Canada Expels Indian diplomat after accusing India of killing their citizen on Canadian Soil

[Upper Canada Tory]

India Today C-Voter survey on this crisis

What if India killed Khalistan terrorists
They did the right thing          61%
They are wrong                     14%

Is Trudeau supporting Khalistan terrorists
Yes                                      60%
No                                       18%

Did Indian agencies kill the Khalistan terrorist
Yes                                      16%
No                                       57%

Are Indian diplomats in Canada unsafe
Yes                                       54%
No                                        27%

Who cares what Indians think? This is an issue of Canadian sovereignty.

Canada has an awful awful history of harboring terrorists . Literally Canada has nobody but to blame but themselves for it .

The fact is the reason they are distrusted is a bunch of Khalistanian terrorists bombed an Air India plane in the 1980s and then the Canadian judicial system let a bunch of them out of prison at some point afterwards. To add insult on injury the leader of the NDP as late of 2017 refused to condemn the mastermind of that very attack and given he is an unofficial coalition partner, that makes things even worse for Canada .

 

No, it doesn't. This is very misleading. Canada has had terror attacks by Khalistanis (the last one being almost 40 years ago), and the government response hasn't always been the best, but the term 'harbouring terrorists' implies Canada is deliberately trying to hide and support these terrorists. This of course, isn't true - Canada does not in any way hide or benefit from Khalistani extremists on its soil. Most people killed in the Air India bombing were Canadian citizens. The Canadian judicial system did try to prosecute them and did successfully prosecute one of them (albeit with a lenient sentence), and contacted foreign authorities in some cases to try and obtain more evidence. The others' charges were dismissed due to insufficient evidence, but given the efforts to prosecute them in the first place, this isn't the same as harbouring terrorism.

More recently, the Indian government's complaints regarding Khalistani violence were a parade float that tried to portray Indira's Gandhi's assassination and an unofficial Khalistani referendum. I don't necessarily agree with these things, but this isn't evidence Canada harbours terrorism - just individuals expressing sympathies for unpleasant ideologies. Canada's poor response to Khalistanis in the 1980s doesn't justify cracking down on random individuals. The Khalistani movement has died down since then, both in India and in Canada.

Trudeau, being the weak leader that he is, hasn't handled this situation very well in many respects. With that said, the Indian government so far hasn't provided much evidence Nijjar was a threat to India. I'm not excluding the possibility that he could have been a terrorist, but the evidence for this still hasn't been provided, let alone evidence of the possibility of the guy attacking India.

If India is responsible for a killing on Canadian soil, this and other aspects of its policy in international relations such as its close ties to the Kremlin in the Ukraine war are reflective of its attitude toward foreign policy more than anything else. India has an arrogant and transactional attitude toward foreign policy where only large powers like India/US/Russia get to decide what other states' foreign policy should be, and 'lesser states' like Canada (and Ukraine and others) have to bend over to their will and don't have any rights themselves. This isn't a good quality in a long-term ally, because the second India decides that their interest don't align with that of the US, they will abandon the US and the Western alliance, as has happened before with many less reliable allies of the US.

I also think India will suffer from this diplomatically much more than Canada will, but only time can fully answer that question.

[Upper Canada Tory]

https://www.opindia.com/2023/09/hardeep-singh-nijjar-had-weekly-meetings-with-canadian-intelligence-officers-before-his-killing/

"Hardeep Singh Nijjar had weekly meetings with Canadian Intelligence Agency before his killing, was being regularly briefed: Nijjar’s son"

Balraj Singh Nijjar, the son of slain Hardeep Singh Nijjar, has told the Canadian media that his father had weekly meetings with Canadian intelligence officials before his murder. As per a report by Canadian news website National Observer, Balraj Singh Nijjar said his father had been meeting with Canadian Security Intelligence Service officers “once or twice a week.”

Hardeep Singh Nijjar might have been a Canadian Intelligence Agency asset while being a Khalistan leader.

I'm slightly sceptical of this claim. If this is true, how exactly did his son know about it? Weekly CSIS briefings aren't something you talk to your family about at the dinner table.

[Upper Canada Tory]

Trudeau needs to resign over this. This is unacceptable, regardless of whether the allegations of Indian gov't involvement are true or not.

The killing of Nijjar was caused at least in part by Trudeau's own policies - the fact that he had the audacity to cause an international diplomatic dispute over it for his own political benefit shows his reckless, narcissistic and vacuous approach to international relations.

[Upper Canada Tory]

The killing of Nijjar was caused at least in part by Trudeau's own policies - the fact that he had the audacity to cause an international diplomatic dispute over it for his own political benefit shows his reckless, narcissistic and vacuous approach to international relations.

Yes, Trudeau should have hushed up the murder of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil to avoid hurting the feelings of those responsible.

Maybe the cause of the diplomatic dispute was the murder itself, not the fuss it caused?

Firstly, the facts as they currently are don't exactly portray Trudeau in a positive light. Lax border security makes it very easy for nefarious actors to commit acts like this. Lax border security seems to have been a factor here, because the alleged killers of Nijjar entered the country on student visas. If Trudeau were seriously concerned about foreign actors killing our citizens, we would have much stricter border security and a foreign agent registry by now, yet we don't have these things. Trudeau is abdicating his own responsibility to defend our national security, which makes me roll my eyes when he expresses indignation toward the Indian government regarding the killing.

Secondly, publicly accusing a state of killing your citizen is not a decision to be made lightly. It's better to know you will have backing from other allies as well as to make sure you have somewhat complete information. There's still a lot we don't know about the level at which the Indian government was involved - was it just a rogue intel agent, or was it ordered at the executive level? If it was the former, for all we know, Ottawa could have informed the Indian government privately and they might have dealt with the rogue individual. The US could also have privately intervened to side with Canada. If Trudeau planned to go public about the allegation, how it is revealed could have been co-ordinated with the US and other allies. He lost a lot of leverage by trying to be self-righteous and recklessly revealing the allegation on his own. Early in the dispute, the US seemed to side with Canada but didn't want to discuss it publicly, making the whole thing harder to solve. The reckless manner in which the allegation was revealed also made Canada susceptible to propaganda from Indian media, which also didn't help the situation.

Trudeau could have handled the whole thing far more prudently.