The Decibel - Trudeau accuses India of involvement in Canadian’s murder

Episode Date: September 20, 2023

The murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar left Canada’s Sikh community with a lot of questions. On Monday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gave them a possible answer: he alleged that the Indian government was involved in Mr. Nijjar’s death. India was quick to deny any involvement.Ottawa Bureau Chief Robert Fife discovered this information before the official announcement on Monday. And he is on the show to explain the allegations and how they fit into Canada’s complex relations with India.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

Father's Day was not supposed to end the way it did for Hardeep Singh Nijjar. Nijjar was a father of two grown kids, and that night, he was rushing home from a sick temple in Surrey, B.C. to celebrate with his family. As he was pulling out of the parking lot in his pickup truck, two masked gunmen rushed the driver's side and fired multiple rounds into the front window. When police got there, they found Nidger slumped over in his truck, dead. Last night's homicide was a brazen act of violence outside a place of worship. Many community members were present following evening prayers at the Gurdwara. This was a shocking and very public act of violence against a well-known community member and Gurdwara president. Hardeep Singh Nidja was not just a leader in the Sikh community in Surrey,

but a well-known advocate for the Sikh separatist movement. It's a movement that India deeply opposes, because it's pushing for its own sovereign state, called Khalistan. Nidra was so well-known that before his death, Canada's intelligence agency, CSIS, warned him that there could be a plot to assassinate him, because in the eyes of the Indian government, he was considered a terrorist. All of this led to questions after his murder, which police addressed. We understand there's a lot of speculation as to the motive of this homicide, but we are dedicated to learning the facts and letting the evidence lead our investigation.

In the three months that followed, there haven't been any arrests in Nidger's death. Then, on Monday, the prime minister dropped some stunning news. Over the past number of weeks, Canadian security agencies have been actively pursuing credible allegations of a potential link between agents of the government of India and the killing of a Canadian citizen, Hardeep Singh Nijjar. This has sent shockwaves internationally and within Canada, especially within the Canadian Sikh community. Canada is home to more Sikhs than

anywhere else outside India. So today, I'm speaking with the Globe's Ottawa Bureau Chief, Robert Fyfe. He actually uncovered the allegations before Justin Trudeau announced them publicly. And he's going to tell us what we know so far about the alleged involvement of India in Nijar's death. I'm Maina Karaman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Bob, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. Always a pleasure. So we are talking Tuesday afternoon, and of course, this is a fast-developing story, but we are going to cover off as much as we know at this point in time. So let's just start, Bob, by talking about what

happened in the House of Commons on Monday. What exactly did Prime Minister Justin Trudeau say? First of all, I should say, Manika, that the Prime Minister met briefly with the official opposition leaders to inform them that Canadian intelligence services had credible intelligence that Mr. Nijjar was murdered by agents of the Indian government. He did so to give them time to be able to make statements of their own in the House of Commons after he spoke. The media were then informed that the Prime Minister intended to make a statement about a very serious matter at 3.15. Mr. Trudeau then got up in the House of Commons and announced that the Canadian authorities believed that there was credible intelligence that Mr. Najjar was murdered by agents of the Indian government. He said that this is a serious violation of Canadian sovereignty, that he had raised this issue directly and in no uncertain terms

with Prime Minister Modi of India at the G20 summit. Any involvement of a foreign government in the killing of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil is an unacceptable violation of our sovereignty. And that the Canadian government expected the Indian government to fully cooperate in the investigation to bring these people who are responsible for the murder of Mr. Najjar to justice. And it was a very strong statement. It wasn't to justice. It was a very strong statement. It wasn't a long one, but a very strong statement about the importance of respecting international law

and the sovereignty of other nations, and particularly the citizenship of Canadians. And Mr. Najjar is a Canadian citizen. He has been promoted to separatism in the northern state of Punjab, and he's promoted an international referendum on a Khalistan state. But he should be able to do that without having to fear he's going to be murdered. And those are very serious claims, right? Canada is alleging involvement by the Indian government in the killing of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil. Have we ever seen anything like this before? No, we have never seen anything like this before.

This has not been something that is normal, that happens in Western democracies very often. It certainly has never happened in Canada. And so what is the Canadian government doing in response? Well, let's just step back a little bit because what happened on September the 1st, the government suddenly announced that they were hitting a pause on free trade talks with India. And this was a bit of surprise to everybody because the Canadian government and the Indian government had been talking about how they hope to move very quickly on having a free trade agreement. This is something that had been in the works for a long time and had never come to fruition. And all of a sudden there seemed to be full speed ahead. Let's get this agreement in place.

And there was really no explanation for why they hit pause other than saying that both sides needed to reassess some of the talks. But this news puts that into a different light then, it sounds like. It certainly does. And then on last Friday, Trade Minister Mary Nang also announced that a Canadian trade mission, which she was planning to lead to India on October the 9th, had also been postponed indefinitely. So that got everybody thinking, okay, there's something more to this, particularly if you go back to last week when the Prime Minister had a brief discussion with Prime Minister Modi at the G20. And there was a very awkward moment when you could see Mr. Trudeau really didn't want to shake Mr. Modi's hand. And the Indian

press offices put out a statement that saying that Mr. Modi's hand. And the Indian press offices put out a statement saying that Mr. Modi was very clear that he expressed real concern about the prime minister and the Canadian government's attitude towards Sikh separatism and that they need to do more about people who are promoting separatism and funding of separatism in the Punjab. And the prime minister's office only responded only responded the prime minister actually himself only responded by saying that he had raised the issue of foreign interference i think on the issue of uh of the community it's important to remember

that the actions of the few do not represent the entire community or canada The flip side of it, we also highlighted the importance of respecting the rule of law. And we did talk about foreign interference. The photos of that and the video of that looked like a very strained relationship. Yeah, we were talking about how that was kind of an icy reception between Trudeau and Modi there. And then Trudeau was talking about the rule of law when he was making comments at the G20. So again, looking back on it puts this into kind of a different light. Yeah. So my colleague, Steve Chase, and I said, okay, there's more to this story then. And through our sources, we worked over the weekend, we're able to determine that, in fact, Canadian security intelligence officials did believe that India had carried out

the assassination of Mr. Najjar. And on Sunday, I was ready to go with the story. And we got a call from a senior government official, first to the editor-in-chief, David Walmsley, asking us to postpone the story for at least a week on the request of security agencies who said they still needed more work to be done on that. I, when I would discuss with the same official, I said, well, I'm not going to sit on a story like this for a week. We'll give you 24 hours. We'll do it till Tuesday morning. But I also wanted to be responsible. And I said, well, you know, get your act together and we'll give you time to do that and respect that. So this was on Sunday then, Bob.

So you and Steve were looking into this issue over the weekend. We had it confirmed. We had it confirmed. We were ready to go with the story and we time to inform Canada's allies and to give the law enforcement or whatever time to decide whether, I don't know whether it was going to be arrested or not, but they said they needed more time. So we agreed to do so. And then they kind of upstaged us, by the way, because they jumped the gun and they decided they wanted to do this at 3.15. But we got the story out before the prime minister's announcement.

But yes, so that's the backstory of what went down. Well, either way, the story comes out Monday then. The prime minister speaks to Canadians in the House of Commons and says this stuff out loud. How has India reacted to those allegations being made? Well, the Indian government has reacted very strongly in issuing a denial. Mr. Modi also told the prime minister in no uncertain terms during his meeting that they were not responsible for this. And the Indian government says that they have nothing to do with this. It's absolutely false. So a very strong denial. I should mention, though, the other aside from the trade negotiations that were put on pause shortly after the prime minister made

his announcement in the House of Commons, Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Jolie met with reporters outside the House of Commons foyer to announce that Canada had expelled the top intelligence officer at the Indian High Commission. And lo and behold, on Tuesday, India did a tit-for-tat response and has given a senior Canadian official at the High Commission in New Delhi five days to leave the country. But I don't think we're going to see an escalation.

The Prime Minister spoke with reporters before a cabinet meeting on Tuesday and said that the government does not want to provoke India and does not want to escalate. 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... This is the world's largest parliamentary democracy. And although Mr. Modi has beginning to drift more to authoritarianism, he still is a democratic leader. And this is too soft, essentially, on terrorism. What does Canada say in response to that? not involved in unlawful activities, they have a right to do so. Look, we have Quebec separatists. They're in the House of Commons, for heaven's sakes. You know, as long as they're not promoting violence or committing violent acts, they have every right to advocate whatever they wish to advocate. We'll be back in a minute. I do want to ask you about the politics at play in the House of Commons as a result of this as well, Bob.

When the prime minister made this announcement on Monday, how have the opposition parties reacted out in unison saying that if the allegations are true, this is a very serious violation of Canadian sovereignty, that India must answer for these allegations and work with the Canadian government to bring the people who may be responsible for this to justice. It's very possible, Manika, that these could be rogue elements of the Indian Foreign Intelligence Service. Dick Fadden, who used to be the CSIS director and used to be the national security advisor to both Justin Trudeau and Stephen Harper, has argued that he thinks if this did happen, he says it must be rogue elements. But the opposition parties have been on side. And, you know, Mr. Trudeau has had a very bad relationship with the Indian government. From 2015 on, he has not had a great relationship with them. We had that ill-fated trip to India where along with him came was, you know, a former convicted terrorist.

People who were, that the Indians considered to be pro-Khalistan. I thought that the last year or so, there was an effort by the Trudeau government to try to mend relations with Prime Minister Modi. But that's over now. We are in a deep, deep breeze. It's going to be many, many years before we're going to be able to repair that relationship. You mentioned Pierre Palliev. I also want to ask you about Jagmeet Singh, the leader of the NDP, because he actually had some emotional things to say when he spoke on this. I grew up hearing many stories that if you raise concerns about human rights violations in India, that you might be denied a visa, that if you went back to India, you could

suffer violence, torture, and even death. I grew up hearing those stories. Well, you know, he's a Sikh, and he's, in the past, has gone to Khalistan rallies. I've written stories about him. I've seen videos of him at Khalistan rallies and supporting them. And we should just remind people, when we're talking about Khalistan, of course, this is the would be an independent state for Sikhs. This is before he was leader of the NDP.

This is before he was leader. He's been raised in a family where there has been, in his view, a lot of discrimination against Sikhs by the Indian government. And they have reasons with Mr. Modi. Let's be honest here. He's promoted very Hindu nationalistic government. And they have reasons with Mr. Modi. Let's be honest here. He's promoted very Hindu nationalistic government. He's been not only discriminatory towards Sikhs, but he has been discriminatory to Muslim Indians. There is discrimination, and there have been efforts by some Hindu nationalists to foment violence, particularly against Muslims, but also

against Sikhs. All right. I'm going to move a little bit on to back to trade, Bob. So we've kind of we've talked about the allegations in the politics here. Let's let's dive a little bit more into trade. This is an important part. So we've we've talked about the fact that a trade deal was derailed. It sounds like as a result of this. Do you have a sense, Bob, of how much money is actually at stake here when we're talking about trade with India? Well, many, many, many billions of dollars are at stake here. We don't have a lot of trade with India right now. It's certainly less than China. India is a booming economy now. It's growing. Diversifying trade is really an important thing for Canada. We can't

always rely on the United States. We have some diversified trade with China, which is good. I mean, we sell them a lot of our agricultural goods and sell them a lot of our minerals and sell them oil. But India wants a lot of our goods and we should be trying to sell it to them as much as we can. Obviously, diplomatically, there is not going to be any little government-to-government exchanges anymore. In fact, the Premier of Yukon was in India looking at ways to sell critical minerals to the Indian market. And nobody had given him a heads up that the prime minister was going to make this sudden announcement, so he was there and all his meetings were cancelled. So he had to get on a plane and go home because the Indians just cut everything off. So that's why I

think when the prime minister, I hope people are telling him, we have to take this seriously, but we do not want to escalate this because it could have a big impact on economics. We've brought up China a little bit in this conversation. And in this fall, of course, we're going to be hearing a lot about that public inquiry into foreign interference in Canadian affairs. We're going to be talking a lot about China there. And ultimately, those issues are similar to this killing because they are both questions about Canada's sovereignty, right? So could questions about this killing actually also come up in our public inquiry about foreign interference? Oh, undoubtedly it will.

In fact, it would have happened regardless of this assassination. Why? Well, because the leaders had, the parties had talked and Jagmeet Singh, the NDP leader, had said, look, we've got to involve India as well as Russia and Iran in these. And given the fact that we have such a large Indian population in this country, you know, we should be looking at what role India plays in interfering with Canadian politics. All right, just lastly here, Bob, where do Canada and India go from here? Like, what does Canada want India to do now? What Canada wants India is to say, okay, help us in this investigation so that we can bring these two killers to justice. And if there were involvement by people in your security services, these people must face the consequences of being involved with this. That's what Canada wants India to do. And that is the responsible thing for India to do. And as for India, I call it, of course, India wants us

to shut up and not talk about this issue anymore. So you say you don't think India is going to cooperate with Canada wanting it to be part of this investigation. Why not? Because they're not going to admit that they were that they their security services might have been involved in a targeted assassination in a country that is a member of the Commonwealth, that is a parliamentary democracy, and one we've had longstanding relationships for ever. It's not going to admit to that. If they did, they would have done that yesterday. There have been discussions going on for several weeks with the Prime Minister, National Security Advisor, the CSIS Director and other officials with India, trying to show them intelligence, asking them to cooperate, and they've

denied it all along the way. So I don't think that you're going to see them change their mind on this. They're dug in now. Bob, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today to go through all of this. You're welcome. Thank you. That's it for today. I'm Maina Karaman-Wells. Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland, and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Angela

Pachenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.