On the eve of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s official visit to Mumbai and Recent Delhi, a senior official said the federal government believed India was now not plotting attacks on Canadians.
The official’s comments at a press background briefing were the primary to suggest India had halted the clandestine operations that Canada has linked to a murder and other violence.
“We have now a really robust diplomatic engagement, including between national security advisers, and I feel we will say we’re confident that that activity shouldn’t be continuing or we’d not be having one of these discussion,” he said.
Pressed by reporters to make clear the comment, the official declined to elaborate, but added, “I actually don’t think we’d be taking this trip if we thought these type of activities would proceed.”
The official spoke on the condition he wouldn’t be identified.
Canadian national security agencies imagine India began a campaign in 2022 to kill activists in North America who support Khalistan, an independent state within the Sikh-majority Punjab.
Amongst those allegedly targeted was Hardeep Singh Nijjar, who was gunned down in June 2023 as he was leaving the Surrey, B.C., temple where he served as president.
The RCMP believes the Indian government tapped gang leader Lawrence Bishnoi to rearrange the murder. An Indian intelligence officer was also implicated in a plot to kill one other Canadian within the U.S.
Because the RCMP investigations progressed, Commissioner Mike Duheme announced that India’s government had been linked to a broad array of violence, often targeting pro-Khalistan activists.
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Canada subsequently expelled six Indian diplomats. But since taking office, Carney has restored, and deepened, ties with India, which he’s courting for a trade deal to offset a tariff-obsessed White House.
Since then, the Lawrence Bishnoi gang, which India had allegedly cooperated with to focus on opponents in Canada, has been tied to the extortion crisis in cities with large South Asian populations.
But at a briefing on Wednesday prematurely of Carney’s arrival in India on Feb. 27, the senior government official appeared to suggest that Recent Delhi’s targeting of Canadians had stopped.
The World Sikh Organization of Canada called the official’s comment’s “utterly false” and said it “doesn’t align with what Sikh Canadians are experiencing on the bottom and what we’re seeing firsthand.”
Only last weekend, Vancouver police warned Canadian Sikh activist Moninder Singh about an imminent threat to himself, his wife and their children. It’s the fourth such warning he has received since 2022.
“The WSO is aware of incidents previously six months of people being surveilled, harassed and intimidated by agents of the federal government of India,” the national Sikh group said within the statement.
“The Carney government has didn’t hold India accountable or to create any meaningful safeguards to make sure that Sikh Canadians are shielded from foreign interference and transnational repression. Declaring the issue resolved doesn’t make it so.”
The senior officials wouldn’t answer when asked after they believed India had stopped its transnational repression and foreign interference campaign in Canada.
“We have now a mature, robust discussions with the federal government of Indian on these issues. And we’ve robust safeguards in place to avoid foreign interference,” the official told reporters.
“I can’t provide you with a particular date of which individuals modified views. We’ve got a scientific engagement with the federal government in India, at senior officials level, on the ministerial level, on the leader level. And these issues have been raised frequently. And we’re confident that we’ve the idea for further productive discussion.”
Stewart.Bell@globalnews.ca
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