The Canada-India row has its roots in the Liberals’ diaspora politics

Open this photo in gallery:

In 1989, when reports surfaced that Ottawa had expelled Indian diplomats for spying, then foreign affairs minister Joe Clark did not hold a press conference to lecture the Indian government or express righteous indignation at its alleged Vienna Convention violations.

Instead, Mr. Clark rose in the House of Commons to respond to charges from the Liberal immigration critic Sergio Marchi that India’s government had engaged in “elaborate and covert operations … to discredit and destabilize the Canadian Sikh community” and manipulate Canadian officials. India had grown frustrated with Canada’s coddling of Sikh separatists and the RCMP’s botched investigation into the 1985 bombing of an Air India flight that originated in Canada.

“If friendly governments engage in any activities, including intelligence activities, which are inappropriate, we deal with them directly, we reprimand them directly and we require the removal from the country of any people who have been involved in those improper activities,” Mr. Clark replied, neither confirming nor denying the reports that Indian consular and embassy officials had been kicked out of Canada.

Compare the low-key handling of that diplomatic incident with the onslaught against India unleashed on Monday by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau after the RCMP announced that it had gathered evidence allegedly revealing “the breadth and depth of criminal activity orchestrated by agents of the government of India.”

Mr. Trudeau’s press conference, with Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly and Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc standing solemnly behind him, was unprecedented not just in almost 80 years of diplomatic relations between Canada and India, but in the annals of international diplomacy between “friendly” countries, period.

Could you imagine the leader of any other G7 country going to such lengths to stigmatize and alienate such a critical ally?

First China, now India: an increasingly multipolar world is teaching Canada unpleasant truths

To be sure, the allegations levelled by Mr. Trudeau against the six Indian diplomats who have been ordered to leave the country go far beyond collecting information on Canadians through “questionable and illegal means” to include passing on that information to criminal organizations engaged in killing and extortion.

If true, such behaviour is inexcusable, nay unconscionable, and Canada had no choice but to expel these individuals given India’s refusal to waive their diplomatic immunity. But did Mr. Trudeau need to make such a show of it?

Reasonable people can disagree on that point. But what is beyond dispute is that foreign governments, including democratic ones, routinely target suspected terrorists outside their own borders. India sees itself as no different than the United States or Israel in this respect. And it has long seen Canada’s Sikh diaspora as threat to Indian national security.

Indian governments going back more than four decades have bemoaned Canada’s unwillingness to crack down on what it says are the terrorist activities and anti-India hate speech of Sikhs in this country who advocate for an independent Khalistan in the Punjab region. And it accuses politicians here, especially Liberal ones, of putting diaspora politics above Canada’s broader foreign policy interests.

Sikh Canadians have exceptional political clout owing to their concentration in about two dozen federal ridings in Ontario and British Columbia and their deep and strategic engagement in the political process. Though Canada’s Hindu population is slightly larger than the 800,000-strong Sikh community, it is far less geographically concentrated or united in its political views.

No Canadian prime minister has courted Sikh voters as brazenly as Mr. Trudeau. His assiduousness in this respect has only grown since Jagmeet Singh, who has displayed pro-Khalistan sympathies, became Leader of the New Democratic Party.

From Mr. Trudeau’s bragging in 2016 that he had more Sikhs in his cabinet than Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the invitation extended to the B.C. man convicted of attempting to murder an Indian cabinet minister to an official reception in 2018, the Trudeau government repeatedly put wooing Sikh electors ahead of maintaining good diplomatic relations with New Delhi.

In 2019, then public safety minister Ralph Goodale removed a reference to “Sikh extremism” from his department’s 2018 Public Report on the Terrorism Threat to Canada after some Sikh leaders here threatened to ban Liberal politicians from attending events in their community.

In 2020, the Modi government accused Canada of “unacceptable interference” in India’s internal affairs after Mr. Trudeau spoke out in support of Sikh farmers protesting Mr. Modi’s agricultural reforms. New Delhi accused Ottawa of encouraging “extremist activities.”

By all accounts, Canada remains the epicentre of Sikh extremism outside India. The 2023 murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar – which Mr. Trudeau soon after linked to Indian government agents – did not occur in a vacuum. Unfortunately, if the RCMP’s allegations are true, the Indian government only appears to have ramped up its illicit activities here since then.

One thing is for sure. This is no way for two “friendly countries” to conduct business with each other.