New Delhi: The Premier of Canada’s British Columbia David Eby Wednesday said that he has no information regarding any involvement of the Indian government in “extortion” cases being probed in the province.
“I want to be clear at this point we do not have any information, [the] police may, I am not [a] party of the investigation, but we do not have any information that the Indian government is involved in this [extortion]. We have received allegations that the Bishnoi gang was involved in some of this, or it may have been individuals claiming to be associated with that gang in order to gain credibility for their threats,” Eby said in an interview with the Canadian private outlet CTV News.
The Premier of the Canadian province was one of the first to call for the Bishnoi gang to be designated as a terrorist entity by Ottawa last year. The Canadian government designated the gang, led by Lawrence Bishnoi—who is in prison in India—as a terrorist entity last September, weeks after India’s National Security Adviser (NSA) Ajit Doval met with his Canadian counterpart Nathalie G. Drouin in New Delhi.
British Columbia has been facing a number of security challenges, with extortion “probably our number one public safety issue,” said Eby during the course of the interview.
Surrey, the town where Hardeep Singh Nijjar, the Indian-designated terrorist, was killed, is located in British Columbia.
The Nijjar killing led to the unravelling of ties between India and Canada after then Canadian PM Justin Trudeau accused Indian government officials of links to Nijjar’s killing.
Nijjar was killed in June 2023, the accusations by Trudeau were made in September 2023.
However, under incumbent Prime Minister Mark Carney, ties between India and Canada have seen a thaw. Carney visited India in the last week of February, while meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi Monday.
After the visit, people familiar with the matter had indicated that at the leaders’ level talks, that they were present at, there were no discussions on the Nijjar killing or transnational repression, pointing out that there are a number of other mechanisms engaged and looking into the case.
The reset in ties was possible with Ottawa moving the law enforcement challenges within the ties—alleged foreign political interference and the investigation into Nijjar’s killing—to the appropriate levels as envisioned by the two governments, allowing Modi and Carney to hold three meetings within the last ten months.
At least four individuals of Indian origin have been arrested by Canadian authorities for the killing of Nijjar. The judicial processes are currently ongoing within Canada, and India has said that it is willing to cooperate with Canada as a part of its “established legal procedures”.
Carney’s visit to New Delhi, was the first bilateral visit by a Canadian Prime Minister in eight years, indicating the chill in ties for the better part of the last few years. On the eve of the Canadian Prime Minister’s visit to India, a senior official in Ottawa had briefed local media and asserted that at this moment there is no foreign interference emanating from New Delhi.
In October 2024, India withdrew six of its diplomats from Canada, after Ottawa sought the waiver of their diplomatic immunity from New Delhi, linking their activities to violent crime in the North American nation.
India rejected the allegations and expelled Canadian diplomats in retaliation, including then Acting High Commissioner Stewart Wheeler. The diplomatic chill continued till August 2025, when the two countries finally appointed high commissioners almost simultaneously, and have since seen a step-by-step normalisation in diplomatic representation in their respective missions.
Eby travelled to India in January with a trade delegation as a part of efforts to expand commercial ties between India and the province of British Columbia. For Canada and Canadian provinces, India has become an important pillar of Ottawa’s move to reduce its dependence on the US for its exports.
The US accounts for around two-thirds of Canada’s annual merchandise exports. US President Donald J. Trump has led to a reflection within Ottawa of the necessity to find new and larger markets for its products. India, with its population of 1.4 billion people, is a potential destination for Canada’s energy goods, as well as its mineral wealth.
Carney’s visit to India saw a number of deals signed between the two countries, including one for long-term supply of uranium worth $2.6 billion. While India and Canada had signed a similar uranium deal over a decade ago, there was little to no supply of the energy source to Indian end users.
However, the sense within New Delhi at the moment is to try the deal again, given Carney’s personal interest in ensuring Canada as a stable source of energy for India. Canadian pension funds have invested over $50 billion into Indian firms, while private equity investors from the North American nation have also invested around the same amount.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)