The Munk Debates Podcast - Friday Focus: Canada-India Bust-up

Episode Date: September 22, 2023

Friday Focus provides listeners with a focused, half-hour masterclass on the big issues, events and trends driving the news and current events. The show features Janice Gross Stein, the founding director of the Munk School of Global Affairs and bestselling author, in conversation with Rudyard Griffiths, Chair and moderator of the Munk Debates. The following is a sample of the Munk Debates’ weekly current affairs podcast, Friday Focus. On this week’s edition of Friday Focus Janice and Rudyard dedicate the show to discussing the fallout in Canada-India relations precipitated by Prime Minister Trudeau’s revelations that there are “credible allegations” Indian security services murdered a Canadian citizen in Canada who supported an independent homeland for Sikhs in Punjab. What are Canadians to make of this latest example of direct foreign interference in Canada which in its seriousness far exceeds recent Chinese election meddling? Why have Canada-India relations come to this impasse and who is to blame? And finally, what are Canadians to make of their traditional allies’ response to Canada’s allegation of an extra judicial killing on Canadian soil directed by the Indian government?  Janice and Rudyard debate it all! To access full-length editions of the Friday Focus podcast consider becoming a donor to the Munk Debates for as little as $25 annually, or $.50 per episode. Canadian donors receive a charitable tax receipt. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue.Become a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The following is a complimentary excerpt of this week's edition of the Friday Focus podcast by The Monk Debates. To access full-length editions of each and every episode, along with all kinds of great additional benefits and perks, become a donor to the Monk debates. You can do that for as little as $25 a year, and you'll receive each and every year 50 Friday Focus episodes at full length. It's all available right now on our website in just a third. few simple clicks. Triple W. The Monk Debates.com. Look for the Friday focus option in our navigation bar, the top right of the website. Make your donation, and we will send you each and every Friday a link to listen to the full-length edition of this program. Thanks in advance for your generous contribution. Hello, Monk members. Rudyard Griffiths here, the executive director of the Monk Debates.

Welcome to this, our Friday Focus podcast. Each and every Friday, we're joined by Janice, Stein, the founding director, the Monk School of Global Affairs, internationally renowned scholar and author. Janice, great to be in conversation with you on the 22nd of September. And so glad to be here with you, Rudyard. What a week here in Canada. We are top of the news right now, almost everywhere. Absolutely.

This does happen from time to time on this show. I can remember a few months back when we were talking about Chinese election interference in Canadian democracy. It was a big story around the world, and now we're back at it, but it's not China, Janice. It's India that's grabbed the headlines. The Prime Minister of Canada, in an extraordinary address in Parliament on Monday, indicating that there are credible allegations that India's, we assume, security services conducted an assassination of a so-called Calistani Nationalist. This is a group that is advocating for an independent homeland in the Punjab region of India.

This same group in India is labeled as a terrorist organization and has been subject to an ongoing multi-now decade kind of covert, internecine battle war fight with the Indian government over independence. But this is kind of now Janice boiled over into a much bigger seemingly diplomatic and bilateral dispute between India and Canada. So my question to you is, how important is this in the light of Canada's, you know, deteriorated relationship with China, our non-relationship understandably with Russia around the Ukraine War, even though we do share this Arctic region with Russia.

On a scale of one to ten, what importance do you give these events? An eight, an eight, Rudyard, and actually, for the reasons you mentioned, big picture, we now have very tense relationships with India, China, and Russia. That is not a good place for this country to be in. But let me just say, I have empathy for any Canadian prime minister who is told by the head of CIS, they have credible allegations that a killing. took place on Canadian soil, inspired by in coordination with a foreign government. No Prime Minister wants to hear that.

And here's the second point, Rudyard. I hope we get to talk about it. It is not the big geopolitical story, but let's make some time. That story was leaked by our own security services. Normally, this would be handled the way this government was handled. handling it as a bilateral discussion between top officials, not friendly, but managed. That's how governments do it. That was blown up by our own security services.

You hear the outrage in my voice that leaked this door to the global meal. We are in a very bad place in this country. Yeah, I've heard this kind of behind the scenes, I've heard that over the course of negotiations between the parties around a job, to come forward and lead an inquiry into Chinese interference, that there were some senior members of the government indicating to the opposition parties that there was something major coming on India.

So I do believe, Janice, that the Globe and Mail was doing what the media could or should do. It was hearing these stories and reports. It was working their sources. And what do we have? Yes, we have a prime minister in a sense that's forced out on Monday with this statement of, you know, serious credible allegations that have emerged and need to be investigated more.

So I take your point that those leaks to the globe had to come from somewhere, but it wasn't also as if the government was being entirely discreet about this, because this investigation clearly had been ongoing for a number of months. Six weeks at least. Yeah. And, you know, they to some extent showed their hand, at least to the opposition parties. If you're talking to the opposition parties, you might as well be talking to the media. Yeah, but you still have to have a credible security source inside to confirm,

right before you go public, which means that somebody in an official position in this country, a trusted official took it on themselves to confirm this to the Goldman Mail. That's called making policy, not executing on policy. So a great conversation, love the back and forth. To me, a lot of imagery, symmetry here with Chinese interference in Canada because it seems like way back in 2018, our security services tabled a report that identified three primary threats to Canadian national security. Number one was the threat of Islamic terrorism. Number two was in cells, these, you know, reprobrival. who are motivated by violence towards women.

The number of third risk in 2018 identified by our security services seek radicalism in the form of the Calistani independent movement. The government quickly moved to squash that part of the report. They were then supposedly, according to more reporting in the Globe of Mail, warned about additional risks around seek radicalism in Canada in advance of the, Prime Minister's first trip to India, but the government chose not to, in a sense, allow the security services to engage in a counter-radicalism movement against those groups. So look, the government has, Janice, in similar ways to its attitudes towards, you know,

Chinese interference in Canada and more importantly, diaspora groups, some of which are doing not good things in Canada, it seems to have taken a passive approach here, both on the China file and on the India file. And look, passivity sometimes in the instance might look like the wise policy, but constant can kicking down the proverbial road eventually incurs consequences. So let me disagree with you in the most restraining language I can find. Okay. there is no equivalence here to the China file.

Let me say why I think this so strongly. When the evidence came in that there was credible Indian interference, and let's be clear for all our listeners, nobody's seen the evidence. There's been one interesting leak that there were intercepts of conversations by Indian officials in Canada. And if that is true, that is dapping. that is credible evidence, but we don't know because it hasn't been released officially, but it's been legal.

But as soon as the prime minister was told about it, he raised it with the Indian prime minister at the G20. He sent his national security advisor to over to New Delhi to talk to her counterpart. He sent the head of CIS over. In other words, the only conceivable ground for a legitimate whistleblower is the government isn't doing enough. But in fact, it was here, unlike you might argue, the China file. So there is no excuse whatsoever unless you feel somehow a God-given right to abrogate to yourself as an official to decide and to pass judgment on what the government is doing. I think, Janice, that the point I'm making is that security officials clearly, in the same way that they were frustrated with this government's foot dragging on Chinese election interference, had reason to be frustrated at the government's foot dragging on confronting Calistani radicals in Canada who are doing really bad things. Regardless of, you know, bilateral relations with India, we cannot and should not accept groups in Canada, regardless of their homeland or ethnicity.

This is not specific to the sea community at all who have made a remarkable contribution to Canada and rightly are welcomed in this country as, you know, marvelous citizens who contribute to our way of life. This is about a violent, radicalized minority that exists in a lot of different diaspora groups, but particularly within the sea community related to this issue of an independent homeland in Punjab. And it seems like there were multiple instances over the last four and a half or five years where the security services were coming forward to this government and saying we have to do something about calisdani radicals. And the government, as with the Chinese file, at various times, decided that they didn't want to hear what the security services were saying. Now, this doesn't justify in any way if these allegations are true. In any way, what the Indian government had did,

if it did, in fact, conduct an assassination on Canadian soil. But by ignoring Kalesdani radicalism, it certainly created a greater set of preconditions, a greater chance that a government like India could act extra judiciary outside of its any kind of international norms because it felt that the Canadian government was doing nothing. I'm going to disagree on two grounds here, Richard. You have to make a judgment on the evidence you have in front of you. The security services knew that the prime minister had taken action on this file. And the story was leaked after he took action.

Case closed on that. There is simply no excuse for their behavior. Let's talk about Kalistani radicalism. There is no question that there is a group of radicalized members of the sea community, largely in the west of Canada, although, who knows, who are in support of an independent state of Kalasthan carved out of Punjab and that the Indian government regards them as terrorists. But this is a democratic country, Canada, governed by the rule. of law. You have to have evidence that people are engaging in criminal activity. So the Canadian

government has not designated supporters of Calistan as a terrorist group. Short of that, what do you have to do before you take so-called take action against members of a diaspora group who are supporting movements at home that the prime minister at home does not like? You have to to engage in illegal arms trafficking. You have to engage in gangline killings of other members of the group. You have to transfer funds illegally. If that were the case, why were the security services? They had every opportunity under the law to identify and arrest and charge anybody engaged in these illegal activities. They didn't do it, which means they had no evidence under Canadian criminal law. So we have to be very careful with these kinds of warnings. You and I both know, we have very active

diaspora in this country. That's what makes Canada, who get very heavily involved with. Our Ukrainian community has been involved for the last year and a half, and most of us would say, in a just cause, in raising money to send arms to Ukraine, right? So you need to designate a group as a terrorist movement before you can do anything. And if you don't do that, nobody has authority. There's no evidence of an illegal act in the last four or five years. If I could get a word in, Edgwaz, I'd appreciate it. Number one, the United States and the FBI have faced similar Calistani radicals in the United States.

And they've arrested and deported people. So, you know, I think there clearly was. a will in a way for them to act. I think in Canada, when you have prominent politicians of the governing party appearing at Sikh nationalist rallies where there are effigies of murdered Indian politicians like in Dera Gandhi and, you know, placards, lauding so-called martyrs of the calistani movement and you have prominent politicians participating in those events, that kind of sends a message to the rest of government that says, you know what?

Our political class seems very comfortable with these kinds of expressions, with what this movement is about and seemingly what it is advocating. Those were very unfortunate, injudicious decisions on the part of senior politicians in this country to associate themselves with what is, I mean, it's a separate debate, a separate show. There are horrible things going on in Punjab, and I do think the Sikh community has been the subject of persecution there. I saw a story. I couldn't believe it on Bloomberg this week that 56% of the state budget. of Punjab goes towards servicing its debt. This is incredibly impoverished and, you know, discriminated region and group in India, 100%. But that does not justify calls for organized violence against, I guess, what was formerly an ally, India. Yet we had our politicians

marching in those very protests alongside those so-called, you know, community leaders who represented or were associated with this group. That, you know, there are consequences. Actions have consequences. Thanks for listening to this excerpt of the Friday Focus podcast. To get full-length editions of each and every episode of this program, simply go to our website, triple w the monk debates.com. Click on the Friday Focus tab in our navigation on the top right of the site.

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