Canadians manage to give Modi a headache for a change

For years, Justin Trudeau’s government failed to manage foreign interference in Canadian politics, with officials struggling to explain how they failed to see or act on intelligence reports. It got so bad that frustrated Canadian spies started leaking damaging tidbits, forcing the prime minister to call a public inquiry.

Canada has one of the world’s highest proportions of foreign-born citizens, which leads to lively grassroots diaspora politics, but it has failed to set up adequate protections against outside influence. It is only now setting up a foreign agent registry, for example, and the gaps appear to have been taken advantage of by foreign powers, particularly China and India.

Trudeau has been accused of turning a blind eye to Chinese interference and being too close to separatist Canadian Sikhs, while his Conservative opponents are accused of being too close to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Trudeau and his officials have been on the defensive for years, struggling to explain their inadequate measures while trying to rectify them. But on Monday, his team showed a sign of progress as it took a series of carefully orchestrated steps designed to push back at Modi.

First, Canada announced it had expelled six Indian diplomats, including High Commissioner Sanjay Kumar Verma. In New Delhi, after being summoned by India’s Ministry of External Affairs, Canadian Deputy High Commissioner Stewart Wheelertold Indian journalists that Canada had provided “credible, irrefutable evidence of ties between agents of the government of India and the murder of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil.”

Next, senior Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers said they had “evidence pertaining to agents of the government of India’s involvement in serious criminal activity in Canada,” including “well over a dozen credible and imminent threats to life.”

Then, a steely-eyed Trudeau held a news conference outlining the allegations and complaining that India had failed to cooperate with Canadian police and public safety officials. “We will never tolerate the involvement of a foreign government threatening and killing Canadian citizens on Canadian soil,” Trudeau said.

Finally, officials worked the phones, giving off-the-record details to national security reporters in Ottawa and Washington, adding lurid details to the broad picture already laid out by the police and politicians.

Speaking off the record, Canadian officials told journalists that Indian diplomats have been forcing Indian Canadians to spy on one another, using money, visas, and threats for leverage, then sending the information back to India, where a senior official “authorized the intelligence-gathering missions and attacks” on people Modi wanted to be targeted. An unnamed Canadian official told the Washington Post that the senior official in India was Amit Shah, Modi’s right-hand man.

India denounced the “preposterous imputations” and blamed “vote bank politics,” Indian shorthand for Trudeau’s reliance on Sikh Canadian voters. India has often accused Canada of being soft on Sikh separatists, alleging that it harbors terrorists, blaming the Canadians for ignoring Indian warnings that might have prevented the 1985 Air India bombing that killed 329 people.

On their face, the Canadian allegations seem too outlandish to be true. Officials allege that the attacks in Canada were carried out by thugs controlled by famous gangster Lawrence Bishnoi, who is directing assassins on behalf of his masters in the Modi government even while he sits in a Punjab prison cell. The targets include supporters of an independent Khalistan and other people who have gotten on the wrong side of Modi.

India has been demanding evidence of criminality since September 2023, when Trudeau accused Modi of being behind the murder of Canadian Hardeep Singh Nijjar, who was gunned down by a hit squad outside a temple in British Columbia that June. Back then, India scoffed and falsely accused Trudeau of being coked up, acting as though Canada was making up lies.

Going to see Uncle Sam

But last November, an indictment was unsealed in New York that revealed Indian national Nikhil Gupta, acting on behalf of Modi’s government, had allegedly tried to hire a hitman to kill Nijjar’s lawyer, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun. India’s bumbling 007s made two big mistakes. Pannum is an American citizen, so the Americans could hardly let that slide. And the hitman Gupta tried to hire was actually an undercover Drug Enforcement Agency officer.

Gupta is now in a US prison, and officials in Canada and the police must now have a thick dossier linking India to other assassination attempts, including that of Nijjar.

Sushant Singh, a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi and a lecturer at Yale University, says Modi can’t afford to be seen to have angered Uncle Sam.

“There will hardly be any damaging political consequences for Mr. Modi unless the United States decides to pursue its case very very strongly and embarrass India,” says Singh.

“Then it would make a material difference to how Mr. Modi is perceived.”

Trudeau showed his cards just as Indian officials were arriving in Washington this week to help the Americans with their inquiries in the Gupta case, maximizing the impact and embarrassing Modi on the world stage.

One of the most surprising things about the whole affair is that India seemingly did not dial down its activities after Trudeau called them out last year: Canadians allege that a recent attack against a popular singer was linked to Indian intelligence.

What does this mean for Modi?

So far, it’s a murky, inconclusive mess. The Canadians, of course, have proved nothing, and Trudeau’s back is to the wall as he’s facing growing pressure at home to step down as Liberal Party leader. In testimony at the inquiry on Wednesday, he went after his Conservative opponents, linking them to foreign interference, which lends credence to Indian allegations that he is just trying to save his own skin.

But allies have not expressed skepticism about the evidence the Canadians have shared. The US State Department seems unimpressed by India’s failure to cooperate with Canadian authorities, as do the UK and Australia.

Experts think this is a headache for Modi, but it is unlikely to blow up the significant strategic and trade relations between India and its Western friends.

“The US is likely to deliver a clear message to India about interfering in the internal affairs of allied democracies, especially Washington’s trusted Five Eyes partners,” says Graeme Thompson, a senior analyst at Eurasia Group.

“But it’s also going to seek to contain the fallout from Delhi’s dispute with Ottawa with an eye to the bigger strategic prize: alignment with India as an essential partner to counter China.”

Behind the scenes, Canada’s allies can be expected to twist arms to try to get the Indians to call off their hit squads. If they don’t, they can expect police and intelligence agencies to keep a close eye on their diplomats, even while military and economic ties grow stronger.