National Post (National Edition)
Canada grovels for vaccines
All is well between Ottawa and New Delhi, it seems, or at least as well as it was before. Eleven weeks after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau annoyed the Indian government by going to bat for the country's protesting farmers — he said his government had “reached out through multiple means directly to the Indian authorities to highlight our concerns,” and vowed (ludicrously) that “Canada will always be there to defend the right of peaceful protest” — a telephone call between Trudeau and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi last week seems to have settled the matter.
The Canadian headlines Monday were hardly at all about the farmers, and much more about the immediately tangible payoff: “India to send Canada COVID-19 vaccines `in less than a month'.”
The initial shipment from the Serum Institute of India, the world's most prolific vaccine producer, will reportedly be 500,000 doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca jab. Trudeau's government, whose assurances of universal vaccination by Oct. 1 are not backed by anything very convincing, must be hoping for more.
And if he's willing to sell the farmers down the river, well, it's not like his intervention was going to make much difference anyway. It's not like many Canadian voters, outside of much-coveted ethnic voting blocs, care about foreign policy.
And good thing, too: If they did, toes might be curling right about now.
The Canadian PMO's official readout of the call did not contain the word “farmer.” It mentioned the controversy only under its breath: “The leaders discussed Canada and India's commitment to democratic principles, recent protests, and the importance of resolving issues through dialogue.”
Indian foreign ministry spokesperson Anurag Srivastava painted a rather grander portrait. “On the farmers' protests, Prime Minister Trudeau commended efforts of the government of India to choose the path of dialogue as befitting in democracy,” Srivastava said, the financial newspaper Mint reported.
Reviews from the farmers have been far less positive, it must be said.
Mint's headline: “Trudeau commends India's path to hold dialogue with protesting farmers.”
Srivastava also took a pretty solid, subtle dig at one of Canadian politics' uglier subplots: “(Trudeau) also acknowledged the responsibility of his government in providing protection to Indian diplomatic premises and personnel in Canada.”
Trudeau's comments in support of the farmers came during a Dec. 1 online townhall with members of Canada's Sikh community. Most of the protesting farmers are Sikhs. New Delhi claims Trudeau emboldened Sikh separatists in Canada, including extremists, who wish to establish a homeland they call Khalistan on what is now Indian and Pakistani territory. The extremists are most famous for blowing up Air India flight 182 in 1985, at a cost of 329 lives, 268 of them Canadian.
Speeches on the steps of the Indian consulate in Vancouver on Jan. 26 explicitly linked the farmers' plight to the wider struggle for Khalistan. The Indian government alleges both the consul-general's and Modi's lives were directly threatened as well — in the latter case by Inderjit Singh Bains, who is perhaps most famous for warning two of Canada's better-known moderate Sikhs, Ujjal Dosanjh (then a Vancouver MP) and Dave Hayer (then a Surrey MLA), not to attend Surrey's Sikh New Year parade in 2010 without their own security in tow.
Hayer's father, newspaper publisher Tara Singh Hayer, had turned against Khalistan extremists after Air India. His damning testimony implicating accused bomber Ajaib Singh Bagri — he swore an affidavit that he had overheard a confession — was never admitted at the trial, in part because he was assassinated in 1996.
Dosanjh survived a 1985 assassination attempt, it is assumed for his anti-extremist efforts. Jaspar Atwal, his alleged assailant, was acquitted — but convicted later of trying to murder Punjabi minister Malkiat Singh Sidhu on Vancouver Island the next year. Atwal was the guy the Canadian High Commission in New Delhi accidentally invited to a formal reception with Trudeau and family during their slapstick 2018 tour of India. Whoops!
There has always been a reckoning waiting to happen in Canadian politics over Sikh extremism, and more generally over a foreign policy whose consistent incoherence can be traced in part to every political party's constant wooing of ethnic blocs. Of course, that incoherence can be traced in much larger part to the fact that Canada really doesn't matter on the world stage, and the parties that govern it care far more about exaggerating their own carefully branded efforts at improving the world than actually intensifying those efforts or making any big improvements.
To see the charade revealed so dramatically over a promise of just 500,000 vaccine doses is still remarkable. And hey, good on Trudeau: we can't spare 500,000 doses!
But if we weren't so dependent on other countries for the things we need — for everything from military self-defence to vaccines — we might be spared these indignities. In some situations, we might even have a bit of leverage. But at the moment we'll happily flatter just about anyone who can guarantee us some vaccines. And rightly so. Beggars can't be choosers. We should at least recognize, however, that we are officially beggars.