Canadian allegations against India put United States in a pinch

The United States is caught in the middle of a diplomatic war between India and Canada, after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s allegations that Indian agents were behind the killing of a Sikh Separatist leader in the country.

The explosive allegation comes amid the Biden administration’s charm offensive toward India as a key bulwark against China, with many questioning the US relationship with India’s controversial Prime Minister, Narendra Modi.

The US reportedly worked closely with Canada in investigating the apparent murder on its soil. President Biden has not publicly commented on the allegations, highlighting the tricky balancing act of standing by Canada without alienating India.

All eyes are now on whether Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will present evidence to support his claims and just how bad relations between Ottawa and New Delhi will get before the US is forced to step in.

Since Trudeau’s public allegations against India on Tuesday, relations between the two countries have hit rock bottom. Canada has received no public support from its allies backing up the claim. 

Vivek Dehejia, professor of economics and an India-Canada policy expert at Carleton University in Ottawa, told The Hill that Canadian officials and Trudeau assumed they would get unconditional support from their allies and from the US in particular. 

“They have been disappointed by the level of support that they have received. If you look carefully at National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan’s recent comments, he’s walking a tightrope because Canada’s very dramatic allegations have put the US and other NATO allies in a bind,” he added.

On Thursday, Sullivan offered a vague statement in support of Canada’s undertaking in this investigation and said the US has also been in touch with Indian government.  

“It is a matter of concern for us. It is something we take seriously. It is something we will keep working on, and we will do that regardless of the country,” he told reporters at the White House on Thursday.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the US was coordinating with Canada on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly on Friday, and called for India to cooperate in the ongoing probe.

“We want to see accountability. And it’s important that the investigation run its course and lead to that result,” Blinken told reporters in New York.

The Washington Post reported earlier this week that several senior officials of Canada’s Five Eyes allies, of which the US is a member, were informed of the allegations ahead of the G20 summit in New Delhi. Nevertheless, no public comment was made by any senior leaders among the group’s members, which also include the UK, Australia and New Zealand.

According to Sadanand Dhume, a senior fellow at the Washington, DC-based American Enterprise Institute, the Biden administration has no intention of sacrificing its relationship with India over an ill-judged accusation by Trudeau.

Biden has made closer ties with India a foreign policy priority in its efforts to counter China’s influence in Asia, inviting Modi for an official state visit in June, when he also addressed Congress. 

That was the same month that masked gunmen killed Hardeep Singh Nijjar outside a Sikh temple in Vancouver. The 45-year-old separatist leader had previously been designated as a terrorist by India. 

India has long maintained that Canada has turned a blind eye toward extremist elements against India, especially Khalistani secessionists who demand a separate homeland for Sikh in the Punjab region. 

“The fact is that the Canadians have allowed some pretty dodgy people to use Canadian soil and to spread violent messages,” Dhume said.

“It’s not as though there’s deep sympathy for Canada given that Trudeau has not handled this really well. He’s really been forced into a corner here.”

Trudeau has also come under scathing criticism from some former officials back home. 

Omer Aziz, a former foreign policy advisor for Trudeau’s administration in Canada, wrote in The Globe and Mail that Ottawa’s foreign policy initiatives have never understood South Asia or India, but were instead aimed at winning over the sizable ethnic Sikh vote at home. 

“Under Trudeau, the foreign policy choices have been subordinated to domestic diaspora politics, given the importance of the Sikh diaspora in Canada, which have been important liberal voters. Trudeau, who has a minority in Canadian parliament, is only in power because of the New Democratic Party led by Jagmeet Singh,” Dehejia told The Hill.

Singh is the first Sikh to lead a major federal party in Canada, and helped Trudeau form a minority government last year after the Liberals failed to win a majority in parliament. 

In New Delhi, the Canadian allegations have united a fractious political landscape. 

“The Indian response has been ferocious, and it’s been uniform,” said Dhume, adding that it has dredged up memories of the assassination of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1984 and Air India bombing the next year, both of which were linked to Sikh separatists. 

Even Modi’s main opposition, the Indian National Congress has backed his government’s stance on Trudeau and Canada in a rare show of unity. 

“The Congress reiterates that the country’s fight against terrorism has to be uncompromising, especially when it threatens India’s sovereignty, unity and integrity,” it said in a statement.

Pressure is now on Trudeau to reveal how Canada obtained the intelligence that led it to so publicly suggest the Indian government was behind the killing. 

The prime minister doubled down on his claims Thursday, again saying Canada had credible reasons to believe that agents of the government of India were involved in the killing of a Canadian on Canadian soil.

Canada may not be in a position to reveal where it got the information, Dhume said, but the Indian view is that if you’re not in a position to corroborate … then don’t make the allegation in public.

Yet ultimately it may depend on the US to settle the growing feud, which has resulted in India halting new visas for Canadians and expelling a Canadian diplomat. 

“Only the US has the ability to solve this as only they have both trust and influence in both Ottawa and New Delhi,” Dhume added. 

 

 

 

 

 

Fallout from Canada-India clash

Canada-India relations are reeling from the announcement that Canadian security agencies had uncovered evidence linking the Indian government to the assassination of an Indian-born Canadian citizen in British Columbia earlier this year. Canada Institute Associate Xavier Delgado outlines what's at stake for both countries and their allies in the Indo-Pacific.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that Canadian security agencies have obtained credible evidence linking the Indian government to the unsolved murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Canadian citizen and notable advocate for Sikh separatism. 

Nijjar was shot by two masked assailants outside a Sikh temple in British Columbia earlier this year in an attack that Canada alleges has since been connected to agents of India.

The Indian foreign ministry decried the allegations as absurd and, in the aftermath of the announcement, exchanged tit-for-tat expulsions of senior diplomats from Ottawa and New Delhi.

The dispute has shined a sudden spotlight on the Canada-India relationship, which, prior to the Nijjar incident, had been trending in a positive direction. Geopolitical developments, economic ties, and demographic trends over the past ten years had set the stage for closer cooperation between the two former British colonies. India’s prominence in Canada’s 2022 Indo-Pacific Strategy and high-level negotiations between the two states for an early progress trade agreement (EPTA) gave supporters of the relationship plenty of reasons to be optimistic.

Now, the allegations that the Indian government orchestrated the assassination of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil have cast a cloud of doubt over the path ahead for the bilateral relationship.

Trade will likely be the first major casualty of the fallout, with negotiations for the EPTA being put on hold. Both countries declared that they would pause trade talks with each other earlier this month and Canadian Trade Minister Mary Ng has indefinitely postponed a trade mission to New Delhi that had been planned for October. The negotiations were a notable part of Canada’s Indo-Pacific Strategy, which listed the EPTA as a critical step towards a larger comprehensive economic partnership agreement (CEPA) that would bolster trade ties between the two countries.

The stalled trade talks have put a US$17 billion bilateral trade relationship under strain. Canadian merchandise trade with India grew from approximately US$3.87 billion in 2012 to US$10.18 billion in 2022, with major increases in the export of Canadian energy products and import of Indian consumer goods. In that same year, services trade between the two countries measured US$6.96 billion. 

A reduction in the flow of Indian immigrants, which constitute almost one in five of all recent immigrants to Canada, could be even more devastating than a deterioration of trade relations.

Canada recently reached the 40-million-population milestone off an influx in inbound migration following the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, Canada’s population growth, which is the fastest in the G7, is mainly driven by migration ‑ four in five new Canadians from 2016 to 2021 were immigrants. 

Indian immigration to Canada has tripled since 2013, overtaking and pulling away from the Philippines and China as the top source country for new Canadians in the 2021 census.

That census also counted 1.3 million ethnic Indians living in Canada, over 1 million of whom resided in British Columbia or Ontario. 77% of that group – 771,790 people – follow Sikhism, making Canada’s Sikh population the largest in the world outside of India. 

India also tops a notable subcategory of immigration ‑ international students, 34% of international students in Canada from 2015 to 2019 came from India, providing a critical source of revenue for Canadian academic institutions; by 2022, that share had grown to 40%. These numbers directly translate to the labor force, with Indian graduates from Canadian programs accounting for the largest share of post-graduate work permit holders in 2018 over China (20%) and the United States (1%).

Beyond the bounds of Canada-India relations, the dispute between the two countries may throw a wrench in the emerging Indo-Pacific framework of institutions and alliances.

India, with its economic might and security capabilities, has been hailed by the United States and democratic allies as a regional counterweight to China. Washington included India as a founding member of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) and the freshly-anointed I2U2 bloc with Israel and the United Arab Emirates.

Both countries are also founding members of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QSD or Quad), a strategic security dialogue that includes Japan and Australia.

Canada, for its part, was not invited to join the Quad or IPEF at the conception of either group, nor was it included alongside Five Eyes allies Australia and the United Kingdom in the AUKUS security pact. After inviting Canada to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership during the Obama administration, the United States opted to not join the agreement, leaving both countries without a shared major economic or security institution in the Indo-Pacific. 

A chilling of relations with India could hinder Canada’s ability to join the network of Indo-Pacific institutions, both because regional allies will be wary of angering the Modi government and because India itself could block Canadian membership in certain groups.

Ottawa is clearly aware of India’s influence and power in the region. The Canadian Indo-Pacific strategy, published in late 2022, has an entire section dedicated to India that reads, “India’s strategic importance and leadership – both across the region and globally – will only increase as India – the world’s biggest democracy – becomes the most populous country in the world and continues to grow its economy.”

Canada is not the only party that stands to lose from this dispute. The allegations can damage India’s public image as a democratic nation committed to a rules-based order or, more critically, its perception as a trustworthy ally in the competition against China. Canada’s Five Eyes partners could reevaluate intelligence sharing and law enforcement cooperation with India if Canadian officials uncover definitive proof of India’s involvement in Nijjar’s murder. 

Disputes between allies are common and, in the diverse roster of countries that constitute the emerging Indo-Pacific architecture, should be expected. Governments disagree frequently over trade policies, environmental practices, and other issues that don’t pose a threat to their diplomatic relationships.

The Canada-India dispute is unique in that the severity of the allegations, the economic and demographic ties between the two countries, and the geopolitical context in which the situation unfolded have raised the stakes for all parties, including the United States.

To prevent spillover damage to the nascent Indo-Pacific alliances, Washington will need to approach the situation carefully. Beijing benefits the most from in-fighting between major US allies, but regardless of how the coming weeks play out, both Canada and India will still have poor relations with China and good relations with the United States. One reason for this is the values that all three countries nominally share. US leaders should remember this and remind Ottawa and New Delhi that the path forward must be paved by justice and a commitment to due process to deviate from those values would be to bring relations between all three countries into uncharted and volatile territory.