India rejected repeated “off ramps” to avoiding a diplomatic crisis after intelligence linked it to the Hardeep Singh Nijjar murder in B.C., Prime Minister Justin Trudeau testified on Wednesday.
Rather than cooperating with the Canada’s investigations into the role of its intelligence services in the assassination, India instead pushed back, Trudeau told the foreign interference inquiry.
“Their response was to double down and attack Canada rather than take responsibility or say, ‘How can we fix this? Yes, this was a violation of the rule of law,’” Trudeau said.
Responding to Trudeau’s testimony, the Indian government said Canada had “presented us no evidence whatsoever in support of the serious allegations that it has chosen to level against India and Indian diplomats.”
“The responsibility for the damage that this cavalier behaviour has caused to India-Canada relations lies with Prime Minister Trudeau alone.”
But appearing at the Hogue Commission two days after the RCMP said India was targeting its opponents in Canada with violence, Trudeau detailed his attempts to resolve the dispute with New Delhi.
He said that while the June 18, 2023, murder of the Surrey, B.C. Sikh temple leader was initially considered a gang or crime killing, indications of India’s involvement emerged over the summer.
“In late July, early August, I was briefed on the fact that there was intelligence from Canada and possibly Five Eyes allies that made it fairly clear, credibly clear, that India was involved in this killing,” he said.
Canada first reached out to the Indian officials in August, to inform them of the findings and to try to work together “in a responsible way that doesn’t come and blow up the relationship.”
Trudeau said Canada could have made things “uncomfortable” for Prime Minister Narendra Modi by going public with the allegations before the G20 summit in September 2023 in New Dehli.
“We chose not to,” he said.
“We chose to continue to work behind the scenes to try and get India to cooperate with us,” he said.
But instead of looking into the conduct of its security agencies, India only wanted to know what Canada had on them.
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“And at that point, it was primarily intelligence, not hard evidentiary proof. So we said, ‘Well, you know, let’s work together and look into your security services, and maybe we can get that done,”’ Trudeau said, adding the Indian response was, “No, no, no, we’re not doing that.”
At the end of the G20, Trudeau said he spoke directly with Modi.
“I sat down and shared that we knew that they were involved, and explained a real concern around it,” the prime minister said.
“He responded with the usual response from him, which is that we have people who are outspoken against the Indian government living in Canada that he would like to see arrested,” he testified.
“And I tried to explain that freedom of speech and freedom of people who come to our country to be Canadians, to criticize governments overseas, or indeed to criticize the Canadian government, is a fundamental freedom of Canada.”
“But as always, we would work with them on any evidence or any, concerns they have around terrorism or incitement to hate or anything that is patently unacceptable in Canada.”
Upon returning to Ottawa, Trudeau said it was obvious India was continuing its approach of attacking Canada instead of dealing with the issue, and he decided to go public with his allegations about India’s role in late September.
On Sept. 18, 2023, with the Canadian press about to report the story, Trudeau told the House of Commons that security agencies had “credible allegations” of the potential involvement of Indian agents in Nijjar’s killing.
“We determined that it was in the interest of public safety in Canada to let people know that we knew about these allegations, that we were following up on them,” Trudeau told the inquiry.
The prime minister said he did so partly “to ensure that nobody in Canada, in any communities, felt like they needed to take action themselves, that they should trust Canadian institutions to take this threat seriously and follow up on it.”
The Indian government again responded to the statement with attacks and denials, instead of cooperation, he said. India also ejected dozens of Canadian diplomats in an act of reprisal, as if to say, “‘We don’t like what you said in the House about us, and we’re going to punish you for that,” according to Trudeau.
“This was a situation in which we had clear, and certainly now even clearer, indications that India had violated Canada’s sovereignty, and their response was to double down and attack Canada further.”
He said Canada did not want to pick a fight with India, an important trade partner, but he had to stand up for Canadian security and sovereignty.
Last weekend weekend, Canadian officials made another effort to secure India’s cooperation, asking it to lift immunity on six diplomats the RCMP had identified as “persons of interest” in investigations.
India declined and launched a broadside early Monday, accusing Trudeau of playing politics. Later that day, the RCMP announced it had uncovered evidence of India’s involvement in a wave of violent crime.
Agents based at India’s high commission in Ottawa and consulates in Vancouver and Toronto had been denying visas to Canadians who needed to travel to India in order to coerce them into spying, sources said.
Cash payments were also used to recruit informants. The information they gathered was relayed back to India’s intelligence services, who used it to plan attacks on Modi’s opponents.
Indian intelligence contracted organized crime groups such as the Lawrence Bishnoi gang to carry out the attacks in Canada, which targeted mostly activists in the Khalistan movement that champions independence for the Sikh-majority Punjab.
Global News reported Tuesday police have evidence the operation was approved by Modi’s right hand man, Amit Shah, the hardline Hindu nationalist who serves as India’s Home Minister.
Asked if he agreed the violence in Canada was a policy that was “authorized and directed by responsible members of the government of India,” Trudeau said that was “an extremely important question.”
“And that is a question that actually we have been repeatedly asking the government of India to assist us on, and to get to the bottom of, the question of whether it is or could be, rogue elements within the government or whether it was a more, systemic, systematic, endeavour, for the government of India.”
Canadian investigators were “somewhat removed from being able to uncover the internal machinations of the Indian government, of who went wrong or who did this or who did that,” he said.
“That’s why from the very beginning, we have been asking for India, the Indian government to take, these allegations seriously and proceed with their own investigations and work with us on, figuring out exactly how these egregious violations of Canadian sovereignty, actually happened.”
Stewart.Bell@globalnews.ca