social media account showed he had visited the Indian External Affairs department the previous year.
Jean told the committee that he saw the briefings as “an important line of defence against foreign interference.”
The committee concluded in its report that the most compelling rationale for the almost unprecedented spectacle of the national security adviser briefing the press was that Jean was “deeply invested” in countering what he viewed as an orchestrated attempt to “shine a spotlight” on Atwal’s invitation.
The redacted report did not say the Indians had been playing games to embarrass the Canadian government — it did not have to. The inference is there.
Meanwhile, the Indians are miffed at what they see as pandering by the Canadian prime minister toward Sikh extremism.
The mood will scarcely have been improved by a story in the National Post last month that circulated in the Indian media. It quoted an analysis by the Canadian Border Services Agency that revealed a 246 per cent increase in refugee claims made by Indian Sikhs, after gaining access to Canada using temporary resident visas issued by the government.
The CBSA report cited tensions between the Indian government and the country’s Sikh population over renewed support for separatism in Punjab. “Contemporary support has reemerged around proposals for an unofficial referendum of the global Sikh diaspora in 2020 on the question of independence … As government pushback against Sikh community continues, fear of arbitrary arrest and abuse by authorities will likely prompt more Indian Sikhs to leave the country,” it said.
The upshot of such undiplomatic frankness is that Indian-Canadian relations, already chilly, have turned frigid.
The Hindustan Times, a large English language newspaper, reported Tuesday a proposed visit by environment minister Catherine McKenna to India is off and that attempts to arrange a bilateral meeting between global affairs minister Chrystia Freeland and her Indian counterpart Sushma Swaraj have come to nothing. McKenna’s office said they received an invitation last July to visit India but declined because of “domestic commitments” and other international travel already lined up.
An Indian source told the paper relations were at a “standstill” and predicted it would take a change of government in New Delhi or Ottawa to put the relationship back on track. (Both countries have parliamentary elections next year).
Given the Trudeau government’s stated goal of diversifying its trading partners, the failure to upgrade an underperforming $8-billion-a-year trading relationship is a missed opportunity.