Opinion
Gallons of maple syrup won’t sweeten India-Canada relations
Summary
Try we must, nonetheless. Although it’s inexplicable why Canada’s PM chose to embitter ties with India by linking the Indian government to a hit job, we both need to get out of this spot
There has long existed a liberal elite across the world for whom Canada could do no wrong, especially under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. It was partly on account of his leadership, for example, that Americans put off by Donald Trump began talking about what Indians had been doing for decades: moving to Canada. Ottawa’s welcome mat for immigrants and effort to diversify the country in various ways, including what can legally be inhaled, gave it a heroic profile well beyond its borders. What these admirers may have taken too long to notice, however, is the Canadian administration’s record on dealing with the real world, the one in which relations with foreign countries cannot be subject to cavalier shake-ups, let alone the sort of rupture we have just seen with India. By openly talking about “credible allegations" of the Indian government’s involvement in the killing of a Canadian citizen there, dismissed as “absurd" by New Delhi, Trudeau has set off a chain reaction that threatens the interests of both countries by trapping us in mutual hostility. That we are now caught in an avoidable confrontation, with tit-for-tat diplomat expulsions, is a let-down whose costs could pile up unless quick amends are made.
The Canadian PM was referring to a local probe of the 18 June murder in a Vancouver suburb of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, who was best known for his advocacy of a separate Sikh state called Khalistan. Trudeau did not mention any specific evidence of Indian agents having had a role in it, which suggests that his statement was not just highly premature, it can be viewed in the larger context of bilateral ties stretched thin by a deep divergence over the issue of Sikh separatism. New Delhi has been upset with what it sees as Canada’s coddling of Khalistani extremists, some of whom have gone out of their way to run down India, mount graffiti campaigns against the country and even vandalize symbols of the Indian state. In contrast, Canada’s liberal establishment under Trudeau has shrugged it all off on the argument that protesting against a state and calling for a new country carved out of another are legal under its free speech laws. For India’s national security bosses, this was waffle. Nijjar wasn’t a college pamphleteer. He was the chief of the so-called Khalistan Tiger Force, a man wanted by Indian authorities for a bomb attack and the killing of a Hindu priest in Punjab. In some circles, it was taken as an affront to India that Nijjar could brazenly drum up support for a cause that had already led to so much needless bloodshed in our country. The cold shoulder that Trudeau got on his G20 visit, thus, wasn’t a surprise.
Still, strained ties should never have been allowed to reach a snap-off point, given what’s at stake, from family relations across the high seas to lucrative trade and investment deals. Canada is not the US, but is worth forging a close economic pact with all the same. Alas, these talks have been thrown into jeopardy. That’s bad for both. Bilateral trade, at around $8.2 billion in 2022-23, has been evenly balanced and set to expand, while Canadian pension funds have been pumping billions into India. Ottawa was aware of India’s sensitivities all along. If it had reason to suspect Indian agents of ordering a hit job on its soil, strategic sense would have demanded taking it up with our diplomats behind closed doors. By going public, Canada has created a bitterness that even gallons of maple syrup can’t easily overcome. But overcome it, we must.
