Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s testimony Wednesday before the Foreign Interference Commission—a public inquiry into the allegations of foreign involvement in the country’s federal elections—comes amid an unprecedented escalation in the diplomatic row between India and Canada.
It has seen Canadian authorities link Indian diplomats to the killing of Sikh separatist and India-designated terrorist Hardeep Singh Nijjar as well as broader criminal activity in the country—including extortion and murder—and tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats by the two countries.
In his testimony, Trudeau once again accused Indian authorities of being involved in Nijjar’s killing, but also said that his government had initially acted primarily on the basis of intelligence, not evidentiary proof.
During his testimony, Trudeau also emphasised that Canada’s official position was ‘One India’, despite the presence of “a number of people in Canada who advocate otherwise”, alluding to Sikh separatists.
Excerpts from what Trudeau said about India in his testimony follow. They have been edited for clarity.
Over he course of the summer, I was apprised by my intelligence services that there was credible intelligence that agents of the Government of India were involved in the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar. This is something we had actually asked the intelligence agencies to look into because following the rather high-profile killing months before, the initial assessment was, this was gang-related or criminal-related. There was not an obvious, immediate international nexus to this.
That’s how we were briefed in the days after the killing . However, hearing directly from a number of our South Asian Members of Parliament and seeing and talking with members of the South Asian community who were quite insistent that it was something that was likely connected to the Government of India, we actually asked the intelligence agencies, and it turned out they were doing this anyway, to look more closely at the circumstances around this particular murder.
So, in late July, early August, I was briefed on the fact that there was intelligence from Canada and possibly from Five Eyes
allies that made it fairly clear, incredibly clear, that India was involved in this killing. Agents of the Government of India were involved in the killing of a Canadian on Canadian soil. This was something that we obviously had to take extremely seriously. That violation of sovereignty, of the international rule of law, with extrajudicial killing in a foreign country, in a fellow democracy, was a massive mistake if India had indeed done it—and we had reasons to believe that they had.
So, our immediate approach was to engage with the Government of India, to say—and we had our various security officials reach out to India—‘Look, there are real concerns that your security agencies were involved in the killing of Nijjar. We need to work on this together because that can’t stand. We need to make sure that there are changes and there’s accountability for this process, but let’s try and do it in a responsible way that doesn’t come and blow up the relationship between Canada and India.’ And that was the attempt we made in the month of August.
As we approached the end of August and September, the big thing that was happening was India itself hosting the summit of the advanced economies of the world, the G20. So, it was a big moment for India, welcoming the world, all the leaders of the world, to Delhi for a very important summit, and we had the opportunity of making it a very uncomfortable summit for India if we went public with these allegations ahead of time. We chose not to. We chose to continue to work behind the scenes to try and get India to cooperate with us.
Their ask of us was, ‘Well, how much do you know? Give us the evidence you have on this.’ And our response was, ‘Well, it’s within your security agencies. You should be looking into how much they know. You should be engaging us.’
‘No, no, no, tell us what you know. Show us the evidence.’ 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.’ ‘No, no, no, we’re not doing that.’
It culminated with a conversation I had with Prime Minister Modi after the end of the last session at the G20 in Delhi, where I sat down and shared that we knew that they were involved, and expressed a real concern around it.
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. I tried to explain that freedom of speech and freedom of people who come to our country to be Canadians, to criticise governments overseas—or indeed to criticise 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.
We have taken action in the past. We continue to take action, even as—I emphasise, and I have emphasised regularly—my position, and Canada’s position, is to defend the territorial integrity of India. ‘One India’ is official Canadian policy, and the fact that there are a number of people in Canada who advocate otherwise does not make it Canadian policy—but also does not make it something that is illegal in Canada.
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Having done all that, we returned to Canada, and it was obvious that the Indian government response—particularly through the media—was to instead attack Canada, to attack Canadians, to criticise us, to undermine our government and our governance, and quite frankly, the integrity of our democracy.
Combined with the fact that as we approached the end of September, it looked like there were going to be media stories detailing some of these allegations.
When, on the first day that the House returned, 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. There was an investigation into them that was taken on by police services in Canada to ensure that, partially 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, and that’s exactly what we then did. We launched investigations.
The Indian response to these allegations and to our investigations was to double down on attacks against this government, attacks against this government’s integrity, attacks against
Canada in general, but also to arbitrarily eject dozens of diplomats from India, on absolutely no cause other than to say, ‘Well, we don’t like what you said in the House about us and we’re going to punish you for that.’
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 rather than take responsibility or say, ‘How can we fix this? Yes, this was a violation of the rule of law.’ Or even take any of the many off-ramps we offered, because we don’t want to be in this situation of picking a fight with a significant trading partner with whom we have deep people-to-people ties and a long history, and our fellow democracy.
But standing up unequivocally for Canadian sovereignty and for the safety of Canadians back then was essential and absolutely led to the very, very clear pronouncements we made earlier this week, the conclusions and the evidence that the RCMP determined in terms of violence towards Canadians that has been enabled by and directed by, in many cases, the Indian government.
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Commissioner: So you’ve made reference to the allegations that were in the announcement of the RCMP earlier this week, and we know that wasn’t solely connected to the Nijjar investigation per se. It’s a broader thing than that, and it involves allegations of interference by India in promotion of violent extremism, tying agents of the Government of India to homicides, violent acts, the use of organised crime and interference in democratic processes.
So it’s a much wider thing, and we know that it led to, over the past weekend, the PNG (declaration as persona non grata) of six Indian diplomats. What can you say—and you mentioned before that the hope was not to blow up the relationship with India after the Nijjar murder?
Obviously, things have progressed since then.
Commissioner: What comment are you able to offer on what the RCMP announced on Monday and where things stand at the moment?
The decision by the RCMP to go forward with that announcement was entirely anchored in public safety and a goal of disrupting the chain of activities that was resulting in drive-by shootings, home invasions, and violent extortion and even murder in and across Canada, particularly in the South Asian community. Largely Sikhs, but not exclusively the Sikh community.
The goal was to disrupt the chain that was diplomats collecting information on Canadians who are opponents or are in disagreement with the Modi government, passing along that information to the highest levels within the Indian government, and then having that information directed through criminal organisations like the Lawrence Bishnoi gang, to then result in violence against Canadians on the ground.
It was the RCMP’s determination that that chain or that sequence or that scheme needed to be disrupted by going public on Monday as they did and therefore removing those diplomats.
The first option was actually being able to question those diplomats and interview those diplomats by having them waive diplomatic immunity. They didn’t. That’s not surprising that they didn’t. Canada wouldn’t waive diplomatic immunity in many cases either, but therefore we had to ask them to leave the country. And just to be clear, when you speak of diplomats collecting information in this instance, we’re not talking about researching or Google searches. We’re talking about covert, clandestine or coercive measures, threatening to withhold family visas, paying sources, a range of things that the RCMP can detail. One of the important things on this is there are ongoing court cases and trials. If the RCMP had its druthers, it wouldn’t have revealed any of this.
It’s just that it hit the threshold before it came out naturally in court through our judicial process, as it would, as much of this will. But the threat to public safety and the need to disrupt preemptively even before the court cases were fully adjudicated made it the RCMP’s decision to go public with this.