Justin Trudeau defends allegation against India as Canada’s allies offer muted support

India also expelled a Canadian diplomat on Tuesday after Trudeau revealed Monday that there are “credible allegations” that agents of the Indian government were involved in Nijjar’s shooting death, and that India’s top intelligence officer in Canada was being expelled as a consequence.

The tit-for-tat echoed the diplomatic tensions between Canada and China earlier this year after revelations that China was targeting a Canadian member of Parliament. But while many Western allies had publicly backed Canada in that case, the same broad support wasn’t immediately on display with the latest degradation of Canada-India relations.

The United States, Australia and the United Kingdom all voiced concerns, but stopped short of publicly backing Canada’s calls for the Indian government to come clean with what it knows about Nijjar’s killing.

“It is critical that Canada’s investigation proceed and the perpetrators be brought to justice,” said U.S. National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson in a statement to reporters.

Suggestions that India was involved have circulated since Nijjar was shot to death in Surrey, B.C. in June, and the prospect that evidence to potentially support that theory could be made public helped prompt Trudeau to make the surprise revelation Monday on the floor of the House of Commons.

On Tuesday, Trudeau said he had been waiting to raise the issue with allies and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the sidelines of the G20 summit in New Delhi earlier this month, before going public.

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“We wanted to make sure that we had a solid grounding in understanding what was going on in analysis and, indeed, in facts,” he said.

In making his statement, however, Trudeau said “we are not looking to provoke or escalate.”

“We are simply laying out the facts as we understand them and we want to work with the government of India to lay everything clear and to ensure that there is proper process.”

During the controversy over allegations of Chinese interference in Canadian politics, Trudeau and his governing Liberals were raked over the coals by their political rivals for having intelligence that included suggestions MPs were being targeted, but doing nothing with that information.

The issue became a political firestorm that lasted months, and ultimately led to the start this week of a public inquiry into foreign interference.

Early signs the allegation against India will set off another political fire for the government began to appear Tuesday.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said there wasn’t enough information to make a judgment on whether Trudeau ought to have gone public, nor whether the Canadian government ought to take more action against India.

“The prime minister hasn’t provided any facts. He provided a statement,” Poilievre said.

The risk if the allegation isn’t true is “real,” Poilievre added, although he did not elaborate.

Asked about Poilievre’s demand to release more information, a spokesperson for Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc said they wouldn’t make any further statements “so as to protect the integrity of an ongoing and active homicide investigation.”

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said the allegation deserves more scrutiny, which will come through police investigations and the upcoming public inquiry. He also wrote to the judge in charge of the public inquiry, asking her to explicitly include Indian interference in her work. The probe is already set to tackle interference by China, Russia, and “other foreign states.”

Nijjar, 45, was shot dead on June 18 while sitting in his truck outside the Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara, where he served as temple president.

Police said last month they were seeking three individuals in connection with the killing.

Nijjar was a leading advocate for the creation of Khalistan, an independent Sikh homeland in India, and had been involved in organizing a referendum among Sikhs living abroad.

Indian officials considered him to be a fugitive who held a leadership position with the Khalistan Tiger Force, a Sikh militant group designated by the Indian government in February as a terrorist organization.

They had long charged that Nijjar was hiding out in Canada, where he had lived since leaving India in the 1990s.

In the days before his death, Nijjar had told close associates and a journalist that he feared for his life. After he was killed, hundreds of people protested outside the Indian consulate in Vancouver, calling his death a tragic example of foreign interference.

Even before Trudeau’s revelation on Monday, Canada’s relations with India were at a “low ebb,” said Vivek Dehejia, an associate professor of economics at Carleton University’s Canada-India Centre.

Dehejia pointed to Trudeau’s trip to India in 2018, when a man convicted of attempting to kill an Indian cabinet minister hobnobbed with the prime minister at an exclusive event in Mumbai — a gaffe that Dehejia called “extremely embarrassing.”

Relations between the countries will have been further damaged by Trudeau’s allegation, Dehejia said, noting that trade talks were already suspended.

Bessma Momani, a professor of political science at the University of Waterloo who specializes in international affairs, said the revelation that India might be involved is “beneath the level of a fellow liberal democracy.”

But she noted the resulting hit to relations with India comes at a complex time in global affairs, when the United States, Canada and other western countries are trying to reduce economic ties with China and establish stronger trade links with like-minded liberal democracies.

The resulting importance of India as a rising economic power with a massive population might make it difficult for some of Canada’s allies to boldly denounce India for its alleged role in Nijjar’s killing.

“(India’s) geo-economic role is undoubtedly going to complicate things for us,” she said, adding that other western countries also have diverse Indian diaspora populations with political heft, much like in Canada.

“Our allies are in a tough spot,” she said.

In Ottawa, members of Canada’s Sikh and Muslim communities noted there are other Sikhs who are under threat, and called on the federal government to do more to protect them — including an immediate cessation of intelligence sharing with India.

Mukhbir Singh, a board member for the World Sikh Organization of Canada, also said he wants to see Ottawa widen the terms of the public inquiry to include analyzing Canada’s capacity to shield communities from foreign threats committed for any reason — not just election interference.

Stephen Brown, the CEO of the National Council of Canadian Muslims, urged politicians not to descend to partisan attacks over the issue.

“We need to make sure that all Canadian politicians are working together to one, understand exactly how this happened, but two — and more importantly — make sure that this doesn’t happen again,” Brown said.

“People should not have to be worried about getting shot when they’re walking out of a place of worship in Canada.”

With files from Allan Woods

Stephanie Levitz is an Ottawa-based reporter covering federal politics for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @StephanieLevitz

Alex Ballingall is an Ottawa-based reporter covering federal politics for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @aballinga